Bohemia will not go away. Bohemia, like SF, is not a passing fad,although it breeds fads; like SF, Bohemia is old; as old as industrialsociety, of which both SF and Bohemia are integral parts. CyberneticBohemia is not some bizarre advent; when cybernetic Bohemiansproclaim that what they are doing is completely new, they innocentlydelude themselves, merely because they are young.

Cyberpunks write about the ecstasy and hazard of flyingcyberspace and Verne wrote about the ecstasy and hazard of FIVEWEEKS IN A BALLOON, but if you take even half a step outside themire of historical circumstance, you can see that these both serve thesame basic social function.

Of course, Verne, a great master, is still in print, while theverdict is out on cyberpunk. And, of course, Verne got the future allwrong, except for a few lucky guesses; but so will cyberpunk. JulesVerne ended up as some kind of beloved rich crank celebrity in thecity government of Amiens. Worse things have happened, I suppose.

As cyberpunk's practitioners bask in unsought legitimacy, itbecomes harder to pretend that cyberpunk was something freakish oraberrant; it's easier today to see where it came from, and how it gotwhere it is. Still, it might be thought that allegiance to Jules Verne is abizarre declaration for a cyberpunk. It might, for instance, be arguedthat Jules Verne was a nice guy who loved his Mom, while the brutishantihuman cyberpunks advocate drugs, anarchy, brain-plugs and thedestruction of everything sacred.

This objection is bogus. Captain Nemo was a technical anarcho-terrorist. Jules Verne passed out radical pamphlets in 1848 when thestreets of Paris were strewn with dead. And yet Jules Verne isconsidered a Victorian optimist (those who have read him must doubtthis) while the cyberpunks are often declared nihilists (by those whopick and choose in the canon). Why? It is the tenor of the times, Ithink.

There is much bleakness in cyberpunk, but it is an honest