![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've been almost unreasonably irritated with my journal writing lately. There's nothing quite like sitting down for half an hour, banging out a few pretty well considered paragraphs and then coming back and thinking, "Well, this is all a bit shit, isn't it?" It's just short of enraging. I've lost count of the entries I've tried and failed to produce.
Man, whatever.
I'm actually up to kind of a lot, but I don't really know what to say about it. Video games. Role-playing. There's really nothing new going on here and I don't have an opinion that hasn't been voiced by maybe everyone who's engaged in these activities ever. That's not a lot of incentive.
As I've posted then deleted two things in as many hours, though, I feel like I need to have something up.
"Jesus, man. Think! These fine people deserve content!"
There's got to be something. Of course there is.
I'm what you might call a genre writer. At least I am some of the time. And while my fiction could use a little beefing up, I've spent a lot of time actually researching it. Cyberpunk, I mean. To me, it feels like a dead genre - the nails in the coffin being, perhaps, William Gibson's latest novels. He retains much of the inherent sensibilities and tendencies of his previous novels, but things like VR, cybernetic implants, and first-world war zones seem to have lost their edge. Not for the reasons some would guess though, but because they're basically already here, and they've arrived without much fanfare at all.
Yeah. Well. It kind of seems strange to make a big fuss about it these days. To write a cyberpunk novel now is simply to write a thriller that's up to date on technological trends. Say hello to Gibson's new trilogy.
The problem with cyberpunk isn't that you can't write a story with a combination of near future technology coupled with social commentary, but that the ascetic which is the other half of the story doesn't resonate in the same way anymore. The future is here, and as it always is for those that live it, it's surprisingly banal. We've had a long time to come to terms with our corporate overlords.
I mean, I think you can still write something and call it cyberpunk, but it's a send up to a previous time. I'm open to recanting this opinion. I'm in the middle of researching it.
Man, whatever.
I'm actually up to kind of a lot, but I don't really know what to say about it. Video games. Role-playing. There's really nothing new going on here and I don't have an opinion that hasn't been voiced by maybe everyone who's engaged in these activities ever. That's not a lot of incentive.
As I've posted then deleted two things in as many hours, though, I feel like I need to have something up.
"Jesus, man. Think! These fine people deserve content!"
There's got to be something. Of course there is.
I'm what you might call a genre writer. At least I am some of the time. And while my fiction could use a little beefing up, I've spent a lot of time actually researching it. Cyberpunk, I mean. To me, it feels like a dead genre - the nails in the coffin being, perhaps, William Gibson's latest novels. He retains much of the inherent sensibilities and tendencies of his previous novels, but things like VR, cybernetic implants, and first-world war zones seem to have lost their edge. Not for the reasons some would guess though, but because they're basically already here, and they've arrived without much fanfare at all.
Yeah. Well. It kind of seems strange to make a big fuss about it these days. To write a cyberpunk novel now is simply to write a thriller that's up to date on technological trends. Say hello to Gibson's new trilogy.
The problem with cyberpunk isn't that you can't write a story with a combination of near future technology coupled with social commentary, but that the ascetic which is the other half of the story doesn't resonate in the same way anymore. The future is here, and as it always is for those that live it, it's surprisingly banal. We've had a long time to come to terms with our corporate overlords.
I mean, I think you can still write something and call it cyberpunk, but it's a send up to a previous time. I'm open to recanting this opinion. I'm in the middle of researching it.
Tags: