Escape Velocity

by Mark Dery

  98. Erik Davis, “Technopagans: May the Astral Plane Be Reborn in Cyberspace,” Wired, July 1995, p. 128.

  99. Julian Dibbell, “Cool Technology: Toys for the Mind,” Spin, May 1991, p. 50.

  100. Ibid.

  101. Lurker Below (ashton), topic 316, “Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth,” in the WELL’s spirituality conference, December 20, 1992.

  102. Neil Strauss, “Tripping the Light Ecstatic: Psychic TV & the Acid House Experience,” Option, no. 25 (March/April 1989), p. 84.

  103. Ambient Temple of Imagination, Mystery School (Silent Records, 1994).

  104. Quoted in Matthew F. Riley, “Clock DVA: Energy Tending to Change,” Technology Works, unnumbered, unpaginated issue.

  105. Ibid.

  106. Edward Rothstein, “A New Art Form May Arise from the ‘Myst,’” New York Times, December 4, 1994, sect. 2, p. 1.

  107. Erik Davis, “Into the Myst: The Miller Brothers’ Virtual Tale,” Village Voice, August 23, 1994, p. 45.

  108. Ibid., p. 46.

  109. Spinrad, Science Fiction, p. 111.

  110. William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1988), p. 215.

  111. William Gibson, Count Zero (New York: Ace Books, 1986), pp. 118-19.

  112. Erik Davis, “Techgnosis: Magic, Memory, and the Angels of Information,” in Flame Wars,” p. 586.

  113. Ibid.

  114. Maxwell X. Delysid, E-mail to the author, December 2, 1992.

  115. Charles B. Kramer, “Nazis in Cyberspace!” BBS Callers Digest, August 1992, p. 28.

  116. Ken Kelley, “The Interview: Whole Earthling and Software Savant Stewart Brand,” SF Focus, February 1985, p. 78.

  117. Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in R. C. Zaehner, “Teilhard de Chardin” in Man, Myth & Magic, vol. 10, ed. Richard Cavendish (Freeport, Long Island, N.Y.: Marshall Cavendish, 1983), p. 2811.

  118. Tools for Exploration vol. 4, no. 1 (winter/spring 1994-95), p. 55.

  119. Tools for Exploration vol. 4, no. 2 (1993 supplement), p. 16.

  120. Tools for Exploration vol. 4, no. 1, p. A-3.

  121. Michael Hutchinson, Mega Brain Power: Transform Your Life with Mind Machines and Brain Nutrients (New York: Hyperion, 1994), p. 431.

  122. Tony Lane, echo area 30, “Cybermage,” on BaphoNet, August 7, 1991.

  123. Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology (New York: Bonanza Books, 1981), p. 190.

  124. John Markoff, “The Fourth Law of Robotics,” Educom Review 29, no. 2 (March/April 1994), p. 45.

  125. Aga Windwalker, “Cybermage,” August 9, 1992.

  126. Maxwell X. Delysid, E-mail to the author, December 2, 1992.

  127. Charles Neal, Tape Delay (Harrow, England: SAF Ltd., 1987), p. 32.

  128. Constance Penley, introduction to Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction, ed. Constance Penley, Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. x.

  129. Andrew Ross, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 30.

  130. Godfrey Harold Hardy, “A Mathematician’s Apology,” in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, ed. Timothy Ferris (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), p. 439.

  131. Rudy Rucker, Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 223.

  132. John L. Casti, Searching for Certainty: What Scientists Can Know about the Future (New York: William Morrow, 1990), p. 404.

  133. Bruce Sterling, “Cyber-Superstition,” Science Fiction Eye, no. 8 (winter 1991), p. 11.

  134. Gary Chapman, “Taming the Computer,” in Flame Wars, pp. 830-31, 837.

  135. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 19.

  136. Ibid., p. 18.

  137. Christopher Evans, The Micro Millennium (New York: Washington Square Press, 1979). p. 233.

  138. Ibid., p. 262.

  139. Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine (New York: Avon Books, 1981), p. 98.

  140. “Is Computer Hacking a Crime?” in The Harper’s Forum Book: What Are We Talking About, ed. Jack Hitt (New York: Citadel Press, 1991), pp. 256-57.

  141. Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” Village Voice, December 21, 1993, p. 42.

