of the middle rank. In early 1990, it employed fifteen people.In 1989, SJG grossed about half a million dollars. SJG's Austinheadquarters is a modest two-story brick office-suite, clutteredwith phones, photocopiers, fax machines and computers. Apublisher's digs, it bustles with semi-organized activity and islittered with glossy promotional brochures and dog-eared SFnovels. Attached to the offices is a large tin-roofed warehousepiled twenty feet high with cardboard boxes of games and books.This building was the site of the "Cyberpunk Bust."

A look at the company's wares, neatly stacked on endless rows ofcheap shelving, quickly shows SJG's long involvement with theScience Fiction community. SJG's main product, the GenericUniversal Role-Playing System or G.U.R.P.S., features licensedand adapted works from many genre writers. There is GURPS WitchWorld, GURPS Conan, GURPS Riverworld, GURPS Horseclans, manynames eminently familiar to SF fans. (GURPS Difference Engineis currently in the works.) GURPS Cyberpunk, however, was tobe another story entirely.

PLAYER FIVE: The Science Fiction Writers.

The "cyberpunk" SF writers are a small group of mostlycollege-educated white litterateurs, without conspicuouscriminal records, scattered through the US and Canada. Onlyone, Rudy Rucker, a professor of computer science in SiliconValley, would rank with even the humblest computer hacker.However, these writers all own computers and take an intense,public, and somewhat morbid interest in the social ramificationsof the information industry. Despite their small numbers, theyall know one another, and are linked by antique print-mediumpublications with unlikely names like SCIENCE FICTION EYE, ISAACASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, OMNI and INTERZONE.

PLAYER SIX: The Civil Libertarians.

This small but rapidly growing group consists of heavily