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From: gordon@bu-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Just how dark is the future ?
Message-ID: <13784@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Thu, 1-Oct-87 21:36:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.13784
Posted: Thu Oct  1 21:36:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Oct-87 07:40:13 EDT
References: <4328@spool.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: gordon@bucsd.UUCP (Gordon Lee)
Organization: Boston Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 31

In article <4328@spool.wisc.edu> jojo@speedy.WISC.EDU (Jon Wesener) writes:
>	One more thing, when I've discussed possible futures going along the
>	lines projected in Gibson's books, and even "Blade Runner" the people
>	I speak with inevitably get depressed thinking that it's a dark
>	inhuman future.  I, however, don't feel that way.

Me either, the way I like to picture it is this:
  EVERY society has its good points and bad points, Cyberpunk literature
chooses to discuss the dark side of possible future societies.  This does
not preclude the existence of the bright side, merely ignores it.  
  Consider for a minute the movie, "To Live and Die in L.A.".  It is a pretty
grim story containing some pretty depressing situations, but that does not 
mean that everyone in L.A. experiences those sort of escapades.
  Consider also that the two movies, "Sound of Music" and "Sophie's Choice",
both are hypothetical stories set during the same particular era, yet the 
tone of the first is upbeat family entertainment while the other is 
"political cyberpunk".  It is all a matter of how the story is presented.
  While thousands partied at Woodstock, soldiers, some as young as 17,
sat in the Vietnam jungle and wondered whether they would make it home.
  As I sit here idly flipping through news, people, many of them innocent
bystanders, in Central America, South Africa, etc are living under seige.

   Hmmm....

Consider for a moment the sort of horrifying NASTINESS that can be occuring
  somewhere in the world RIGHT NOW.  Truth is stranger than Fiction.
-- 

                                Gordon Lee
                                Distributed Systems Group
                                Boston University