  142. Farrell McGovern, “Cybermage,” Village Voice, February 13, 1993.

  143. Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” p. 42.

  144. Campbell with Moyer, The Power of Myth, p. 214.

  145. Barbara Presley Noble, “At Work: Labor-Management Rorschach Test,” New York Times, June 5, 1994, p. 21.

  146. Stuart Ewen, “Pragmatism’s Postmodern Poltergeist,” New Perspectives Quarterly 9, no. 2 (spring 1992), p. 47.

  147. Robert B. Reich, “The Fracturing of the Middle Class,” New York Times, August 31, 1994, sect. A, p. 19.

  148. Dibbell, “A Rape In Cyberspace,” p. 37.

  149. Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 71.

  150. William Mook (mook), topic 30, “Techgnosis: Computers as Magic,” in the WELL’s Fringeware conference, January 15, 1994.

  151. K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology (New York: Anchor Books, 1986), p. 63.

  152. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: William Morrow, 1974), p. 16.

  153. Campbell with Moyer, The Power of Myth, pp. 19-20.

  Chapter 2

  1. This chapter is a distant descendant of my cover story “Cyberpunk: Riding the Shockwave with the Toxic Underground” (Keyboard, May 1989, pps. 75-89) and my feature “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Cybers: Brain-Bruising Soundtracks for Life in Robotopia” (Keyboard, January 1992, pp. 69-83).

  2. Katie Hafner and John Markoff, Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 9.

  3. Lewis Shiner, “Inside the Movement: Past, Present, and Future,” in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, ed. George Slusser and Tom Shippey (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 19.

  4. Lewis Shiner, “Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk,” New York Times, January 7, 1991, p. A17.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Keyboard, February 1994, p. 3.

  7. Ibid., p. 90.

  8. Michael Marans, “The Next Big Thing,” Keyboard, February 1994, p. 108.

  9. Tod Machover, “Hyperinstruments: A Composer’s Approach to the Evolution of Intelligent Musical Instruments,” in Cyber Arts: Exploring Art & Technology, ed. Linda Jacobson (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 1992), pp. 73-74.

  10. Ibid., p. 75.

  11. Louis M. Brill, “Mark Trayle: Making Space for Music,” Keyboard, October 1992, p. 39. Trayle’s CD, Etudes and Bagatelles (Artifact) is available from 1374 Francisco Street, Berkeley, Calif. 94702. E-mail: info@artifact.com.

  12. Erik Davis, “Wireheads and Cybergunk,” Village Voice, August 8, 1989, p. 72.

  13. Stewart Brand, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T. (New York: Penguin, 1988), pp. 108-9.

  14. Quoted in a record company biography accompanying the release of Hack.

  15. Richard Kadrey and Larry McCaffery, “Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide to Storming the Reality Studio,” in Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction, ed. Larry McCaffery (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 28.

  16. Joe Gore, “Sonic Youth,” Guitar Player, February 1989, p. 29.

  17. Jon Savage, introduction to Re/Search 6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, ed. Vale (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1983), p. 5.

  18. Ibid., p. 10.

  19. Front Line Assembly, Tactical Neural Implant (Third Mind Records, 1992).

  20. William Gibson, “Burning Chrome,” in Burning Chrome (New York: Ace, 1987), p. 182.

  21. Mark Dery, “‘We Are the Reality of This Cyberpunk Fantasy’: Glenn Branca and Elliot
t Sharp in Conversation with Mark Dery,” Mondo 2000, no. 5 (1992), pp. 70-72. This reedited excerpt differs slightly from the published version.

  22. John Shirley, Transmaniacon (New York: Zebra Books, 1979), p. 13.

  23. William Gibson, “The Winter Market,” in Burning Chrome (New York: Ace, 1987), p. 118.

  24. William Gibson, “Cyberspace ’90,” Computerworld, October 15, 1990, pp. 107-8.

  25. Elliott Sharp, liner notes to Elliott Sharp/Orchestra Carbon, Abstract Repressionism 1990-99 (Victo, 1992).

  26. All quotes this paragraph: Robert R. Conroy, “For the Airwaves,” Rockpool, November 15, 1989, page number not available; Gareth Branwyn, “Industrial Introspection: An Interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails,” Mondo 2000, no. 5, p. 62; Robert L. Doerschuk, “Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor Hits College Radio on the Head with a Tough, Sharp Solo Album,” Keyboard, April 1990, p. 42.

