‘Petra’ by Greg Bear
A load of gargoyles come alive, mythic strangeness ensues. This is not a side of Bear’s work that I know; it is sort of proto-New Weird which might make it just plain weird but doesn’t make it cyberpunk.
Punkosity: *
Quality: ****
Written by Martin
5 April 2011 at 12:33
Posted in sf, short stories
Tagged with greg bear, mirrorshades
5 Responses
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Everything Is Nice 
In terms of “proto-New Weird”, there’s also Sterling’s first novel, Involution Ocean. It’s ostensibly planetary SF (it has a map, even) with liberal dollops of Moby Dick and Michael Moorcock.
I’ve been reading these with interest, because I think that “cyberpunk” is a less homogenized form than is typically imagined. I suspect it’s not a sub-genre at all, but just a group of people and a place in time, or perhaps there’s two cyberpunks, one describing people and place and another a bunch of genreric cliches.
Patrick H
7 April 2011 at 09:23
I suspect it’s not a sub-genre at all, but just a group of people and a place in time, or perhaps there’s two cyberpunks, one describing people and place and another a bunch of generic cliches.
I think that is right. Sterling is very clear that his cyberpunk is really just a movement; in fact, he prefers to refer to the Movement rather than cyberpunk at all. At the same time, it doesn’t seem very useful to have a term to refer to the output of a small group working for a very short period. There is no unifying link between the stories in Mirrorshades beyond the authors themselves. So it seems pointless to refer to this as cyberpunk in 2011.
Because the term clearly has come to stand for something else. I’m not sure I would go so far as to say this consists of “a bunch of genreric cliches” but it is certainly a bunch of tropes and – dare I say it? – a sensibility. And it has won: this is how people use cyberpunk so this is what cyberpunk means.
Martin
7 April 2011 at 09:54
Bear is underrated as a fantasy writer, I think.
David Moles
15 April 2011 at 22:03
[…] by Rudy Rucker ’400 Boys’ by Marc Laidlaw ‘Solstice’ by James Patrick Kelly ‘Petra’ by Greg Bear ‘Till Human Voices Wake Me’ by Lewis Shiner ‘Freezone’ by John Shirley ‘Stone Lives’ by […]
Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology « Everything Is Nice
5 May 2011 at 10:30
Its adventue time:D
lewis
27 January 2013 at 08:22