Brief Interview with Bruce Sterling

by Jay Patton

CN: When did you start writing technology based fiction?

BS: I wrote my first book in 1976. It was published in early 1978.

CN: Is the term cyberpunk just a label or is this a "genre?"

BS: I think it's probably accurate to refer to cyberpunk as a "subgenre" of the science fiction category. I always thought of cyberpunk as the literary expression of a means of perception and a way of life.

CN: Is it possible to keep up with all the technological advances and keep sane?

BS: Depends on how up you want to keep. Obviously no one human brain can keep up with the intellectual efforts of the world's millions of engineers, academics and scientists. What's more, the advances are just the edge of the problem. There's a lot of very interesting technology which is either extinct, not advancing at all, or decaying in an intriguing fashion.

CN: How do you feel about the goverment trying to regulate the Internet?

BS: A fascinating spectacle. Power without accountability is a monstrous thing. There is no way to make power accountable without politics. Still, I see no particular reason why electronic politics should look very much at all like conventional politics. Will the Internet look more like a government or will government come to look more like the Internet?

CN: Do you think the major publishing houses are nervous about the advances in electronic publishing?

BS: Sure they are, but if they have sense they'd be a lot more nervous about chain bookstores and centralized publishing monoliths.