  27. Kimberly Carrino, “Nine Inch Nails: Gettin’ Down in It with Trent Reznor,” Buzz 6, no. 49 (December 1989), page number not available; Branwyn, “Industrial Introspection,” p. 64.

  28. The Downward Spiral (Nothing / TVT / Interscope, 1994).

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Pretty Hate Machine (TVT, 1989).

  32. Undated “Happiness in Slavery” press release from Formula Artist Development & Public Relations. “Happiness” is currently available only as a bootleg video, circulated among fans, but it may be included in an upcoming NIN video compilation.

  33. Broken (TVT / Interscope, 1992).

  34. Ibid.

  35. Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco: City Lights, 1986), p. 90.

  36. Moon Unit Zappa, “Trent Reznor: The Voice of Reason,” Raygun, June/July 1994, unpaginated.

  37. Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Penguin: New York, 1985), p. 206.

  38. Broken.

  39. Kadrey and McCaffery, “Cyberpunk 101,” p. 23.

  40. William Gibson, “Johnny Mnemonic” in Burning Chrome, p. 5.

  41. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace, 1984), p. 148.

  42. Larry McCaffery, “An Interview with William Gibson,” in Storming the Reality Studio, p. 265.

  43. Larry McCaffery, “Introduction: The Desert of the Real,” in Storming the Reality Studio, p. 12.

  44. Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, ed. Bruce Sterling (New York: Ace, 1988), p. xiii.

  45. Lewis Shiner, “Inside the Movement: Past, Present, and Future,” in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, p. 21.

  46. Rudy Rucker and Peter Lamborn Wilson, “Introduction: Strange Attractor(s),” in Semiotext(e) SF, ed. Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Robert Anton Wilson (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1989), p. 13.

  47. Jude Milhon, “Coming In under the Radar,” Mondo 2000, no. 7 (fall 1989), p. 100.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Takayuki Tatsumi, “Eye to Eye: An Interview with Bruce Sterling,” Science Fiction Eye 1, no. 1 (1987), p. 33.

  50. Ibid., p. 35.

  51. John Shirley, “About ‘Fragments of an Exploded Heart,’” in prepublication manuscript of The Exploded Heart (Asheville, N.C.: Eyeball Books, 1994), pagination not yet complete as of this writing.

  52. Michael Moorcock, The Final Programme, in The Cornelius Chronicles (New York: Avon, 1977), p. 65.

  53. Moorcock, A Cure for Cancer, in The Cornelius Chronicles, pp. 414-15.

  54. Tatsumi, “Eye to Eye,” p. 36.

  55. John Shirley, Transmaniacon, p. 15.

  56. Ibid., pp. 14, 33.

  57. Ibid., p. 33.

  58. Ibid., p. 34.

  59. Ibid., p. 33.

  60. Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades, p. xii.

  61. Ibid., p. xiii.

  62. Ken Tucker, “Rock in the Video Age,” in Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll (New York: Summit Books, 1986), p. 595.

  63. Mark Crispin Miller, “Where All the Flowers Went,” in Boxed In: The Culture of TV (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1989), p. 174.

  64. Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 185.

  65. Miller, “Where Flowers Went,” p. 181.

  66. Miller, afterword to “Rock Music: A Success Story,” in Boxed In, p. 196.

  67. Miller, “Where Flowers Went,” p. 181.

  68. Miller, afterword to “A Success Story,” p. 200.

  69. Goodwin, Distraction Factory, pp. 154-55.

  70. Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades, p. xii.

  71. Cadigan, “Rock On,” in Mirrorshades, p. 42.

  72. Ibid., p. 39.

  73. Ibid., pp. 36, 37, 42.

  74. Ibid., p. 42.

  75. McCaffery, “Introduction: The Desert of the Real,” in Storming the Reality Studio, p. 6.

  76. Anthony DeCurtis, Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture, ed. Anthony DeCurtis (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), p. 5.

