This was published on the Weaponizer website on Monday 25th of January 2010. It is a manifesto that isn’t a manifesto. Some of the language I’m not entirely keen on any more. The phrase ‘Social Realist SF’ was rightly dismissed in the comment thread that followed this being posted to Weaponizer. At the moment I’m using the term Kitchen Sink SF; although this label also feels inadequate. I do however think that the general principle and line of thought was well received.

I’ve done a few stories based on this now, and I do happen to think that they have been some of my strongest pieces of work to date. Anyway, don’t let this little preface at the top put you off. The anger and indifference to contemporary SF felt then is still there.

Something is wrong with science fiction & fantasy. Speculative Fiction in general. This is something that has been bugging me for a few months now. Maybe longer. Maybe years. I have been told that my argument is a defence of all fiction. But SF is my first love, the literature of my teenage years, so it is from that area I will be arguing.

SF, as a genre, has been around for just over eighty years. There have been attempts to kick the genre into a better state. The New Wave and the Cyberpunks. These attempts have left a lasting impression on the genre. They have changed things for the better.

But recently, for me at least, it seems like the genre has taken two steps backwards. I mean more books and films and comics than ever are coming out. But none of them feel very progressive. They all feel stagnant and weighed down by expectation. But even still hardly any of them feel very contemporary to my situation.
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I first discovered this last year while on a long trawl through Wikipedia. My discovery of this ancient newsletter is possible vindication of my addiction to that bloody website. This newsletter is called Cheap Truth and it was edited by Vincent Omniaveritas (Bruce Sterling) in the early to mid 1980s.

The purpose of Cheap Truth was to act as the place for a group of writers who called themselves “the Movement” to write with a militant and highly critical tone about what they perceived to be the dire state of most science fiction and fantasy being published at the time.

In doing this, it helped to define Cyberpunk. A style that Ectomo has covered before, and that fills contemporary books, comic, fashion, film and video games in far too many examples to even begin list here.

Cheap Truth writers always wrote under pseudonyms, and the contents were never copyrighted; it was handed out for free to whoever wanted it on a single sheet of paper printed on both sides at conventions or by post; there are lots of lists of then contemporary things to pay attention to; there are heavily bias rants which make no attempt at being in anyway balanced. It is, if you like, a good example example of blogging before blogging.

It is also one of what must be a small number of publications which interviewed both Raymond Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft.

As I’ve said, I love Cheap Truth. I love how insightful it is seeing the thoughts of the authors, who were then young angry writers and are now the old men, developed. I adore the aggressive and angry tone that permeates the text. I especially enjoy the vicious humor.

At the same time I hate how relevant these newsletters from a now distant past still feel. How it reminds me that the more things change, often, the more they stay the same, because the contemporary state of science fiction still feels generally pretty bloody awful. But then I hate feeling nostalgic.

I strongly recommend that you read the whole archive which you can find here and here.

There is also an essay by Bruce Sterling called “Cyberpunk in the Nineties” which is a sobering assessment of the impact that Cheap Truth and cyberpunk had. But read that after you’ve gone here and gorged on the Cheap Truth for a few wonderful hours.

Molly Millions [Neuromancer.org]
Cheap Truth Archive [Cheap Truth]

This post was original published at Ectoplasmosis at this location