The alt.cp FAQ was getting a tad dated. Not from information so much
as broken links etc. 

This revision, 4.1, is the original text of the previous FAQ's with
out-dated links either replaced or moved to "Lost and Found" 

If any of these links go out, or if I missed some bad ones, please let
me know at shirkahn@mindspring.com so I can get them fixed.



This version will be posted about every-other week or when we get too
many "what is cyberpunk" questions posted to the group.

Enjoy-

ShirKahn


And now..........The FAQ


    FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
         ALT.CYBERPUNK

Maintained and posted every two weeks by ShirKahn- 
Ideas for changes and factual corrections should be sent by email or 
carrier pigeon to: shirkahn@mindspring.com



 This is Version 4.1 of the alt.cyberpunk FAQ. Although previous FAQs
have not been allocated version numbers, due the number of people now
 involved, Goobs has taken the liberty to do so. Previous maintainers
/
editors  and version numbers are given below:

  - Version 3: Erich Schneider
  - Version 2: Tim Oerting
  - Version 1: Andy Hawks

 I would also like to recognise and express my thanks to Jer and Stack
for  all their help and assistance in compiling previous versions of
the FAQ.

 This FAQ, as with Cyberpunk literature, is a living document. If you
Have any comments, criticisms, additions, questions please send them
to one
 of the above email addresses. (I especially welcome reports of
"broken
 links", either in the ASCII or HTML versions). Send to that address
as
 well if you would like the latest version of this document.

The vast number of the "answers" here could be predicated by "in
several 
peoples opinion"  The general consensus is however that no one person 
is the ultimate Cyberpunk authority.

 Contents

    1.  What is Cyberpunk, the Literary Movement ?
    2.  What is Cyberpunk, the Subculture ?
    3.  What is Cyberspace ?
    4.  Cyberpunk Literature
    5.  Magazines About Cyberpunk and Related Topics
    6.  Cyberpunk in Visual Media (Movies and TV)
    7.  Blade Runner
    8.  Cyberpunk Music / Dress / Aftershave
    9.  CP Authors' email addresses ?
    10. What is "PGP" ?
    11. Agrippa: What and Where, is it ?
    12. Other On-Line Resources

 1. What is Cyberpunk, the Literary Movement ?

 Gardner Dozois, one of the editors of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction
 Magazine during the early '80s, is generally acknowledged as the
first
 person to popularize the term "Cyberpunk", when describing a body of
 literature. Dozois doesn't claim to have coined the term; he says he
 picked it up "on the street somewhere".

 It is probably no coincidence that Bruce Bethke wrote a short story
 titled "Cyberpunk" in 1980 and submitted it Asimov's mag, when Dozois
may have been doing first readings, and got it published in Amazing in
1983, when Dozois was editor of 1983 Year's Best SF and would be
expected to
be reading the major SF magazines. But as Bethke says, "who gives a
rat's
ass, anyway?!". (Bethke is not really a Cyberpunk author; in mid-1995
he published "Headcrash",
which  he calls "a cybernetically-aware comedy". (Thanks to Bruce for
his help
 in this issue.)

 Before its christening the "Cyberpunk movement", known to its members
as  "The Movement", had existed for quite some time, centred around
Bruce
 Sterling's samizdat, "Cheap Truth"
. Authors like Sterling, Rucker and Shirley submitted articles
 pseudonymously to this newsletter, hyping the works of people in the
 group and vigorously attacking the "SF mainstream". This helped form
the core "movement consciousness". (The run of Cheap Truth is
available by
anonymous FTP in the directory ).

 Cyberpunk literature, in general, deals with marginalized people in
 technologically-enhanced cultural "systems". In Cyberpunk stories'
 settings, there is usually a "system" which dominates the lives of
most
 "ordinary" people, be it an oppressive government, a group of large,
 paternalistic corporations or a fundamentalist religion. These
systems
 are enhanced by certain technologies, particularly "information
 technology" (computers, the mass media), making the system better at
 keeping those within it, inside it. Often this technological system
 extends into its human "components" as well, via brain implants,
 prosthetic limbs, cloned or genetically engineered organs, etc.
Humans
 themselves become part of "the Machine". This is the "cyber" aspect
of
 Cyberpunk.   However, in any cultural system, there are always those
who live on its margins, on "the Edge": criminals, outcasts,
visionaries or
 those who simply want freedom for its own sake. Cyberpunk literature
 focuses on these people, and often on how they turn the system's
 technological tools to their own ends. This is the "punk" aspect of
 Cyberpunk.

