<>@2 \//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\/ *4@5 CYBERPUNK HANDBOOK - BOOK REVIEW *3]5@6 by Sal Bright *1]1@2 \\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ @3 ]5 by St. Jude, R.U. Sirius and Bart Nagel £6.99 - Arrow Books ISBN 0-09-979161-7 @1]1 Okay, it's a fun (phun?) book, written by a couple of the people behind MONDO 2000, the style-bible of the electronically mobile. It's also safe to leave around where your mum might find it, so nothing about smart drugs, really, and sensible advice about body piercing. Shame really, I remember a Horizon programme about Smart Drugs with sad yuppies snorting cold remedies every day and a list of side-effects including incontenance. Another programme on Channel 4 revealed that one of the top cognative enhancing drugs is instant coffee (apparently better than "real" coffee) but best of all is to smoke a cigarette. The book includes a dig at Billy Idol, so full points there! I'm old enough to remember Generation X on Top Of The Pops with Billy's inability to mime. Then it was off to California where he became everything he claimed to hate. His old mate Tony James formed Sigue Sigue Sputnik (remember them?) who couldn't get banned by the Beeb no matter how hard they tried. Billy heard them and five years later he's got his own crap disco-album. The book does recommend a John Brunner book, a good thing everytime. Brunner was a sweet, if lecherous, guy who I saw about two days before he died. His mid-seventies books, (Stand on Zanzibar, Sheep Look Up, Jagged Orbit. etc.) were possibly the highpoints of his career. Read those if you want to know what Cyberpunk was before it was so named. (I also heard a very funny story about Mr. Brunner and his exploding testicle from A.N.Other author.) Now why do American's think that The Cure is the only Goth band (if at all), in the world? Perhaps they never heard of The Banshees, Sisters of Mercy or the Neph'? Stuff the book doesn't include but should include is Steve Jackson Games fun with the American Government over his game Hacker. To anglicise it I'd have mentioned bands like Dread Zone, Zion Train, Sonic Energy Authority or some of the Arab techno stuff you only find on Nick Kershaw's programme on Radio 1; authors such as Simon Ings and Peter F. Hamilton and under cults I'd bung in the Cyberian Tigers with Ho Chi Max, Arthur Ascii and the rest of the neterrorist/hoaxers. I know a wannabe writer who's written what she calls a Cyberpunk novel. Uh-uh, it's cutsie and twee and I'd call it Cyberfolk. Her boyfriend says, "but it's got a computer that talks to her brain." That ain't what CP is about, it's about edge and sometimes going over it. For £6.99 it's a fun read that got me some odd looks on the bus as I chortled. I'll file my copy on the same shelf as the Isher Catalog, ("finest energy weapons in the known Universe"); World Domaination Handbook, (do you know how much fun you can have with the CIA's phone number at a party. Go on, ring them on 001 703 482 1100 and ask them if you can become a spy, but ]3not]1 on your own phone!); and Bluff Your Way in Computers.