{"id":6700,"date":"2012-06-21T22:33:55","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T02:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=6700"},"modified":"2012-06-21T22:34:25","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T02:34:25","slug":"please-help-answer-a-question-about-the-1985-nasfic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/21\/please-help-answer-a-question-about-the-1985-nasfic\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you answer a question about the 1985 NASFiC?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading\u2014and loving\u2014Rudy Rucker<\/a>‘s autobiography Nested Scrolls<\/em><\/a>. It’s beautifully written, and in addition to learning more about the guy than I’ve ever known, I’m also getting to see from a different perspective parts of science fiction history I lived through.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, that creates a mystery. For example, I just caught up with 1985, and an incident that occurred at that year’s NASFiC in Austin.<\/p>\n

Here’s what Rucker wrote about an intriguing panel held that year.<\/p>\n

I met the other canonical cyberpunk, John Shirley, two years later, in 1985, when he and I were both staying with Bruce and Nancy Sterling in Austin, Texas, in town for the North American science fiction convention, which was featuring a panel on cyberpunk. …<\/p>\n

The writers on that 1985 panel were me, Shirley, Sterling, Lew Shiner, Pat Cadigan, and Greg Bear. [William] Gibson couldn’t make it. The moderator\u2014an SF fan whose name I’ve forgotten or never knew\u2014hadn’t read any of my work, and was bursting with venom against all of us. He represented the population of SF fans who are looking for a security blanket rather than for higher consciousness. For his ilk, cyberpunk was an annoyance or even a threat. He’d slid through the 1970s thinking of himself as with-it, and cyberpunk was yanking his covers. And he wasn’t the only one who resented us.<\/p>\n

To my eyes, the audience began taking on the look of a lynch mob. Here I’m finally asked to join a literary movement, and everyone hates me before I can even open my mouth? Enraged by the moderator’s ongoing barrage of insults, John Shirley got up and walked out, followed by Sterling and Shiner. But I stayed up there. I’d traveled a long distance for my moment in the sun.<\/p>\n

“So I guess cyberpunk is dead now?” said Shiner afterwards.<\/p>\n

I didn’t think so. Surely, if we could make plastic people that uptight, we were on the right track. That’s what the punk part was all about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wish I’d been there!<\/p>\n

But since I wasn’t\u2014can any of you who were<\/em> there identify the moderator? I’d love to know.<\/p>\n

And now I’ll back away from my computer and continue reading this fascinating book …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading\u2014and loving\u2014Rudy Rucker‘s autobiography Nested Scrolls. It’s beautifully written, and in addition to learning more about the guy than I’ve ever known, I’m also getting to see from a different perspective parts of science fiction history I lived through. Sometimes, though, that creates a mystery. For example, I just caught up with 1985, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212,211,16],"class_list":["post-6700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cyberpunk","tag-rudy-rucker","tag-worldcon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}