Winter Technical Difficulties

Posted on: 17:25:02 / 11-05-2008		 Today's segment is late due to a recent laptop breakdown. My machine is dead in the water for the moment, along with my latest Street files and other material that I hadn't gotten around to backing up properly, and I've only just managed to resurrect an old laptop I had lying around in order to update the website.

Tomorrow I'll be going over the backups and hopefully get today's segment uploaded, before I go into hospital for a bit of surgery.

Here's hoping everything goes well!

Regards,
Ryan
Winter Welcome

Posted on: 01:12:20 / 08-05-2008		 Hello, and welcome! This is the home of Street, an online and ongoing cyberpunk novel series written by science-fiction author Ryan A. Span. You can read it all here for free -- no ads, no obligations, just a good story.

The story is continually updated with new segments appearing every Wednesday and every Sunday. If you've enjoyed the story so far, please check back on these days and you'll find another segment waiting for you. You can also use our RSS feed.

If you're a new visitor, you'll most likely want to start at the beginning of the story and go from there. Or, if you don't like reading on a screen, you can buy a copy of "STREET: Empathy" (contains Parts 1-18, plus Part 19 as a bonus). Lastly, you can find easily-printable PDF files and other goodies in our Files section.

If you like what you read, please tell your friends about Street! We're relying on you readers to get the word out.

For anything that's on your mind, feel free to use our forum.

All content on these pages is copyrighted (c) 2006-2008 by Ryan A. Span. It is displayed here free of charge, but reprinting or reuse of this content -- whole or in part -- is strictly prohibited without the author's express written permission.


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Winter State of Cyberpunk? All Processes Running!

Posted on: 13:28:35 / 06-05-2008		 Wow, I've been posting a lot of opinion pieces lately. Here's another one in honour of the start of Part 20 on Wednesday, the first totally unseen Street material for nearly 6 months. ;)



Every so often there's a big fuss about someone claiming something to be 'dead' or 'done' or whatever. Cyberpunk is a favourite target for this because it's a fairly unique and visible subgenre. Lots of people dismiss it as having been made irrelevant by modern technology.

However, these critics seem entirely unable to take into account that cyberpunk has already outlived its heyday by about 20 years without dying out. Sometimes they deign to acknowledge it, but then quickly dismiss the facts by positing CP as a tired genre, merely hanging on by its fingernails out of reader nostalgia.

Again, I call this short-sighted. New seminal novels like Stephenson's Snow Crash and Street: Empathy ( ;) ) seem to keep coming out every few years or so, redefining and -- even more importantly -- updating the genre to move with the times. We continue to extrapolate technology from the present day into the future, perhaps a little further than the previous generation, a little closer to what we're likely to see. However, I may be alone in this, but I don't think that illustrating future worlds is the point of cyberpunk anymore. Something has changed.

Modern science-fiction, even modern fiction in general, is becoming less and less about sweeping visions of other places and other peoples. It doesn't have the same focus on the wider effects of technological advances. All that has been done. Nearly every possible advance in the next few hundred years has already been predicted by somebody, somewhere. I see the future of cyberpunk in moving with that greater trend.

What we're doing now in science-fiction -- what I certainly am trying to do -- is to investigate the effects of these predicted futures (increasing computerisation of humanity, the promise of true artificial intelligence, the growth of the internet) on the individual human psyche, rather than some great collective unconscious or Earth itself. We're using characters as characters rather than set-pieces in some big statement about human nature or the dangers of science. We're taking modern-day phenomena and anomalies that no one foresaw twenty years ago, and we're running with them. Instead of showing you a window through which you can look at causes, effects and possibilities, we're trying to figure out how the future is going to feel to each of us. I've seen many visions of how it's going to turn out. What I want to look into is how we're going to cope.

So is cyberpunk dead? Well, there are people still writing it, still reading it, still enjoying it -- still making it fresh and applicable to the new century.

You be the judge.

Regards,
Ryan
Winter Empathy doing well on Kindle

Posted on: 00:00:28 / 05-05-2008		 At this moment in time, Street: Empathy is ranked at #3450 in total sales on the Amazon Kindle. Even better, it's now ranking #11 on the bestseller list in Technothrillers and #13 on High Tech. I'm really thrilled at seeing Empathy ranked right next to the likes of Gibson, Morgan and Stephenson, and it shows that this story can compete with the best the big publishers have to offer!

Regards,
Ryan
Winter On Pretension

Posted on: 16:32:30 / 04-05-2008		 "The air was heavy as the party approached the dais where the elf queen -- beautiful beyond mortal ken -- sat on her jewelled throne amid the marble vastness of the elf city. She waved at them, her fingers covered in magick rings to match the strands of gold woven through her fiery hair, and called out, 'You four are burdened with a great prophecy to save our world from the evil Dark Lord. Our world, and many more.'"

Pretension in writing is a pretty big phenomenon in our internet-enabled world where anyone can write anything and have an audience to read it. We no longer have the luxury of a firm screen of editors to act as a filter to separate us from all (well, most) of the generic chaff produced every year, and even where tough editors are in place, it's still not a guarantee. What's worse is that where certain brands are concerned, we lap it up. We buy crap and thereby encourage the industry to produce more crap to feed the apparent demand. Shitty tie-ins, spinoffs that were better left unmade, inferior retreads or reimaginings of old brands -- with certain exceptions, of course -- there are endless variations of shit. However, although there's a big overlap, in this article I'll try to focus specifically on pretentious shit.

