#cheap truth

[computersciencegothic]

Fourth print of the cyberpunk zine Cheap Truth, 1983

[seekmy]

[spaceintruderdetector]

1984-so wth happened?

0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$ CHEAP TRUTH 6 0$0$0$0$$0$0$0$0 EDITORIAL.  radical, hard SF     seeing signs that something new is imminent ---        new fiction from the bounty of new technology.     /// the perspectives opened up by contemporary science fight back, using guerilla tactics        new information systems f/a/s/h/i/o/n that new science fiction               for the *electronic age* $$0$0$0$0$$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0

[spaceintruderdetector]

Cheap Truth 1984

$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0 CHEAP TRUTH ONE $0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0 EDITORIAL:  Hi.  You want to know the truth.  We want to tell it to you. Let's try to keep the ECONOMICS between us to a minimum, okay?  Right, let's do it. **  QUEST FOR DECAY  **        As American SF lies in a reptilian torpor, its small, squishy cousin, Fantasy, creeps gecko-like across the bookstands.  Dreaming of dragon-hood, Fantasy has puffed itself up with air like a Mojave chuckwalla.  SF's collapse had formed a vacuum that forces Fantasy into a painful and explosive bloat.        Short stories, crippled with the bends, expand into whole hideous trilogies as hollow as nickel gumballs.  Even poor Stephen Donaldson, who struggles to atone for his literary crimes with wet hippy sincerity, has been forced to re-xerox his Tolkien pastiches and doubly insult the public.  As Robert E. Howard spins in his grave, the Chryslers of publishing attach rotors to his head and feet and use him to power the presses.        But the editors have eaten sour grapes and the writers' teeth are on edge.  Fantasy, for too long the vapid playground of McCaffreyite unicorn-cuddlers and insect-eating SCA freaks, has some new and dangerous borderlands.  Suddenly, perhaps out of sheer frustration, fantasy has movement and color again.  It is the squirming movement of corruption and the bright sheen of decay.

[cheaptruth-blog]

Success: 62% Faliure : 38% Time Span: 24 Hours FOI

[cyberdrvnk]

Parallels

Scavenging from cached alt.forum texts I come across similarities between the formation of the cyberpunk movement & indie* game development subculture.

Authors... submitted articles pseudonymously to [Cheap Truth fanzine], hyping the works of people in the [cyberpunk movement] and vigorously attacking the science fiction mainstream. This helped form the core movement consciousness.

Cyberpunk literature, in general, deals with marginalized people in technologically advanced hierarchical societies.

SOURCE

At least, that was my perception of it when I was deeply entrenched in the digital social networks of the indie movement. I've long-since abandoned the consumption of the myriad tweets & twerks of those circles, having found no constructive value in the all-too-common "woe is me" & "poor artist" attitudes. On occasion I find myself linked to a passage from that miasma & I find it hasn't changed. But certainly, within those circles, there is a sense of disenfranchisement & schismatic philosophy abounds.

Yet again, as with my burgeoning analysis of cyberpunk, it's a future that I cannot see coming to pass. It's an anachronism in the making. I wonder if the founders were as self-aware as some of us superdevelopers are today? Perhaps not. Maybe it's a kind of creative Darwinism, & maybe that's why I have so much difficulty falling in love with what now comes through the speakers & screens of my research. It's no longer a revolution, but a parody of one.

Rebellion without cause or merit. When I was a teenager it was easy to get involved & feel alive through such emotion. Then one day I realized I was going to live past age 20, & everything changed.

The power was there all along, sleeping within.

Now my confusion over the allure of cyberpunk becomes clear: I'm not (self-) marginalized enough appreciate it. I'm not enough of a punk.

And is that such a bad thing? Again, maybe not. It depends on how thickly I'll be varnishing the final project with these particular ghosts.

*this popular term has become near-derogatory in its use, & I've abandoned it in favor of the much more suitable "superdeveloper" to describe what I do.