Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1988) - Plot & Excerpts
When I picked up 'Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology' I was hoping for an anthology of cyberpunk. That was not exactly what I got. Maybe my understanding of the cyberpunk genre is wrong, and it was just my ignorant expectations that were disappointed. Cyberpunk, I thought, was the genre 'Neuromancer' belonged to. I saw Bruce Sterling and William Gibson on the cover, saw it's neon colours and pixelated design and made, what I considered to be at the time, safe assumptions. They were wrong.Of the thirteen stories, four and a half - maybe five - are what I consider cyberpunk. The others were just science fiction. '400 Boys' is a post-apocalyptic tale in which various street gangs are battling for territory - cyberpunk themes, yes, but not necessarily cyberpunk at all. I'd've expected a story like this in a compendium of post-apocalyptic fiction, but that's not what Mirrorshades was meant to be. I enjoyed '400 Boys' a lot. My complaint isn't that the stories are bad - though I didn't enjoy some - but that they do not fit the genre. 'Solstice' - one of my favourite stories in the book - is about a drug artist. It is coloured with the cyberpunk palette. Yet it isn't really cyberpunk. Rather, the main character seems like someone we might meet in a cyberpunk novel, just a side character whom the main character goes to see, whom the actual cyberpunk interacts with. And then there are some (Tales of Houdini, Petra, Till Human Voices Wake Us) that miss the mark completely, that shouldn't have a place in a cyberpunk collection.In Mirrorshades we are introduced to a bunch of cyberpunk-esque themes (drugs, genetic engineering, cybernetics, etc), but these are just elements; they aren't intrinsically cyberpunk, not for cyberpunk's exclusive use. It's what the author does with these elements that makes a cyberpunk novel. It's Gibson's particular use of cybernetics in Neuromancer that creates the cyberpunk atmosphere. It seems that this is a book of raw materials, not just for cyberpunk but for a range of science fiction. That's not what I was looking for when I picked up Mirrorshades, which is why I only gave it three stars. Some of the stories in it - the ones that aren't cyberpunk - are actually really good - I mentioned 400 Boys and Solstice, and also 'Red Star, Winter Orbit' and Mozart in Mirrorshades' are great reads.A bit on the more cyberpunk stories. While reading 'Freezone' my first thought was that it was the inspiration for the Raft in Neal Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'. Regarding 'Red Star, Winter Orbit', I would like to read a novel that starts exactly where it ends. The story itself I thought was not bad, but what happens next is much more of interest to me, is much more cyberpunk. I thought 'Mozart in Mirrorshades' was stupid at the beginning - I don't like anachronisms; they are too cheap, too easy. However, by the end I was really enjoying it. To wrap up, you'll get a few cyberpunk stories and many cyberpunk themes if you read Mirrorshades. If you're interested in the outer-circle of cyberpunk, this book is probably for you. But if you're interested in cyberpunk - like I am - I suggest putting this off and just going for something by William Gibson.
Una breve reflexión sobre las antologías:Por lo general nunca he tenido una buena predisposición hacia ellas, a no ser que fueran del mismo autor, ya que siempre me he quedado insatisfecho por lo breves de los relatos... y siempre he acabado disfrutando mucho de ellas.Es cierto que hay piezas que no terminan de llenarte, pero si la selección está bien hecha, suelen ser las menos, y a cambio tienes un ramillete muy amplio de ejercicios narrativos que seguramente no conocías. Eso es lo que me ha vuelto pasar con esta antología que, quitando a Gibson, no conocía a nadie y me he llevado muy gratas sorpresas, que me llevarán a buscar más de esos autores...Una breve reflexión sobre ESTA antología:La breve presentación de cada autor en el contexto del género (el cyberpunk) me parece genial, pues te da un poco de perspectiva de lo que puedes esperar de él, no vas "a ciegas". Me ha resultado muy útil, pues como dije anteriormente, casi no conocía a ninguno de los autores.La selección de los relatos me parece muy acertada, pues cubre un abanico amplísimo de opciones dentro del cyberpunk y la ciencia ficción: la mezcla de lo cibernético con lo biológico, viaje en el tiempo, las drogas como medio de ampliación de los límites perceptivos, etc.También me ha gustado que el background de los autores fuera también tan variopinto: desde el archiconocido Gibson (autor de Neuromante o Conde Cero, entre otras), de enorme influencia en el género cyberpunk, sobre todo en la estética, pasando por los polifacéticos Pat Cadigan o John Shirley (ambos músicos), que mezclan el rock con la ciencia ficción, hasta la desoladora narrativa de Lewis Shiner, que aprovecha su rico bagaje cultural para plantearnos relatos fronterizos entre la fantasía, el horror y la ciencia ficción...Mis relatos favoritos:-Ojos de serpiente, de Tom Maddox, por la rica recreación de los estados mentales del protagonista al coquetear con las drogas psicotrópicas y sus alteraciones neutrales.-Petra, de Greg Bear, por montar un mundo de fantasía creíble en un cosmos muy reducido, apoyándose en figuras de la antropología religiosa conocidas por todo el mundo, y aprovecharla para ensayar varios de los prejuicios morales en ese nuevo escenario de una forma bastante original.-Zona Libre de John Shirley, por su excelente ambientación de lo que una novela cyberpunk requiere, junto con toda una estética rockera y las contradicciones que envuelven la vida de una estrella venida a menos.-Stove vive, de Pau di Filippo, por el misterio con el que es introducido el personaje principal dentro de un mundo lleno de contrastes, escondiendo perfectamente su característica principal, aunque siempre la hemos tenido delante. Soberbio.¿La recomendaría?Sin ninguna duda. No es una obra de actualidad, está claro, pues se encuadra en los 80's/90's, que ya han quedado lejos, pero sí es una obra que remueve todos los ingredientes del cóctel que fue el cyberpunk y te ofrece la posibilidad de retomar el género y releer ideas que han sido de gran influencia en la ciencia ficción posterior.