 The best Cyberpunk works are distinguished from previous works with
 similar themes, by a certain style. The setting is urban, the mood is
 dark and pessimistic. Concepts are thrown at the reader without
 explanation, much like new developments are thrown at us in our
everyday lives. There is often a sense of moral ambiguity; simply
fighting
 "system" (to topple it, or just to stay alive) does not make the main
 characters "heroes" or "good" in the traditional sense.

 2. What is Cyberpunk, the Subculture ?

 Spurred on by Cyberpunk literature in the mid-1980's, certain groups
of
 people started referring to themselves as Cyberpunk, because they
 correctly noticed the seeds of the fictional "techno-system" in
Western
 society today, and because they identified with the marginalized
 characters in Cyberpunk stories. Within the last few years, the mass
 media has caught on to this, spontaneously dubbing certain people and
 groups "Cyberpunk".

 Specific subgroups which are identified with Cyberpunk are: Hackers,
 Crackers, Phreaks < http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/ > and
Cypher-  punks: 

  - "Hackers" are the "wizards" of the computer community; people with
a
     deep understanding of how their computers work, and can do things
     with them that seem "magical".

  - "Crackers" are the real-world analogues of the "console cowboys"
of
     Cyberpunk fiction; they break into other people's computer
systems,
     without their permission, for illicit gain or simply for the
     pleasure of exercising their skill

  - "Phreaks" are those who do a similar thing with the telephone
     system, coming up with ways to circumvent phone companies'
     calling charges and doing clever things with the phone network.

  - "Cypher-punks: These people think a good way to bollocks "The
      System" is through cryptography and cryptosystems. They
     believe widespread  use of extremely hard-to-break coding 
     schemes will create "regions of privacy" that "The System" 
     cannot invade.

 Some other groups which are associated with Cyberpunk are:

  - "Transhuman"  are actively
     seeking to become "Posthuman" 
     . This involves 
     learning about and making use of new technologies that can
potentially
     increase their capacities and life expectancy. They follow
"Trans-
      humanism" < http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Intro/definitions.html >, 
      a set of 'philosophies of life' (such as the Extropian
philosophy) 
      that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of
      intelligent life beyond its currently human form and limits by 
      means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting
principles
      and values, while avoiding  religion and dogma.

  - "Extropian" <
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Philosophy/princip
     .html > are dedicated to the opposition of Entropy

Politically, extropians are close kin to the libertarians, including 
some anarchists, some classical liberals, and even a political
neoconservative or two. But many extropians have no interest in 
politics at all, and many are actively anti-political. Extropians have
a principle called "spontaneous order", but politics is by no means 
the only domain in which they apply it.

 So are Cyberpunks any or all of the above? Well, not really. One
person's  "Cyberpunk" is another's obnoxious teenager with some
technical skill thrown in, a self-designated Cyberpunk looking for 
the latest trend to identify with or yet another mass media label used

as a marketing ploy. Whilst most Cyberpunks understand, and 
some have a a good working  knowledge of the above definitions, 
these pursuits are seen as a means, rather than an end. The "end"
of course depends upon your own personal goals.

 There are those who claim that "Cyberpunk" is indefinable, which in
some sense it is. Moreover, most regulars on alt.cp are uncomfortable 
about even implying that there actually are any cyberpunks. The point
being  that we all live in a cyberpunk society today, after all Gisbon

himself said "The future has arrived; it's just not evenly
distributed".

Therefore, by definition most some people are already Cyberpunks. That
Is  why when some post on alt.cp claiming that "I am a cyberpunk"
don't 
get flamed to death, just ignored, whereas statements such as
"survival
 through technological superiority" get flamed from here to eternity
and
 back.

 In the end, anybody insisting they are a Cyberpunk will probably get
 flamed in alt.cyberpunk. Think of it as a trial by ordeal. John
Shirley
 (noted cyberpunk author) didn't make it through the entrance exam.
 Chairman Bruce might just hack it, but AFAIK he's never come
visiting.

