Bruce Bethke

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Bruce Bethke (2001)

Bruce Raymond Bethke (born April 1955 in Milwaukee , Wisconsin ) is an American science fiction writer. With the title of his first short story from 1983 he coined the term " cyberpunk ".

Life

Bethke went down in the history of the science fiction genre with his first published story, Cyberpunk . He wrote them in 1980, they were then rejected a few times by publishers and finally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction in November 1983 . In 1984 William Gibson's style-defining novel Neuromancer was published and Gardner Dozois then used "Cyberpunk" to refer to the work of a group of American authors in the 1980s, for the first time in an article in the Washington Post from the end of 1984, where he spoke to Bruce Sterling , William Gibson, Lewis Shiner , Pat Cadigan and Greg Bear named as their representatives.

Cyberpunk tells the story of a group of computer kids who pass the time by creating mischief and confusion in the CityNet computer network , which must be imagined as a kind of Internet , playing tricks on their teachers and occasionally also getting involved ( The Big One ) to attack a bank. When the main character Mikey Harris remotely wipes his bank balance and job documents after an argument with his father, he is separated from the network by his parents and sent to a military academy.

Bethke wrote a few more stories with the main character Mikey Harris, one of them, Elimination Round , also appeared in Amazing Stories in July 1989 , but actually a collection of these stories was supposed to be published as a book. After Bethke succeeded in selling the rights to a publisher in 1989, the publisher was not satisfied with the outcome and the book was not published. It was only after five years and several legal disputes that Bethke was able to regain the rights, but at that time the publishers were no longer interested, because they made him understand that cyberpunk was dead.

Bethke first novel Maverick (1990) is part of a spin-off , which in series Isaac Asimov's Robot - universe is located. For his next novel, Headcrash (1995), he received the Philip K. Dick Award in 1996. The main character is Jack Burroughs, a nerd again , now an adult, who has problems with his mother and an uninteresting job as a programmer at a computer company. All the more interesting is his life in the virtual world, where under the nick MAX_KOOL he is given the task as a kind of hacker samurai to help law enforcement to win by breaking into a company to find evidence that the son the founder is whose rightful heir.

His last two books are novel versions . Rebel Moon (1996), which he wrote with Vox Day , adapted the prequel of the same name to the first-person shooter game Rebel Moon Rising , and Wild Wild West (1999) is an adaptation of the steampunk film Wild Wild West . He has been the editor of Stupefying Stories magazine since 2011 .

Awards

bibliography

Novels
  • Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens 5: Maverick (1990)
    • German: The outsider. Translated by Winfried Czech. Bastei-Lübbe SF Adventure # 23128, 1992, ISBN 3-404-23128-7 .
  • Head crash (1995)
  • Rebel Moon (1996; with Vox Day)
  • Wild Wild West (1999)
Short stories

1983:

  • Cyberpunk (in: Amazing Science Fiction, November 1983 )

1986:

  • One Evening in HG's Drawing Room (in: Amazing Stories, March 1986 )

1987:

  • It Came from the Slushpile (in: Aboriginal Science Fiction, July-August 1987 )

1988:

  • The Skanky Soul of Jimmy Twist (in: Amazing Stories, May 1988 )
  • Specter in Blue Doubleknit (in: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 1988 )
  • Utter Oog, the Caveman (in: Tales of the Unanticipated, Winter / Spring 1988 )
  • Worms! (in: Tales of the Unanticipated, Fall / Winter 1988 )

1989:

  • Buck Turner and the Spud from Space (in: Tales of the Unanticipated, Fall / Winter 1989 )
  • Elimination Round (in: Amazing Stories, July 1989 )
  • The Last Cyberpunk Story (in: Tales of the Unanticipated, Spring / Summer 1989 )

1990:

  • First Full-Contact (in: Aboriginal Science Fiction, January-February 1990 )
  • A Contract for Meyerowitz (in: Science Fiction Review, Autumn 1990 )
  • Expendables (in: Tales of the Unanticipated, Spring / Summer / Fall 1990 )

1991:

  • Appliancé (in: Aboriginal Science Fiction, January-February 1991 )
  • Life in A Drop of Pond Water (in: Amazing Stories, January 1991 )
    • English: Life in a drop of pond water. In: Alien Contact, Number 8. Edition Avalon, 1991.
  • Into The Altar Pit (in: Amazing Stories, September 1991 )
  • The Final Death of the Comeback King (in: Weird Tales, Summer 1991 )

1992:

  • The Death of the Master Cannoneer (in: Asimov's Science Fiction, Mid-December 1992 ; with Phillip C. Jennings)

1993:

  • The Single-Bullet Theory (in: Amazing Stories, April 1993 )
  • Jimi Plays Dead (in: Amazing Stories, October 1993 )

1994:

  • Interior Monologue (in: Amazing Stories, Winter 1994 )

1998:

  • Mark Dreizig (1998, in: James Cahill (Ed.): Lamps on the Brow )
  • On the Conservation of Historical Momentum (in: Pulp Eternity Magazine # 1, September 1998 )
Anthologies
  • Stupefying Stories: "It Came from the Slushpile" (2010)
  • Two: The 2nd Annual Horror Special (2013)
  • Five Stars: Five Outstanding Tales from the Early Days of Stupefying Stories (2014)
Blogs

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Science Fiction in the Eighties , article by Gardner Dozois in the Wahington Post, December 30, 1984, accessed November 15, 2017.
  2. ^ Cyberpunk , epilogue.
  3. ↑ Lynne Jamneck: Interview: Bruce Bethke , in: Strange Horizons , July 11, 2005
personal data
SURNAME Bethke, Bruce
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bethke, Bruce Raymond (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Milwaukee , Wisconsin