Saxat En sf-hjältes avsked _Från_en_svensk_dagstidning._ I mer än trettio år har jag skrivit, översatt, redigerat och utgivit sciencefiction, först genom det lilla Bokförlaget Fiktiva, sedan Askild & Kärnekull, därefter genom Delta och de senaste åren genom Fakta & Fantasi. Jag har gjort det utan vinningssyfte, eftersom jag menar att sciencefiction och annan fantastisk litteratur är värd en insats. Förluster har jag betalat själv. Nu går det inte längre. Böckerna måste säljas i minst några tusen exemplar för att över huvudtaget gå ihop, trots att jag själv översätter allt utan honorar; men de säljs knappast i några hundra. Det är bara att konstatera, att jag inte kunnat intressera sf-läsarna för det slags sciencefiction jag gärna vill sprida. När jag dessutom, som sf-författare och sf-utgivare, varken får stipendier, utgivningsstöd eller annan hjälp eller uppmuntran, har jag slutligen tappat orken och ger upp. Min sf-verksamhet upphör ungefär samtidigt med Fria Pro, och av samma skäl: ifrågasättande av etablerade sanningar, vilket är sciencefictions förutsättning, är inte längre så accepterat som det var på 70- och 80-talet. Nu lägger jag ner all bokutgivning på Delta, JVM-Serien och övrigt som jag sysslat med dessa år. Jules Verne-Magasinet skall dock INTE läggas ner; fast om jag blir inblandad i framtiden är en öppen fråga. Jag kommer också att upphöra helt som författare --- det går inte att vara sf-författare i ett kulturklimat som känns så utomordentligt negativt till sf-författandet och sf i allmänhet. Jag skall försörja hustru och barn och kanariefågel med de tillfälliga arbeten och uppdrag jag kan få. Det är ju inte lika roligt som sciencefiction; men vad gör man? Jag ska naturligtvis fullgöra alla åtaganden. Alla ska få allt de betalt och betalar för, både böcker och JVM. Jag har uppskattat de här åren mycket, och lämnar sf-författandet och sf-utgivandet utan bitterhet, men med stor sorg och saknad. Och jag vill tacka dem som stött mig under den här gropiga resan. Allt måste sluta någon gång, så även detta; men medge att det var roligt så länge det varade! SAM J LUNDWALL Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk _Av_Lewis_Shiner_och_taget_ur_New_York_Times_7_januari_1991._ I'm 39 years old. In my early 30's, I wrote 'Frontera,' which has appeared on a few lists of formative cyberpunk novels. Cyberpunk started out as a fashionable subset of science fiction, showing high-technology subverted by opportunists on the margins of society, for profit or just for fun. The paradigm was William Gibson's highly successful novel 'Neuromancer,' a near future thriller about computer hackers, artificial intelligence and corporate warfare. What cyberpunk had going for it was the idea that technology did not have to be intimidating. Readers in their teens and 20's responded powerfully to it. They were tired of hearing how their home computers were tempting them into crime, how a few hackers would undermine Western civilization. They wanted fiction that could speak to the sense of joy and power that computers gave them. As one reader told me: "We're the first generation that spent our entire lives around computers and video games. We don't see computers as threats; we see them as toys. Cyberspace [computer-generated reality] is just an enhancement of video games. We can see the future. We can see this happening.". Because 'Neuromancer' was not just an isolated phenomenon, because Gibson was part of a perceived group of writers, critics had a hook to work with. Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley and I became a 'movement.' Sterling reinforced this notion, declaring that the 'old, stale futures' of science fiction were dead. In the early 1980's, I felt that we were indeed a movement. Certainly the five of us exchanged a lot of letters and phone calls. We believed that science fiction needed to take its cues from the present --- computer technology, corporate power structures, Japanese economic ascendency --- rather than the mid-century pipe dreams of World Governments and Galactic Federations. For me, the movement was about global culture, anarchy and high-energy prose. But by 1987, cyberpunk had become a cliché. Other writers had turned the form into formula: implant wetware (biological computer chips), government by multinational corporations, street-wise, leather-jacketed, amphetamine-loving protagonists and decayed orbital colonies. These changes led a number of us to declare the movement dead. For us, cyberpunk in its new incarnation had turned technology into an end in itself and lost its original impulse. Ironically, as the term cyberpunk was losing its meaning for us, it was escaping virus-like, into the mainstream, where it continues, to thrive. Clifford Stoll used the term in his best-selling book 'The Cuckoo's Egg' to describe computer criminals; Keyboard magazine applied cyberpunk to avant-garde composers. I don't see anything dangerous or threatening about cyberpunk in its current incarnation. But its newfound popularity is revealing. It shows our obsession with material goods, and technical, engineered solutions. Pop culture's fascination with the bleak vision of cyberpunk may be short-lived. There seems to be a national need for spiritual values. New age bookstores are doing a land office business in crystals and self-help manuals. People are joining cults and neo-pagan communes. Newsweek recently devoted a cover story to the resurgence of religion among young Americans. How do we keep our families together? How do we deal with addictions to alcohol and drugs and tobacco and sex? What is our place in a chaotic world? Today's cyberpunk doesn't answer these questions. Instead it offers power fantasies, the same dead-end thrills we get from video games and blockbuster movies like 'Rambo' and 'Aliens.' It gives Nature up for dead, accepts violence and greed as inevitable and promotes the cult of the loner. I find myself waiting - maybe in vain - for a new literature of idealism and compassion that is contemporary not only on the technological level but also the emotional. It would see the computer neither as enemy nor god but as a tool for human purposes. I believe that this --- not cyberpunk --- is the attitude we need to get us into the 21st century.