Cyberpunk, Difference Engines and Mad Madge with Bruce Sterling (Patreon)

Hello everyone

If my voice is more reverberant than usual its because this is beaming from our new studio, which currently has no furniture, no electricity and no internet! We are hoping eventually to establish one or two of those things, and maybe even host some of these conversations live once we are all allowed to occupy space together again.

In the near term, the good news is we have a new episode for you! Last night we recorded a long and fun conversation with the Hugo award winning author and futurist Bruce Sterling. As you will hear Bruce has a great deal of knowledge about a great deal of stuff, and as well as his early writing helping to establish the cyberpunk movement, he was also among a handful of people who set the countercultural tone in San Francisco at the dawn of WIRED and the dot com boom. He is also a curator and expert on digital art. 

We discuss his being the first WIRED cover story, new information he uncovered on the relationship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, the first science fiction writer; a woman referred to as “mad Madge”, Qanon as Christian fundamentalist Scifi, Amazons beginnings as a sci-fi bookstore, ideas from early dot com times that people didn’t pick up but maybe should have done more with, and to close we have a fiery debate about the merits and pitfalls of the name of this podcast and a conversation with GPT-3.

Bruce is a treat to talk to and a fountain of wild knowledge, we hope its fun to listen to. Have a great week.