New Taboos (Outspoken Authors)
Part of the Outspoken Authors series (previous books featured Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Moorcock, and Ursula Le Guin), this little book is a gift for fans of Shirley, an early architect of cyberpunk. The title piece, “New Taboos,” is an essay proposing, in a sort of ironic Swiftian sense, some new taboos—toxifying the environment, lying in order to make money, making unreasonably large profits, among others—and some new punishments (including “economic and social ostracism”). “State of Imprisonment” is a first-time-in-print novella about the privatization of the prison industry; it’s funny with some serious undertones. “Why We Need Forty Years of Hell” is another essay, this one about the rapidly approaching point at which technology becomes so advanced that a new kind of intelligence is created, a hybrid of the human and robotic mind. Finally, the book includes an interview with Shirley, which should be considered required reading for fans looking for insight into this cult favorite’s writings. --David Pitt