 3. What is cyberspace ?

 To my knowledge, the term "Cyberspace" was first used by William
Gibson
 in his story  "Burning Chrome". That work first describes users using

devices called "cyberdecks" to override their normal sensory organs,
presenting them with a full-sensory interface to the world computer
network.
When doing  so, said users are "in cyberspace". (The concept had
appeared
prior to  Gibson, most notably in Vernor Vinge's story "True Names").
"Cyberspace" is thus the metaphorical "place" where one "is" when
accessing the
world computer net.

 Even though Gibson's vision of how cyberspace is in some sense,
surreal, it has stimulated many in the computing community. 
The word "cyberspace"  is commonly used in the "mainstream world"
with reference to the emergent world-wide computer network
(especially the Internet). Also, some researchers in the "virtual
reality" 
arena of computer science are trying to implement something like 
Gibson's Matrix into a more general computer generated environment,
even if its purpose is not "accessing the net"

 4. Cyberpunk Literature

 The following is intended to be a short list of the best in-print
 Cyberpunk works. Note that quite a few works written before 1980 have
 been retroactively labelled "Cyberpunk" due to stylistic
similarities,
eg  Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, or similar themes such as Brunner's
The
 Shockwave Rider or Delany's Nova.

  - William Gibson's Neuromancer, about a cracker operating in
cyberspace, a cybernetically-enhanced bodyguard/mercenary, and 
a pair of mysterious AIs, got the ball rolling as far as Cyberpunk is
concerned. It won the Hugo, Nebula, P. K. Dick, Seiun, and Ditmar 
awards, something no other SF work has done.

    Gibson wrote two sequels in the same setting, Count Zero and Mona
Lisa  Overdrive. Gibson also has a collection of short stories,
Burning
 Chrome, which contains three stories in Neuromancer's setting, as
well as several others, such as the excellent "The Winter Market" and
"Dogfight".

    Gibson's two most recent works are Virtual Light and Idoru; they
share a setting (San Francisco and Tokyo, respectively, of the near
future) and a few characters, but are otherwise independent. Compared
to his first trilogy, the technology they posit is less advanced in
some
ways and they are more theme-driven than plot-driven, but they deal
with
many of the same concerns as other cyberpunk works. "Idoru" is a
Japanese borrowing of the English "idol", and refers to a media-
company-manufactured pop-music star, a "virtual" example of which
plays a prominent role in Idoru.

  - Bruce Sterling's anthology Crystal Express contains all of the
    "Shaper/Mechanist" short stories about the future humanity and
"post humanity". Those short stories are also available with
Schismatrix,
a  Shaper/Mechanist novel, in the combined volume Schismatrix Plus.
Also  to be found in Crystal Express is "Green Days in Brunei" a story
which shares the setting of Sterling's novel Islands in the Net. Both
are
near-future extrapolations in worlds very similar to our own.
Sterling also has another collection in print, Globalhead.

  - Sterling edited Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology, which
contains
    stories by many authors; some are questionably cyberpunk, but it
has
    some real gems "Mozart in Mirrorshades".

    Sterling's latest novel is Holy Fire, set in a "gerontocratic"
late
    21st century Earth dominated by the "medical-industrial complex",
     and  focuses on a group of young European artists, hackers, and
    intellectuals determined to go their own way in a world domianted
by
    elderly wealth.

  - Gibson and Sterling collaboratively wrote The Difference Engine, a
    novel called "steampunk" by some; it deals with many cyberpunk
    themes by using an alternate 19th-century Britain where Babbage's
    mechanical computer technology has been fully developed.

  - Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, carries cyberpunk to a humorous
    extreme what else can one say about a work where the Mafia
delivers
    pizza and the main character's name is "Hiro Protagonist"?

  - Larry McCaffrey edited an anthology, Storming the Reality Studio,
    which has snippets of many cyberpunk works, as  well as critical
    articles about cyberpunk, and a fairly good bibliography. Other
    works of criticism are Bukatman's Terminal Identity and Slusser
and
    Shippey's Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative.

 Some other good cyberpunk works include:

  - Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired: a smuggler who pilots a hovertank
    decides to take on the Orbital Corporations that control his
world.

  - Walter Jon Williams, Voice Of The Whirlwind: a corporate soldier's
    clone tries to discover what happened to his "original copy".

  - Greg Bear, Blood Music: a genetic engineer "uplifts" some of his
own
    blood cells to human-level intelligence, with radical
consequences.

  - Pat Cadigan, Synners: hackers and other misfits pursue a deadly
new
    "virus" when direct brain interfaces first appear in near-future
LA.
http:// www.wmin.ac.uk/~fowlerc/patcadigan.html

  - Jeff Noon, Vurt: a Clockwork Orange-esque tale in an England where
    virtual reality is truly the opiate of the masses.

 Some good out-of-print works to look for are Cadigan's Mindplayers,
 Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers, Daniel Keyes Moran's The Long Run,
and Vernor Vinge's short story "True Names".

 Also refer to Section 12 of this FAQ; @Other On-Line Resources@

 5. Magazines About Cyberpunk and Related Topics

 Some magazines which are popular among Cyberpunk fans are:

- Mondo 2000 P O Box 10171 Berkeley CA 94709-0171 Voice (510)845-9018, Fax (510)649-9630 Editorials: editor@mondo2000.com Subscriptions: subscriptions@mondo2000.com Advertising: advertising@mondo2000.com HTTP Site: http://www.mondo2000.com/ Many Cyberpunk fans have an uneasy relationship with Mondo 2000, their esteem for it varies according to the amount of technical content and affected hipness in the articles. Nonetheless, if anything could claim to be the Cyberpunk "magazine of record" this is it. With the departure of many of those providing creative impetus (notably, R.U. Sirius), its days may be numbered. - bOING-bOING 11288 Ventura Boulevard #818 Studio City, CA 91604 Voice (310)854-5747, Fax (310)289-4922 mark@well.com HTTP site: http://www.well.com/user/mark bOING-bOING's status is uncertain; most of its writers now work for Wired, it has ceased newsstand distribution and no longer offers subscriptions. However, if one can get a copy, it's worth looking at. *Revision 4.1 Note from ShirKahn* Currently the "boing boing" site no longer exists on either The Well or on Tripod. If you know the whereabouts of the current page or a source for online back issues- please email the list maintainer. - Wired P.O. Box 191826 San Francisco, CA 94119 Voice (415)904-0660 Fax (415)904-0669 Credit-card subscriptions: 1-800-SO-WIRED (1-800-769-4733) Information: info@wired.com Subscriptions: subscriptions@wired.com HTTP site: http://www.hotwired.com/ The magazine which, through aggressive positioning, has managed to become the "magazine of record" for modern techno-aware culture. It's aimed more at technically-oriented professionals with disposable income, but many cyberpunk fans like the articles on network and future related topics. - SF EYE P.O. Box 18539 Asheville, NC 28814 >HTTP site: http://www.empathy.com/eyeball Described by some as the "house organ of the cyberpunk movement", founded by Stephen P. Brown at the urging of his friends Gibson, Shirley, and Sterling. Published semi-annually, and contains a regular column by Sterling. - Phrack 603 W. 13th #1A-27 8 Austin, TX, 78701 phrack@well.com FTP site: ftp.fc.net.com:/pub/phrack HTTP site: http://www.phrack.com/ - 2600 Magazine Subscription correspondence: 2600 Subscription Dept., P.O. Box 752, Middle Island NY, 11953-0752 Letters/Article Submissions: 2600 Editorial Dept P.O. Box 99, Middle Island NY, 11953-0099 2600@well.com FTP site: ftp.2600.com:/pub HTTP site: http:// www.2600.com / Two mainstays of the computer underground. Phrack deals more with people and goings-on in the community, while 2600 focuses on technical information. 6. Cyberpunk in the Visual Media (Movies and TV TV gave us the late, lamented Max Headroom < http://www.virtuallot.com/cmp/vault/classic/cl01.htm > which featured oodles of cyberpunk concepts. The Bravo cable network and the Sci-Fi Channel are rerunning the few episodes that were made. TV also gave us the somewhat bloated Wild Palms, with a "cyberspace", evil corporations, and a cameo by William Gibson. Also shown on the Sci-Fi Channel is TekWar , a series based on William Shatner's "Tek" novels, which evolved from a set of TV movies based on those novels. While possessing some traditionally cyberpunk elements and extended "cyberspace runs", they (or at least the TV movies) tend to boil down to good guys vs. bad guys cop stories. (TekLords features a central plot element that those who have read Snow Crash will recognize.) Blade Runner, based loosely on Philip K. Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is considered the archetypal cyberpunk movie. (Gibson has said that the visuals in Blade Runner match his vision of the urban future in Neuromancer.) Few other movies have matched it; some that are considered cyberpunk or marginally so are "Alien" and its sequels, "Freejack", "The Lawnmower Man", "Until The End Of The World", the "Terminator" movies, "Total Recall", "Strange Days" and "Brainstorm". Cyberpunk stories can also be found in Japanese anime films, including the Bubblegum Crisis series and Ghost in the Shell. There is an hour long documentary called "Cyberpunk" available on video from Mystic Fire Video. It features some interview-style conversation with Gibson, is generally low-budget, and the consensus opinion on the net is that it isn't really worth anyone's time. Gibson is apparently embarrassed by it. Regarding films based on Gibson stories: At one point a fly-by-night operation called "Cabana Boys Productions" had the rights to Neuromancer; this is why the front of the Neuromancer computer game's box claims it is "soon to be a motion picture from Cabana Boys". The rights have since reverted to Gibson, who is sitting on them at the moment. *Revision 4.1 Note from ShirKahn* The movie is in production- see http://www.neuromancer.org/ for details Gibson's short story "Johnny Mnemonic" was made into a big-budget full- length motion picture for details William Gibson wrote one of the many scripts for Alien 3. According to him, only one detail from his script made its way to the actual film: the bar codes visible on the backs of the prisoners' shaved heads. A synopsis of Gibson's script can be found in part 3 of the Alien Movies FAQ list or the whole script via ftp at . Alternatively, try the Internet Movies Database . 7. Blade Runner The Blade Runner FAQ is available via FTP ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/movies/bladerunner-faq And answers many of the more common questions. Here are short answers to the most common. There are several alternate versions. The original theatrical release In the US omitted the Batty-Tyrell eye-gouging sequence and a few other bits; these were added back in Europe and the video release. In 1992, a "director's cut" was released, now available on video, which omits the Deckard voiceover and the "happy" ending, and reinserts the "unicorn scene". Before that, however, a different cut (known as the workprint) was shown at two theaters, one in LA, the other in San Francisco, for a brief period; this had a different title sequence and soundtrack, some different dialogue, no voiceover and no happy ending, but no unicorn sequence. The 5/6 replicants problem: This is widely accepted as an editing Glitch which slipped through to the release. The film originally featured a fifth "live" replicant, "Mary", who was later deleted. In the workprint, the line "one got fried" is changed to "two got fried ...". Bryant does not include Rachel in the original six escaped replicants. However ... internal clues, such as lack of emotion, the photographs, and the reflective eyes, do suggest that Deckard is a replicant. However, this is not explicitly stated in any cut. The "unicorn scene" gives this theory more weight. An excellent resource for any fan is Paul Sammon's in-depth book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, which goes over the differences between the various version in minute detail. K.W. Jeter has written two novels which are sequels to the movie: Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human and Blade Runner: Replicant Night. One's judgement of the "appropriateness" of these may be influenced by the fact that Jeter was a good friend of Philip K. Dick's. The first sequel deals very directly with the "extra replicant" and "Deckard a replicant?" issues. The second sequel involves Deckard's participation in making a movie about his experiences hunting Roy Batty et. al. (as seen by us in the movie). More sequels by Jeter are apparently to come. 8. Cyberpunk Music / Dress / Aftershave There are a lot of posts to alt.cyberpunk asking what Cyberpunk's like, do, wear etc. These posts are seen as inane due to the reason they are asked, i.e., "Cyberpunk sounds cool, how can I become one". Cyberpunk is not a fashion statement, therefore little of this FAQ is taken up with such matters. In late 1993 Billy Idol released an album called "Cyberpunk", which garnered some media attention; it seems to have been a commercial and critical flop. Billy made some token appearances on the net in alt.cyberpunk and on the WELL, but his public interest in the area seems to have waned. No matter how sincere his intentions might have been, scorn and charges of commercialization have been heaped upon him in this and other forums. 