The WELL: inkwell.vue.61: Bruce Sterling: A Viridian Future

#75: Thomas Armagost (silly) Fri 8 Dec 00 12:57

Fri, 08 Dec 2000 12:57:00 PST

Bruce Sterling's _Zeitgeist_ is in bookstores. He'll be interviewed by (jonl) in this conference starting 01/01/01.

Sterling is the guest editor of TIME Digital's special "year 2026" issue. <http://www.time.com/time/digital/reports/future/about.html> [Read entire topic]

#74: Harry Claude Ca (silly) Thu 7 Dec 00 20:27

Thu, 07 Dec 2000 20:27:00 PST

<scribbled by silly Fri 8 Dec 00 12:57> [Read entire topic]

#73: John Shirley (johnp-shirley) Mon 7 Feb 00 13:44

Mon, 07 Feb 2000 13:44:00 PST

If I didn't knock some shit over...it's been too long, I can't remember for sure, but...if I didn't, I shouldve!

Yeah it was the moderator. Who was that? [Read entire topic]

#72: Undo Influence (mnemonic) Sun 6 Feb 00 07:18

Sun, 06 Feb 2000 07:18:00 PST

Speaking as another person who was in the room at the now-infamous NASFiC panel, I have to say that

a) I don't recall any chairs or tables being thrown, overturned, etc.

b) I don't recall the reaction being against Greg Bear (who was as blandly pleasant as his fiction is weird and mindbending) so much as against the moderator.

JADP. [Read entire topic]

#71: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 20 Jan 00 09:53

Thu, 20 Jan 2000 09:53:00 PST

Thanks, Linda! [Read entire topic]

#70: Linda Castellani (castle) Tue 18 Jan 00 21:46

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 21:46:00 PST

Before we wander too far afield, let me say thank you to Bruce and Jon and everyone who participated in this interview - Bruce especially, I know how busy you've been, and how inconveniently hacked, so I thank you for beating your way through the underbrush and sharing your insights with us in spite of the obstacles.

Jonl, too, I appreciate your questions, from the seamless way you conducted the interview, I don't think anyone could tell that you were actually many hundreds of miles away from home, househunting and preparing to move.

Maybe we should make it an annual occurrence that the year can't start officially without a bruces manifesto. [Read entire topic]

#69: Ron Hogan (grifter) Tue 18 Jan 00 21:08

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 21:08:00 PST

Shiner's new book, which uses a Citizen Kane structure to look at the career of a female singer/songwriter, is a real treat. SAY GOODBYE. Buy it now. [Read entire topic]

#68: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 18 Jan 00 20:34

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 20:34:00 PST

Re. the exploding panel, I should add that while Bruce and John totally quit the scene, Lew Shiner seemed conflicted about bailing, and was in fact lured back to the podium, evidently feeling a sense of duty to the form. Lew's another guy who doesn't write science fiction anymore.

I was blissfully drunk and enjoying the show.

Gail has gamely signaled the end of the interview, knowing full well that none of us is destined to shut up anytime soon. Feel free to carry on. Meanwhile I'm gonna wander outside and look at the mountains..... [Read entire topic]

#67: John Shirley (johnp-shirley) Tue 18 Jan 00 17:55

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 17:55:00 PST

Bruce, industrial design aside:

you were *born to write scifi*-- that should be a tattoo on your thigh. [Read entire topic]

#66: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 18 Jan 00 14:52

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 14:52:00 PST

I came back from Chattanooga, which I rather enjoyed. I mean, the convention was okay, but Chattanooga the town is really something. Then my pet anklebiter hacker attacked my WELL account for the third time. Apparently he likes to show up, read my mail, and then cruise onto IRC and brag boast and strut that he's hacked my account. He never hurts anything, but it's getting tiresome. Note that this is not the WELL's fault. It's my ISP. Probably soon to be my former ISP.

I think John's account of the Armadillocon panel walkout was decently obscured by the mists of time. As I recall, we panelists were sincerely trying to discuss our new approach to SF while our panel moderator, who had never heard of us nor us of him, wanted to cop a "punk" attitude and seemed to be a couple of sheets to the wind. He was about as severely out of his league as a panel moderator could get, poor guy. He'd been expecting some ranbunctious dismissive fun and found himself amid the heaviest and most passionate ideologues that the genre had seen in a generation.

It wasn't like we broke a chair over the guy; we just got up and left. I can't think of a cheaper and more effective gesture in the way of garnering attention. It was absolutely the right thing to do at the time. We could have had a perfectly civil and informative panel, and everyone would have forgotten everything we said ten minutes later. But the walkout started a cause celebre, and the attention has never quite died down since.

I have to agree with John that the sheer crass humiliation of the SF Baloney Factory kills a lot of people, but all art forms do that. If we'd been rock stars instead of scribblers we'd have all had new livers by now. I'm proud that not a single contributor to MIRRORSHADES is dead or even really sick, fourteen long years later. While if you ask around in the genre, you'll find that pretty much everybody has at least heard of every one of the contributors. No worldly success comes without some kind of downside and price tag, but on the whole, we got away with it. I'd do it again in a minute. In fact, I am doing it again. It's just that I'm doing it in industrial design instead of science fiction. [Read entire topic]