[109763] in Cypherpunks
Re: Stephenson's new book, _Cryptonomicon_
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sat Apr 3 14:14:46 1999
In-Reply-To: <19990403135401.J27979@arianrhod.systemics.ai>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 13:59:56 -0500
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 12:54 PM -0500 on 4/3/99, Ryan Lackey wrote:
> Too bad
> Kubrick is dead :(
That's okay. Ridley Scott isn't. :-).
Of course, maybe he'd have to do Neuromancer first, since he did Gibson
before Gibson did. There's this whole story about Gibson seeing Blade
Runner when it came out and having to leave, because he didn't want it to
mess him up on Neuromancer, the book he was just finishing...
Actually, for an eventual Stephenson movie, Scott's probably just too damn
gloomy. There's this cheerful anarchic recklessness, and a pointed lack of
conspiracy, if not actual pronoia, that I like an awful lot about Neal
Stephenson. It's something you don't see, you can't see, in "Cyberpunk"
books and movies.
The movie version of "Johnny Mnemonic" was proof that the Grand Conspiracy
is boring now, and I bet that doing a film version Neuromancer as written
would get you the same ponderous feeling. I haven't seen it yet, but I bet
the subtitle of "The Matrix" could just as well be "Johnny Mnassiah". Or
maybe "Keanu Pouts, Conspiracy Routs", or whatever. That probably won't
stop me going to see it, I bet. I operate under the sometimes unfortunate
asumption that almost any science fiction is better than none.
I bet that Stephenson got his optimism from the net itself, which is the
embodiment of the idea that we're all happier when nobody tells us what to
do. Or maybe he got it from the fact that we actually won the cold war, the
Soviets *were* the evil empire, next to the nation-state, and the
nation-state with the notion of all-encompassing conspiratorial hierarachy
is going next. Anyway, to me, it certainly feels like he's a military brat,
one way or another.
I think about the dystopia of cyberpunk science fiction as the last of the
hierarchical-industrial age, the last viable decendant of the Forbin
Project, or Hal, or, of course, Big Brother.
And, I don't see Snow Crash, for instance, as the least bit dystopian. The
fact that the Feds are just another franchise among many is happiness
itself; though, of course, I'm mildly biased. :-).
The Diamond Age would be a good movie as well, though I think it'll take
another 10-15 years for Hollywood to wake up and smell that particular pot
of anarchocapitalist coffee, no matter how good Lucas tunes up the ILM
reality distortion field this summer.
Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
