Sterling's Mirrorshades preface transforms a cluster of writers into a movement with a doctrine

NOV 01 1986 · 12:00

Video: Bruce Sterling | SXSW 2019 Date: 1986-11-01 · Type: literature · Tags: bruce-sterling, anthology, manifesto, cheap-truth, genre-formation, literary-canon, mirrorshades "The overlapping of worlds that were formerly separate: the realm of high tech, and the modern pop underground." Bruce Sterling had been circulating his polemic under the pseudonym Vincent Omniaveritas in the underground SF zine *Cheap Truth* since 1983, telling anyone who would read a photocopied fanzine that American science fiction had grown fat and timid. *Mirrorshades* was the institutional version of that argument: twelve stories from the writers Sterling wanted on his side, plus a ten-page preface that functions as the genre's load-bearing manifesto. The title was the uniform: mirrored sunglasses, from which you cannot see the wearer's eyes but through which the wearer sees everything. The preface's key move is definitional. Sterling insists cyberpunk is not about computers; it is about the *interpenetration of technology and body*, of high-tech and low-life. The street finds its own uses for things. This is the phrase the movement took away — the idea that technological systems diffuse downward and sideways into culture, that the interesting action is always at the margin, not the manufacturer. The cypherpunks would, five years later, make the same point about cryptography: the technology belonged to the state and the academy until it didn't. The contributor list — Gibson, Cadigan, Rucker, Shiner, Shirley, Bear, Maddox, Kelly, Laidlaw, Di Filippo, Sterling — fixed the canonical roster. The boldest thing about *Mirrorshades* wasn't its definition of the genre; it was its exclusions. No Tiptree, no Le Guin, no feminist SF lineage. Sterling was drawing a map with sharp edges, and the edges were as consequential as the center. Facts • Published November 1986, Arbor House; Ace paperback edition 1988. • Twelve stories including contributions by Gibson, Cadigan, Rucker, Shiner, Shirley, Sterling. • Sterling had previously circulated similar arguments as Vincent Omniaveritas in Cheap Truth (1983–1986). • Preface key phrase: 'The street finds its own uses for things.' • Proximate cause of 'cyberpunk' moving from Bruce Bethke's 1983 Asimov's story title to a genre label. Primary Documents • Preface to Mirrorshades — project.cyberpunk.ru — http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/mirrorshades_preface.html • Mirrorshades — Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades