Futurist/Cyberpunk Source List: Nonfiction Books

The source list was getting positively massive due to this section, so it gets its own post now.

Books

The Art of Noises

-- Luigi Russolo

Word and Music Studies: Essays on Literature and Music (1967-2004) by Steven Paul Scher

-- Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf

Envisioning the Future: science fiction and the next millenium
-- Marleen S. Barr

The Souls of Cyberfolk: posthumanism as vernacular theory

-- Thomas Foster

The Self Wired: technology and subjectivity in contemporary narrative

-- Lisa Yaszek

Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction: the age of maturity, 1970-2000

-- Darren Harris-Fain

The Cybercultures Reader

-- David Bell

Postmodern Sublime: technology and American writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk

-- Joseph Tabbi

Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative

-- George Edgar Slusser

Storming the Reality Studio: a casebook of cyberpunk and postmodern science fiction

-- Larry McCaffery

Essays on Music and the Spoken Word and on Surveying the Field

-- Suzanne M. Lodato and David Francis Urrows

Writing Through Music: Essays on Music, Culture, and Politics

-- Jann Pasler

Postmodern Genres

-- Marjorie Perloff

Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction

-- Niall Lucy

Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction to the Theories of the Contemporary

-- Steven Connor

Essays in Postmodern Culture

-- Eyal Amiran & John Unsworth

The Aesthetics of Chaos: Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism

-- Michael Patrick Gillespie

Edging into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation

-- Veronica Hollinger & Joan Gordon

Science Fiction and Postmodern Fiction: A Genre Study

-- Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz

Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage

-- Simon Shaw-Miller

Futurist/Cyberpunk Resource List: Fiction

Below is a list of the resources I've accumulated thus far. It's incomplete right now, but should be finished within the next few days.

((Nonfiction books have been moved to their own post))

Novels

The Sprawl Trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive

-- William Gibson

Johnny Mnemonic
-- William Gibson

Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology
-- Ed. Bruce Sterling

The Diamond Age (postcyberpunk)
-- Neal Stephenson

Accelerando (postcyberpunk)
-- Charles Stross

TV Shows

Serial Experiments Lain

-- Ryutaro Nakamura

Appleseed
-- Masamune Shiro

Movies

Bladerunner

-- Ridley Scott

A Scanner Darkly
-- Richard Linklater

Pi
-- Darren Aronofsky

TIME Article - Cyberpunk!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977654-1,00.html

----

Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative

Slusser, George, and Shippey, Tom, ed. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992.

Part 1: The Movement: Forward or Backward?
Part 2: The Question of Tradition: Cyberpunk and Science Fiction
Part 3: The Question of Newness: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism
Part 4: The Question of Generic Identity: The Cyberpunk "Canon"
Part 5: The New Metaphoricity: The Future of Fiction

I'm normally extremely wary of scholarly books about technology or the future published more than five years from present day. Technology is evolving so fast, and human social behaviors are so rapidly changing, that it's nearly impossible to make accurate predictions about "the future". Despite my initial misgivings, I have to say that I am thoroughly enjoying this book so far. It is actually a series of papers first presented at the 1989 annual J. Lloyd Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, which explored the question of what fiction will be in the year 2000 and beyond. The conference had a particular focus on Cyberpunk that year, what it is (and is not), the authors' real ideas and literary goals, and the various ways the cyberpunk aesthetic has seeped into popular media culture. Reading this over 15 years after it was released, nearly 20 years after the papers were initially presented, I've been surprised and intrigued at how most of the thoughts and ideas presented have held up. This book seems like it will be incredibly helpful in observing the many narrative techniques employed by authors who are deliberately striving to push fiction beyond its current point of stagnation. Though I will have to skip many of the essays for now, being only part way through Neuromancer at the moment, there are many wonderful essays on how we view the future, how that vision has changed, and what it could mean for the real future. I'm really looking forward to reading this book cover to cover. My only problem is resisting the urge to highlight and make notes in the margins. I'm quite tempted to buy this one!

----

Steven Paul Scher - Judith Weir's "Heaven Ablaze in His Breast"

Scher, Steven. "Judith Weir's 'Heaven Ablaze in His Breast: A Postmodern Dance Opera Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's 'The Sandman'." In Word and Music Studies: Essays on Literature and Music (1967-2004), edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, 489-504. New York: Rodopi, 2004.


The value of this essay is minimal in and of itself, but the fact that it introduced me to Judith Weir's 1989 dance/opera makes it worth mentioning. It is difficult to follow much of Scher's critical analysis of the work without being familiar with E.T.A. Hoffmann's story and the many other musical and theatrical interpretations in existence. Though the topic of the production is not connected to futurism or cyberpunk, it is lauded as being truly intermedia, crossing the boundaries between dance, theater, and opera with great success. As I hope to eventually create an intermedia stage work based on my current research sometime (far, far) in the future, it seems that Weir's piece is a great place to start gathering information. Nicholas Kenyon said of Heaven Ablaze, "Is it a ballet? Is it an opera? Is it a play? Who cares: it's entirely individual and wonderful." Kenyon's review was one of the few that reflected positively on Weir's production. The composer employed many compositional tricks throughout her work, such as beginning a song in the style of Schubert and quickly spiraling into a much more disjunct and dissonant parody. She also effects a mechanical aesthetic for certain characters, a technique that may well apply to a future-centered work. Weir plays with the concept of narrative by casting two people in each role: one dancer, and one singer/actor. Scher refers to the role of dance in Heaven as "kinetic recetative", a concept that I find fascinating. Narrative can be advanced in ways beyond the spoken or sung word, and I'm sure there are even more narrative possibilities beyond dance and image.

----

Steven Paul Scher - Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?

Scher, Steven. "Acoustic Experiment as Ephemeral Spectacle?: Musical Futurism, Dada, Cage, and the Talking Heads." In Word and Music Studies: Essays on Literature and Music (1967-2004), edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, 433-450. New York: Rodopi, 2004.

----

Luigi Russolo - The Art of Noises

Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noises. New York: Pendragon Press, 1986.


----

Introduction

Are you sure you want to be here? I assure you, this will not be terribly exciting for anyone but me, in all likelihood. I figured the words "annotated bibliography" would send most people screaming. Now's your chance.

I created a research blog for my last major project and found it quite useful for organizing my notes, not only because the blog format makes it easy to keep track of related posts, but because blogging feels like less work. Anything to keep motivated, right? So, I'm trying it again.

As previously stated, most of my entries will be in the format of an informal annotated bibliography or simple citations. I say informal because I don't plan on agonizing over word choice and formatting, and I definitely won't be worrying about the 150-words-or-less rule most of the time. I may be long on opinion and short on summary, or vice versa. Keeping track of thoughts and information is my concern, not standing on academic ceremony. That said, not every entry will be about books or articles or other Legitimate Sources(tm). News articles and personal observations will certainly be included, as well as my explorations of novels, TV shows, and movies. This will most certainly evolve over time, and I fully expect this intro post to be out of date in a few months.

Ultimately, this will all turn back to art in some way. As a grad student in art, I intend to use all this compiled information to create new works and write enthralling papers to present to captive conference audiences. Yo ho, yo ho, the academic life for me.

Nice to meet you.

----