We're just not much good any more at refusing things becausethey don't seem proper. As a society, we can't even manage to turnour backs on abysmal threats like heroin and the hydrogen bomb. Asa culture, we love to play with fire, just for the sake of its allure; and ifthere happens to be money in it, there are no holds barred.Jumpstarting Mary Shelley's corpses is the least of our problems;something much along that line happens in intensive-care wards everyday.
Human thought itself, in its unprecedented guise as computersoftware, is becoming something to be crystallized, replicated, made acommodity. Even the insides of our brains aren't sacred; on thecontrary, the human brain is a primary target of increasinglysuccessful research, ontological and spiritual questions be damned.The idea that, under these circumstances, Human Nature is somehowdestined to prevail against the Great Machine, is simply silly; it seemsweirdly beside the point. It's as if a rodent philosopher in a lab-cage,about to have his brain bored and wired for the edification of BigScience, were to piously declare that in the end Rodent Nature musttriumph.
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a humanbeing. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing tothink about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover oureyes.
*This* is cyberpunk.
This explains, I hope, why standard sci-fi adventure yarnstarted up in black leather fail to qualify. Lewis Shiner has simply lostpatience with writers who offer dopey shoot-em-up rack-fodder in sci-fiberpunk drag. "Other writers had turned the form into formula," hecomplains in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "the same dead-end thrills we get