Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!sunybcs!ugcherk
From: ugcherk@sunybcs.uucp (Kevin Cherkauer)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Why Cyberpunk is popular -- the computer expert as Cowboy
Summary: "action hero"
Message-ID: <7301@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: 16 Dec 87 23:15:46 GMT
References: <1237@looking.UUCP> <5960002@hpindda.HP.COM>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: ugcherk@joey.UUCP (Kevin Cherkauer)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 25

In article <5960002@hpindda.HP.COM> janke@hpindda.HP.COM (Randy Janke) writes:
>> Gibson created a world where the computer whiz could be a real, honest to
>> goodness, cowboy style gritty action-hero, without it seeming silly.
>                                ????????????
>I dont think that I would label any of the characters in Neuromancer with
>a 'hero' tag.... I really liked Neuromancer,
>but I shrink from anyone attributing heroics within the context of the plot.

The one time in _Neuromancer_ where Case *began* (didn't carry it through)
to act like the typical action hero was when he was being chased and he got
that whip or something and waited to jump his pursuers in a room in the back
of some joint, and I thought, "ICK -- he's turning into another Action Hero.
JUST what we need,.." but lo and behold he chickened out and almost killed
himself jumping out the window to get away.

I don't think there were any "action heros" (a la C.J.Cherryh and any and
every book DAW has ever published) in _Neuromancer_. And I think it was a
better book for it.

--                          --  Kevin Cherkauer  --                           --
 "Thrash until you drop, but there is no pain.
                        You can never stop -- it's like thunder in your brain."
 "No god may stop this bloody slaughter"         "Six feet under six feet deep"
                                                   "We all may be dead someday" 
...sunybcs!ugcherk                         "Speed don't kill and I'm the proof"