Vogue - "Cosmetics as Science Fiction," 1995
"Unique color particles are wrapped in moisturizers so that the coverage floats above fine lines -- makes them seem to disappear. Your makeup stays virtually line-free all day. Don't lie about your age -- defy it!"

Time - "Will Cybercriminals Run The World?"
"It's not that a cybercriminal world of conspiratorial smugglers, scofflaws, crooked banks and tax evaders is impossible. Such countries already exist. It's just that they're not anyone's idea of high-tech paradise. They are places like Bulgaria."

Austin Chronicle - "Information Wants To Be Worthless"
"Fame, glamour, gold ... so funny how that works! Camgirls, for instance. The trials and tribulations of girls with Web cameras, those are issues one might well broach with a SXSW expert, like say, Amanda from Amandacam. Sometimes, as a camgirl ... no, I am not a camgirl myself, but I maintain a chilly, detached, surgical interest in their doings. As a camgirl, you might post some lovely and somewhat indiscreet pictures of yourself on the Internet. Or a picture of your boyfriend. For instance, your sweet, geeky boyfriend that you stole from some other camgirl, who is somewhat less attractive than you, and therefore gets fewer expensive toys from her admirers, purchased and shipped from her handy Amazon wish list. Margaret Mead could get three or four hot anthropological monographs out of this behavior, easily."

Time - "A Century of Science Fiction"
"If the tag end of the century resembles the work of any single SF writer, it must surely be J.G. Ballard. One might make an argument for the prescience of William Burroughs (if you're a junkie) or the uncanny knack of William Gibson (if you're a career computer criminal). But Ballard is surely the most insightful artist the genre ever produced. While most SF writers of his generation were down at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory cheering on the moon landings, Ballard was in a London art gallery throwing a Pop Art happening with a crashed car and a topless model. Ballard's approach to the future was never rooted in engineering, physics or rocket science but rather in medicine, psychology and surrealism. Time has been kind to him."

"Look At The Underside First: Brasilia and St. Petersburg" (Fall 98)
"I am calling my column for U&lc 'Look at the Underside First.'  There are several good reasons to follow this useful design principle. First, it’s what veteran professionals tend to do in any line of creative work. Once you get past your gosh-wow journeyman phase and learn how to do the cool stuff, you develop a pained understanding of the irritating flaws, gaps, cavities, bugs, and screwups inherent in your craft. Dilettantes, however gifted they may be, really can’t bear this revelation. This is the fatal moment when they quit and go do something groovy."

"Look At The Underside First: When Anything Is Possible" (Feb 99)
"Techno-utopia had arrived. Nothing much ever happens in a Utopia. There is no grain of resistance in Utopia, nothing to kick against. Pretty much anything is possible, so nothing much is interesting. In daily practice, Utopia spends most of its time looking backward wistfully to the difficult, challenging, funky world of pre-Utopia. Digital typefaces, like other forms of computer-assisted art, are mostly about appropriation, sampling, deconstruction and detournement. The prototypical digital typeface looks like a time-traveling bandit kidnapped Aldus Manutius and shot him full of horse tranquilizer."

"Look At The Underside First: Crystal Inks" (May 99)
"Lithography is two hundred years old. Utterly non-digital, it’s all about limestone, grease, ink and acid. Jules Cheret and Toulouse-Lautrec used to hack this stuff. Fine-art lithography, the traditional craft that’s still done with ink sponges, rollers, wooden scrapers, and big iron squeezers, has never quite died out – even though its fumes are now classified as health-hazards. The ancient honored craft is still hanging in there, wheezing for creative oxygen in the iron lungs of arts colleges and collectors’ groups."

"The Digital Revolution In Retrospect"
"In the 1990s, we produce computers that are high-tech sarcophagi with the working lifespan of hamsters. The contemporary computer industry has the production values, and the promotional values, and even the investment structure of the couture industry. This may be why computers are the first truly arcane technology that has become deeply and genuinely glamorous."

"Cyberpunk in the 90s" from Interzone
"Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes."

"GURPS' Labor Lost"
"What possible reason could lead an American federal law enforcement agency to raid the headquarters of a science-fiction gaming company? Why was an unpublished book called G.U.R.P.S. Cyberpunk seized by the US Secret Service and declared 'a manual for computer crime?'"

"Cyberview '91 (Summercon)"
"They called it 'CyberView '91.' Actually, it was another 'SummerCon' -- the traditional summer gathering of the American hacker underground. The organizer, 21 year old 'Knight Lightning,' had recently beaten a Computer Fraud and Abuse rap that might have put him in jail for thirty years. A little discretion seemed in order."

Bruce's Suggested 'Cyberpunk' Books
(circa Aug 96)

Bruce's Suggested Periodicals
(circa Jan 93)

"A Science-Fiction Writers Workshop Lexicon"
"This lexicon was compiled by Mr. Lewis Shiner and myself from the work of many writers and critics over many years of genre history, and it contains buzzwords, notions and critical terms of direct use to SF workshops."

"The Future? You Don't Wanna Know" from Hotwired
"Real futurism means staring directly into your own grave and accepting the slow but thorough obliteration of everyone and everything you know and love. Does this sound like fun? It can be. Just don't expect it to move a lot of product."