"Dear Mr Sterling,
ø"The ActuSF team and I wanted to wish you the best of year 2005. We thank you again for your valuable contribution to our C-word special issue in last September.
"We wish you success, love and health, and a lot of patience as you'll soon teach in L.A. We all hope reading some material from you, other than reissues I mean."
http://www.actusf.com/
(((A French SF website. Now firing up GOOGLE LANGUAGE TOOLS, oh boy, brace yourselves:)))
Bruce Sterling "What worries me much today, they are expressions as" safety of the Motherland "
Bruce Sterling is a giant of the SF. After having traversed during years the ramifications of the Cyberpunk, he continues today his career of writer with 50ans.
Us: The end of your Cyberpunks article in the Nineties is a kind of call to the weapons, sent to a new generation of authors of science fiction. Do you think that this generation was born?
Bruce Sterling: Eh well, there is one of them there, now. In fact it would even seem that there are two or three of them.
Us: Feel them to you in anger these young authors? Do you think that they have there for in døcoudre?
Bruce Sterling: I do not think that anger is the term which is appropriate for authors who write in full period of cultural war. Times are with the toughening and a blind avenger rage. When the most significant governments are in full furious madness and become out of control, it is to the writers to be critical and sympathizing.
Us: In 1974 already, Robert Silverberg threw sponge, considering that the world of the edition sank in a ultra-liberalism which was likely to kill cultural creation. Do you think that the things worsened since?
Bruce Sterling: Even if they worsened, and one can certainly say that it is the case, Robert Silverberg always writes. But one should not lose sight of the fact that science American fiction was always exploited in a shameless and obvious way, and that as a kind, it always was at the edge of the pit.
Us: Considering the current policy of the "Large Leading Machine", don't you think that a new fashion of publication would be necessary, such as for example your own policy of setting on line of your texts?
Bruce Sterling: It would be well if the world of the edition had a true cultural and commercial vision, but that was never the case. As for the question of reinforcement of the media, and intellectual property, my faith, we cross well sinks time. Though it is there would be to say much on the subject.
Us: The things which worry to you now are always the same one as those which worried you at your beginnings?
Bruce Sterling: I much less worry to be heard. On the other hand I endeavour to say things which deserve the attention. I have the feeling to live one time of great cultural misery. Our thinkers and our writers are passing beside the great questions of our time. The vocabulary of the XXøme century is not enough for us any more. We would have to find new nouns and new verbs.
Us: It would seem that for you, science fiction cannot be a source of controversies, that as long as it remains a marginal kind. Don't you find that a little contradictory with its function, which would be to spread new ideas in the company?
Bruce Sterling: The term "science fiction" is paradoxical. How science can be a fiction? And how the fiction can be a science? Science fiction is not a marginal kind, because mainly, it is written with the feet, and intellectually bøclø. If it is regarded as such it is because our company is based on a system of castes, and that science fiction plays precisely with these limits of classes. Not necessarily with a great success, but good, it is all the same what it does of better. But beyond that, science fiction is there to diffuse ideas within under very targeted cultures. If these ideas leave these small vaults it do not become whereas peripheral general current of thought.
Us: You said that the word "Cyberpunk" would be engraved on your tomb. Don't you think that it is always a label a little too sticking, especially abroad, where finally the publication of your books depends on goodwill editors who could not understand that you do not deliver any more of the pure and hard Cyberpunk?
Bruce Sterling: I do not only worry any more also concise and final expressions "abroad". I am abroad in this moment-even. In Milan. And after it will be Linz and Berlin. Since I have a portable computer, a mobile and my email, I can do everything. Not, which worries me much today, they are expressions like "safety of the Motherland". I do not like the connotation that that has. For a long time the word "Cyberpunk", avoided me becoming sizeable. But now I am 50 years old, I am a leader-writer for a monthly magazine of reputation, and I soon will become teacher in a school of created. Admittedly, one will write certainly the word "Cyberpunk" on my tomb, but with a little chance it will not be before good about thirty years, and in the interval not badly of thing will arrive. I do not have time yet to let to me go to nostalgia.
Us: William Gibson said that it had the impression that the European, and French readers in particular, perceived better the irony contained in its work that the American readers. Do you think that it is true?
Bruce Sterling: A many American readers perceive this irony very well, and they should make common cause with French.
Us: It seems, at the bottom, that the majority of the authors say "Cyberpunk" did not come from particularly urban zones? Why then this interest for the cities?
Bruce Sterling: Texas has vast metropolises, like Dallas or Houston, and Lewis Shiner for example lives now in North Carolina in the gold triangle of the high technology. We are animals of the cities, not farmers.
Us: And how to explain that your universes correspond so well to imaginary of cities like New York or Los Angeles, cities in which none you lived at the time?
Bruce Sterling: The next year I will live in Los Angeles. I am an itinerant journalist. If I go in a city like Moscow for example, it is quite obvious that I will make my to better describe the particular atmosphere of this city. When you travelled much, it is not a exercise so difficult only that. Europeans in particular are much less mysterious than they believe it. In fact I believe that I will like to write a "regional" novel on the planet Ground.
Us: Do you think that the principles that you defend spread all the same in the company, as by a kind of perverse effect of the globalisation? Like a virus to some extent?
Bruce Sterling: I was always very interested by all the decentralized means of diffusion of information, and there is a growing number of it. But it significant to understand that from a moral point of view, these methods are not exemplary. Any creative action requires a sacrifice, and each technique has its advantages and its disadvantages. And you cannot hoist blindly with the row of principles of the techniques of production and diffusion, whereas they are only tools. The diseases are propagated by decentralized means, that does not make them beautiful for as much. The AIDS something of is decentralized, the condoms, them, are manufactured objects one cannot more centralized, and if you want to thrive, you rather may find it beneficial to avoid the first, and to make good use of the second.
Us: With are the obviousness you always cyber, but are you always punk?
Bruce Sterling: And well, I am a little both, while not being it. What, concretely does not make great difference.
Remarks collected and translated by Eric Holstein by mall into August 2004
