From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (E)
Subject: Re: MY INTERPRETATION OF AGRIPPA
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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 01:37:27 GMT

Somewhere in Cyberspace, dleclair@netlink.cts.com said about 'MY
INTERPRETATION OF AGRIPPA': 
|
|        Okay, so Gibson writes Agrippa and it disappears. Two 
|explanations of why the heck he did it.. These are just theories:
| 
|1. The Information Theory:
|        Gibson was the creator of his "cyberpunk" culture. It is the 
|free-flow of information, or attempt to hack it, in the future. This is 
|his saying, "I am no longer cyberpunk, the information stops here with 
|Agrippa" If you want to read a book by Gibson you can : 1. Go to the 
|library and take it out, 2. Buy it at the store, etc. Here Gibson says 
|you CAN'T GET IT! Only if you have $500 or so dollars he wouldn't mind 
|you spoiling his example, and hell, even if you CAN afford it, you can 
|only read it once. I think this is the answer behind Agrippa. That 
|CyberPunkism is just merely ... a memory.

Ok, lots of disagreements here....First of all, I think Gibson fully
intended for Agrippa to be somewhere in cybersapce...In fact, I'm
almost positive of it, since we've been hearing about that aspect of
Agrippa since we've been reading articles about Agrippa.....Thus,
Gibson is letting everybody have a copy....I'm sure he knows that if
he releases Agrippa on the net, it's going to spread everywhere, like
a drop of dye in a glass of water.....That has already happened, thus,
Agrippa seems sort of a work, on one front, for the nu-masses, the
virtual worlds.....On another front, there is Begos' release with
Ahbaugh's artwork, which would seem to be a fundamental piece of art
intended for the artistic community....Very modern art, in fact - from
what I've seen, even what the disk is enshorouded in fits in perfectly
with the theme of the poem (it's an old, dusty, decayed/frayed book,
with that burnt-edges appeal)

Aside from that, the first thng that should be noted is you will get
many arguements on this forum, as well as many others, if you say
Gibson created cyberpunk culture.  You would also get many
disagreements if you say Gibson created cyberpunk the literary
movement.  Gibson did not create either.  1:  If you are referring to
cyberpunk culture as the sort of BladeRunnerMaxHeadroom scenery, then,
well, that was out before Neuromancer...If you refer to it as hackers
and punks, welp, that's been going on long before 1984 as well... On
the literary front, there are many slipstream authors who were writing
cyberpunk under different huews before Gibson....

Also, I think you might be a little pressed to find a quote from
Gibson saying "I am cyberpunk" or "I am a cyberpunk".  Thus, how can
he refute that, as you say he's doing, when he most likely did not even
label himself as such in the first place?  True, his next work is
supposedly not Cyberpunk (though from a snippet I've seen it sounds to
have a somewhat similar *setting*, though, that of course does not
make it cyberpunk)....

Finally, I fail to see the relevance you deem innate between Agrippa
and Cyberpunk.....Agrippa, alone as a *poem*, is certainly not
cyberpunk under my definition(s)...I would say, though, that has
occured since December 9th surrounding the release of the poem is
definitely pretty cyberpunk-ish, though more importantly it
exemplifies the theme of the poem, and basically sets Gibson in the
forefront of virtual tek-artists of the day....The fact that your
message seems to imply that Gibson is a cyberpunk and all Gibson is
is cyberpunk, bothers me deeply......

|2. The Hype Theory
|        Gibson is using this "poem" to get good PR and public reponse 
|setting the stage for a large release.. or a minor release of a new book.

That would be extremely foolish....I could easily take my net.copy,
and send it out to 1 million people at random or by request (both of
which have already been done on the net, from different sources), and
then put a little header saying - print this out nicely, send it to 5
friends, and have them xerox/fax/broadcast it, and so on, and create a
sort of virtual chain letter on many mediums.....

Thus, Gibson would not make money on the redistribution of the poem
alone... The only way he is going to make any money off Agrippa would
be via the whole work distributed by Kevin begos....

|Take your pick, they both sound sane.

hmmm...sanity is relative...

|--Douglas--
|
|--                    
|INTERNET:  dleclair@netlink.cts.com (Douglas LeClair)
|UUCP:   ...!ryptyde!netlink!dleclair
|NetLink Online Communications * Public Access in San Diego, CA (619) 453-1115

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