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From: webber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: who does it...
Message-ID: <381@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 00:46:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: brandx.381
Posted: Mon Sep 28 00:46:12 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 00:43:56 EDT
References: <4319@spool.wisc.edu> <3036@hoptoad.uucp>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 36
Summary: 1968 ain't so long ago

In article <3036@hoptoad.uucp>, laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton) writes:
> My vote for earliest cyberpunk goes to Samuel Delaney's *Nova*.  
> Anybody have an earlier one?

Actually, they are reprinting Rudy Rucker's Software (1982) these days
and on the cover they claim that this is the novel that started
Cyberpunk.

Nova dates back to 1968.  

Norman Kagan's short story The Mathenauts (1965) clearly raises some
deep issues wrt interfaces.

Alan Nourse's The Universe Between (1951,1965) fits vaguely in.

In Fred Hoyle's Ossian's Ride (1959), I.C.E. was the Industrial
Corporation of Eire. 

The device for interfacing with the Krell's knowledge in Forbidden
Planet (1956) has some potential.

Henry Kuttner's 1943 short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves also raises
some questions as to just what is a computer and what does it mean to
interface with it.

For those who prefer to stress a ``gritty world view,'' it is perhaps
worth remembering the story of the optimist who said this was the best
of all possible worlds and the pessimist who agreed.

On the nonfiction side, this month's Scientific American is dedicated
to advanced computers and has an article on interfaces.

-------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)

p.s., The publisher of Stewart Brand's The Media Lab is Viking Press,
ISBN 0-670-81442-3