9. CP Authors' email addresses? This FAQ used to list the email addresses of some Cyberpunk authors. This may have been appropriate in the days when the number of Internet users was much smaller. However, the potential for authors to be flooded with fan mail (or commercial advertisements sent to addresses extracted by WWW search engines) has increased to the point where the need to respect authors' privacy and working time, outweighs the desire to give fans addresses in one convenient location. You may instead want to consult public email directories for the email addresses for authors of interest. However, before you ask for William Gibson's, you should know that at The time of writing this FAQ, he had no public email address. In fact, he doesn't really care about computers all that much; he didn't use one until he wrote Mona Lisa Overdrive, and was thinking of kids playing videogames when he developed his "cyberspace". *Revision 4.1 note from ShirKahn* Gibson has found at least one personal use for the net: see http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/ebay.html 10. What is "PGP" ? "PGP" is short for "Pretty Good Privacy", a public-key cryptosystem that is the mainstay of the Cypherpunk movement. However, before you rush off and obtain a copy of PGP, I think it may be of useful to explain why it should be used, and the best reason I've heard comes from the guy who developed it, Phil Zimmerman. Why Use PGP ? "It's personal. It's private. And it's no one's business but yours. You may be planning a political campaign, discussing your taxes, or having an illicit affair. Or you may be doing something that you feel shouldn't be illegal, but is. Whatever it is, you don't want your private electronic mail (E-mail) or confidential documents read by anyone else. There's nothing wrong with asserting your privacy. Privacy is as apple-pie as the Constitution. Perhaps you think your E-mail is legitimate enough that encryption is unwarranted. If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something? You must be a subversive or a drug dealer if you hide your mail inside envelopes. Or maybe a paranoid nut. Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their E-mail? What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If some brave soul tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their E-mail, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their E-mail privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity." PGP Sites can be found at , or < http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/cypherpunks >. There's also an excellent resource on anonymous remailers at < http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html >. Alternatively, there are two newsgroups dealing with PGP and encryption, namely alt.cypherpunk and comp.security.pgp. 11. What is "Agrippa" Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, the textual component of an art project, was written by William Gibson in 1992. Gibson wrote a semi-autobio graphical poem, which was placed onto a computer disk. This disk was part of a limited release of special "reader" screens; the reader units themselves had etchings by Dennis Ashbaugh which were light- sensitive, and slowly changed from one form to another, final, form, when exposed to light. Also, the text of the poem, when read, was erased from the disk - it could only be read once. On the net, opinion on the Agrippa project ranged from "what an interesting concept; it challenges what we think 'art' should be" to "Gibson has sold out to the artsy-fartsy crowd" to "Gibson is right to make a quick buck off these art people". Naturally (some would say according to Gibson's plan), someone got hold of the text of "Agrippa" and posted it to Usenet. A public copy can be found at < http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Misc/Agrippa >. 12. Other on-line resources Usenet - Usenet FAQs repository - Usenet Database Dejanews SF and Cyberpunk Literature - Rutgers SF archive: < http://sflovers.rutgers.edu/ - Pat Cadigan info - William Gibson web site <" http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~thefinn/gibson - /gibson.html /"> or bibliography < http://www.slip.net/~spage/ - gibson/biblio.htm "> - Daniel Keys Moran - John Shirley info - Jason Harrison's Directory of Cyberpunk Fiction Hackers and Phreaks - Survival Research Labs, that incomparable group of artists and hardware hackers, has an HTTP site at Another SRL site can to be found at . - Many files of relevance to the real-life :computer underground" and the hacking/phreaking communities can be found in one of "Computer Underground Digest" sites. The Digest itself has an HTTP site at ; new issues are posted to the Usenet newsgroup "comp.society.cu-digest" Phrack issues can also be had via Phrack's HTTP site *Revision 4.1 note from ShirKahn* The following links have appeared in previous versions of the FAQ but are now outdated. If you know the whereabouts of these pages, please email the maintainer at shirkahn@mindspring.com. - Richard Kadrey's novel Metrophage - Tom Maddox's novel Halo http://www.mathcs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker/rucker.html - Bruce Sterling info , or FTP An FTP- able copy of his nonfiction book "The Hacker Crackdown" is available at , about the attacks on the computer underground in 1990. - Walter Jon Williams' home page . Happy exploring! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Anyone who trusts the PR department of a chemical company deserves what he gets" -alt.cyberpunks SweetPoly