There's more to pretension than simply bad style. Purple prose can be a real joy-killer for those of us who like easy, flowing sentences, but not every pretentious story has purple prose. The style can be completely fine, but the story might still be bad for any number of reasons.

As a semi-relevant but joyful aside, especially for any old Amiga Power readers out there, check this wonderful work by J Nash.

A brief list of points which are a good indicator of pretension (in my view, anyway):

1. Misspellings/misuse of terms in a vain attempt to give them extra gravity. 'Magick' is a good example. This is a common stand-by for writers who are too inexperienced or unable to show why we should sit up and pay attention at the use of a specific term in this setting, trying to set it apart from its normal usage by changing the term itself. It can work, but only on rare occasions with a writer who knows what they're doing. One place where it does work is the use of 'Ser' instead of 'Sir' in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice & Fire series, a slight twist that's not played up for gravity but used subtly to remind the reader that this setting is not just medieval Earth.

2. Prophecies, destinies and chosen ones. These have been handled well at times in the past, but can be indicators of a real stinker. Many writers have an inexplicable tendency to make their characters special in the context of the setting, rather than in the force of their personality, with preferential treatment and deference given to that character because of how great and special they are. Whether it's out of a desire for self-insertion by the author or simply uninspired plotting, be on the lookout for other signs of a generic D&D pastiche.

3. Obvious and abrasive political screeds. The author clearly thinks that his views are important enough to tell you them OVER AND OVER AGAIN WHILE THEY TRIUMPH OVER ALL WHO OPPOSE THEM. Take the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Goodkind's prose is bloody awful, but that in itself doesn't make it pretentious -- the Objectivist ravings and the outright murder of probability and plot in favour of political points do that.

Another favourite example I like to use is Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle and Co. You may be taken in by the first chapter as I was, which isn't too bad. However the story quickly devolves into two things -- a blowjob for 'the fans', who ought to be offended by the shameless pandering, and a right-wing manifesto about how CO2 would have saved the world but for those damn dirty greens and tree-huggers.

4. Use of cliches without a shred of irony. Too much modern fantasy becomes an endless parade of undisguised cliches and rip-offs whilst putting on airs of importance, as if somehow the reader is supposed to be amazed by something they've already seen a thousand times -- another clone of Lord of the Rings and/or Star Wars, or any other better work. The recent movement towards more outlandish and original fiction is driving this down a little bit, but also falls prey to the following point . . .

5. Weirdness for its own sake. When writing about weird things, they should have a purpose, a specific role in the setting and/or the plot. When incorporating unexpected plot twists, they should still make sense to the reader and follow in a logical line from the plot up to that point. The logic can be thin sometimes, but without that thread the whole twist can easily fall apart and instead become deus ex machina -- and there's a good chance of it coming across as artsy faffing about.

There are plenty more possible transgressions, but these are the Big Five in my book. Your mileage may differ and all that.

Let me end this by saying that any irony in this article is entirely intentional, and should by no means be pointed out! After all . . . Pretentious, moi?

Regards,
Ryan
Winter Greatness

Posted on: 06:36:24 / 30-04-2008		 I don't usually do blog-like posts, but hey, what else is this site for?! Time to fill it with my thoughts. Today's topic is: Greatness.

Greatness can be a tangible thing. Things can be measured to be better than other things, with classics such as The Postman or Battlefield Earth being clearly superior to the SF genre's lesser offerings. And it can be pretty intimidating to compete with these mammoth institutions.

Now, I don't like using the term 'artist', but that's a whole other rant for another day. The thing is that as a creative -- which can be a writer or musician or painter or whatever -- I find myself coming up against beautiful things made with really impeccable craftsmanship and wondering, "How can I possibly top this? Hell, how can I equal it?"

That thought's been hounding me for years. Some days it makes me despair, other days it drives me in the constant effort towards writing the best things I possibly can. It makes me want to aspire, even if it could turn out I haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of actually creating anything of that scale.

Even more than that, I believe that consciously trying to write something great will always result in disaster. First start writing something good, then see where it leads. That's what I've been trying to do for a while now.

Still, I'm not ashamed to admit that this is something I struggle with in the small hours. Despite everything. Street might be a big thing -- I believe in it more strongly than anything else I've done. It's more grown-up, more focused, more engaging. And it's doing pretty well only three weeks after the release of Empathy.

Time to get writing and carry it through.

Any thoughts from you creative people? Forum them!
Winter Year Two Beginning Today!

Posted on: 01:58:49 / 20-04-2008		 Dear Street readers,

This is it! After way too damned long, Year Two (a.k.a. "STREET: Clairvoyance") has kicked off with Part 19, and will be running here on the website twice a week, for free, for your enjoyment.

Remember, the whole of Part 19 is also included with "STREET: Empathy", so if you want to get a sneak preview or catch up to the present day quickly, buying Empathy is the way to do it. See our Ordering page for information about where to get it.

I hope you'll all enjoy this brand new second part of the series, and continue to support Street by telling your friends and your forums that we're here giving out good stuff for free!

Regards,
Ryan


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