Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology

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In Social Sciences: The Big Issues (2003), Kath Woodward wrote that instead of making a distinction between the body and the machine, “we could benefit from thinking across the boundaries of natural = body = agency on the one side and the machine = culture to the other. And as I moved among these secret ruins, I found myself wondering what the inhabitants of that lost future would think of the world I lived in. Meanwhile, cyberpunk's ripples continue to spread, exciting some, challenging others—and outraging a few, whose pained remonstrances are not yet fully heard. I wondered what time it was in London, and tried to imagine Dialta Downes having breakfast in her Hampstead flat, surrounded by streamlined chrome figurines and books on American culture. The American Revolution has occurred, but it was carried out with the support of the company, which used it as an opportunity to establish a puppet government in North America.

Maybe … he had been wired up and ready for combat training, already accustomed to the form-fitting contours in the rear couch of the black, tiber-bodied General Dynamics A-230. The man came tumbling through the hatch, more or less helpless in free fall, but Innis could see him figuring it out, willing the muscles to quit struggling, quit trying to cope with a gravity that simply wasn’t there.But the rest of it was relentlessly tacky: ephemeral stuff extruded by the collective American subconscious of the Thirties, tending mostly to survive along depressing strips lined with dusty motels, mattress wholesalers, and small used-car lots. Slowly it is turning rebel pop culture inside out, until the artists at pop's cutting edge are now, quite often, cutting-edge technicians in the bargain. Cohen had sent me some books on Thirties design, more photos of streamlined buildings, and a list of Dialta Downes’s fifty favorite examples of the style in California. The preface is knowledgeable and helpful, and I like the brief introduction positioning each author before their respective stories, because so many anthologies don't seem to take the time to do this.

Rice, stunned, grabs "Toinette" and follows Parker and Mozart through the time portal, abandoning that timeline. They had their own problems with congressional committees investigating “the conduct of the war in Thailand.She says cyborgism gives people control and that “this merging of body and machine enables us to exercise control and agency. Roads of crystal soared between the spires, crossed and recrossed by smooth silver shapes like beads of running mercury.