Aug 16, 2007 5:36 PM

The "Gomi-no-Sensei" -- They Don't Call Him That For Nothing, Folks

Link: Phawker » Blog Archive » DAYS OF FUTURE PAST: William Gibson Overdrive.

Phawker: What is your definition of cyberpunk?
WG: Well, low-life and hi-tech as Bruce Sterling said. Cyberpunk was sort of a roots movement that got going in the early to mid-1980s. And the closest thing in pop history, the most informative parallel, is if you think of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and those guys, and Nashville country and the mainstream ordinary wire rack full of today’s science fiction novel had gotten very much like Nashville. We thought. I thought to the extent of it as a movement, which is kind of grand for what it was. It was roots movement in popular music. We were taking it back to the way they’d done it in the late ’60s. There was just some brilliant, very unconventional science fiction in the early to mid ’60s, which is when I had been a teenage science fiction reader. It had been really big for me. I wanted to try and do something like that. … I wanted to play western swing like Hank Williams or something. I didn’t want to be like someone coming out of the radio on Clear Channel.
Phawker: Mission accomplished?
WG: I think I so, and lots of other practitioners did as well. But you didn’t have any effect on Nashville. They didn’t throw down their instruments and shiny turquoise hats and leave the stage. And so the core of science fiction remains unchanged. The core of science fiction is probably more like Nashville then it was in 1977.

(((Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be console cowboys.)))

Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold.
They'd rather give you a song than diamonds or gold.
Lonestar belt buckles and old faded levis,
And each night begins a new day.
If you don't understand him, an' he don't die young,
He'll prob'ly just ride away.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks.
Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
'Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone.
Even with someone they love.

Cowboys like smokey old pool rooms and clear mountain mornings,
Little warm puppies (((?!))) and children and girls of the night.
Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do,
Sometimes won't know how to take him.
He ain't wrong, he's just different but his pride won't let him,
Do things to make you think he's right.