What do You think about Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1988)?
Perhaps looking back at cyberpunk from 2014, it is impossible to fully grasp what the authors at the beginning of that movement were truly about. We have Bruce Sterling's intro of this anthology to help us out, including other names for the movement at the time - Outlaw Technologists, Eighties Wave, Radical Hard SF, and others. Maybe we just needed to call it the Weird at the time, and in each decade assign different authors to that category. When I read this anthology I struggle to place each story within the parameters of what I would call cyberpunk. Is time traveling and stealing art from Thomas Jefferson cyberpunk or just time travel and alternate reality? Is a future where humans mate with stone statues cyberpunk? Or even a near future where Russia's space program is folding? To me, none of these stories fit, and there are only twelve in the anthology to begin with. Sterling points out that it is a label none of them chose, and I think it was just an attempt to capture people who were experimenting with new ideas and directions in science fiction in the 1980s. This isn't an anthology to read if you are hoping for more stories like William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. It's just not what it is.The best story to me was Solstice by James Patrick Kelly, but more for its ideas than how it was written. It combined Stonehenge with custom designer drugs, clones, and cryogenics. I also really liked Red Star, Winter Orbit co-written by Gibson-Sterling but just thought it was a solid regular old science fiction story.To read the stories online:The Gernsback Continuum by William GibsonSnake-Eyes by Tom Maddox(Rock On by Pat Cadigan only available online in German!)Tales of Houdini by Rudy Rucker(400 Boys by Marc Laidlaw)(Solstice by James Patrick Kelly)(Petra by Greg Bear)Till Human Voices Wake Us by Lewis Shiner(Freezone by John Shirley)(Stone Lives by Paul di Filippo)Red Star, Winter Orbit by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson(Mozart in Mirrorshades by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner)
—Jenny (Reading Envy)
Il est difficile de parler de quelque chose d’aussi polymorphe que ce mouvement sans en passer par les généralités, mais je vais essayer d’éviter. Tout le monde le sait, le début des années 80 a été la genèse de ce mouvement, revendiquant une sf différente tant par ses thèmes que ses implications. Et si l’ambition technologique demeure, on quitte radicalement le monde des héros de la sf traditionnelle, ainsi que ses thématiques spatiales et extra-terrestres, pour revenir ici aux bas-fonds, aux laissés pour compte, bref à la lie de l’humanité. Cette anthologie s’inscrit, d’une certaine manière, comme la vision qu’a pu avoir Sterling de ce mouvement. Et sa vision est terriblement variée : quel point commun trouver entre la nouvelle de Greg Bear et celle de Sterling et Gibson ? Le lien me paraît assez difficile à faire, même s’il est bien présent, peut-être dans la manière dont la différence est traitée. il n’est ainsi pas une nouvelle de ce recueil où les personnages ne soient subtilement (ou non) différents d’une humanité terriblement actuelle : conso-matrice, décadente et vaguement nihiliste, elle est plus intéressée par les modes que par les grands idéaux, et les personnages de ces nouvelles ne sont que le reflet de ces préoccupations. Il est d’ailleurs étonnant de constater à quel point le cyberpunk, sous ses habits flamboyants et rebelles, est à l’heure actuelle la littérature la plus proche de notre présent, tant dans l’aspect que dans les préoccupations. Bref, un ouvrage à lire pour l’aspect historique de la chose.
—Nicolas
This gets four stars because I'm an '80s nerd (class of '89), but if I'm being honest, it's more like three. Some of the stories have aged well -- particularly Gibson's classic The Gernsback Continuum, Paul di Filippo's Stone Lives, and Greg Bear's Petra -- but several have not, particularly the ones that focus on the collision of music and tech. Turns out, in the future, punk doesn't look like people trying really hard to look punk, we still use guitars, and no cyberpunk folks anticipated the impact of hip-hop. In fact, that's one very glaring thing about this anthology -- all white males, as far as I can tell, except for one female (Pat Cadigan). Also, James Patrick Kelly's Solstice focuses on raising your own clone with the intention of marrying her, and SPOILER -- the lead guy doesn't see it as creepy-gross-incesty, and gets annoyed when other people do until it finally dawns on him at the end. But overall, especially as a historical document, this is important reading for afficionados of cyberpunk and '80s pop culture.
—Alex