  77. John Shirley, “Freezone,” in Mirrorshades, p. 148; all other quotes this paragraph, p. 145.

  78. Ibid., pp. 145-46.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Ibid., p. 154.

  82. Ibid., p. 157.

  83. Ibid., p. 146.

  84. Norman Spinrad, Little Heroes (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1987), p. 4.

  85. Ibid., pp. 4, 7.

  86. Ibid., p. 4.

  87. Ibid., unnumbered page.

  88. Ibid., p. 7.

  89. Ibid., p. 8.

  90. Ibid., p. 11.

  91. Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades, p. xiv.

  92. Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), p. 133.

  93. Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades, pp. x-xi.

  94. Goodwin, Distraction Factory, p. 31.

  95. Norman Spinrad, Science Fiction in the Real World (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), pp. 113-14.

  96. Ibid., p. 113.

  97. Ibid., p. 116.

  98. William Gibson, interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, National Public Radio, August 31, 1993.

  Chapter 3

  1. The germ of the idea for this chapter appeared as a feature, “The Art of Crash, Hum, and Hiss,” in the New York Times, March 15, 1992, Arts & Leisure section, p. 12.

  2. Rob Hafernik, “Robofest II: Austin, Texas,” in Mondo 2000, no. 5, p. 18.

  3. Glenn Rifkin, “Making Robot Gladiators,” New York Times, July 31, 1994, p. 8F.

  4. Re/Search 6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, ed. Andrea Juno and V. Vale (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1983), pp. 28-29.

  5. K. W. Jeter, Dr. Adder (New York: Signet, 1988), p. 70.

  6. Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis,” in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964), pp. 55-56.

  7. Ibid., p. 56.

  8. Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 3.

  9. Re/Search 11: Pranks! ed. Andrea Juno and V. Vale (San Francisco: Re/Search, 1987), p. 13.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid., pp. 13-14.

  12. It should be noted that Frankensteinish fabrications such as the Mummy-Go-Round and the Piggly-Wiggly make use of dead animals purchased from slaughterhouses or scavenged from train tunnels. The Mummy-Go-Round, for example, resulted from an amphetamine-addled friend’s ravings about a macabre stretch of Pacific Railway tunnel he had stumbled on during one of his late-night rambles. Pauline and Heckert decided to investigate and returned in high spirits with a sack full of mummified animals. SRL’s organic robots are featured, along with their heavy metal brethren, in an extensive selection of videotapes, available from SRL, 1458-C San Bruno Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94110.

  13. Howard Rheingold, Virtual Reality (New York: Summit Books, 1991), pp. 254-55.

  14. John A. Barry, Techn
obabble (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), p. 185.

  15. John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992), p. 161.

  16. Quoted by Judith A. Adams, in The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991), p. 93.

  17. Howard Millman, “Risky Business,” Compute, July 1991, p. 88.

  18. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (New York: Dell, 1981), p. 129. See illustrations as well.

  19. Quoted by Frank Barnaby, in The Automated Battlefield (New York: The Free Press, 1986), p. 1.

  20. Quoted by Lewis Yablonsky, in Robopaths: People as Machines (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin, 1972), p. xii.

  21. Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco: City Lights, 1986), p. 15.

  22. Claudia Springer, “Sex, Memories and Angry Women,” Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture / South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 92, no. 4 (fall 1993), p. 718.

  23. William Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 52.

  24. Ibid., p. 53.

  25. Bataille, Erotism, p. 18.

  26. Georges Bataille, “Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh,” in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings of Georges Bataille, ed. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), p. 70.

  27. Seymour Melman, “The Juggernaut: Military State Capitalism,” The Nation

  252, no. 19 (May 20, 1991), p. 666.

  28. Kathe Burkhart, “Extremely Cool Practices,” High Performance, no. 32, pp. 66-67.

  29. Elizabeth Richardson, “The Mechanisms of Machismo,” Artweek 16, no. 30 (September 21, 1985), p. 4.

  30. Jim Pomeroy, “Black Box S-Thetix: Labor, Research, and Survival in the He[Art] of the Beast,” in Technoculture, ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 292-93.

  31. This debt, while acknowledged, has never been repaid, notes Pauline. “The creators of Hardware made no attempt to contact me for permission to use the SRL video footage featured in the film and refused to make any payment after the film’s release,” he writes, in an August 31, 1993, fax to the author. “When pressed, Miramax, the film’s U.S. distributor, threatened a lengthy and expensive legal battle which, due to my lack of a Swiss bank account, I declined to engage in.”