nmv family and l moved toCalifornia， one of the first California drivers aren t usually rude--if there is a necessity to<br > ings 1 did was to visit the City Lights bookstore on merge， people will pause and wave each other on--but they a re pushy.<br > olumbusAvenueinSanFrancisco sNorthBeach， right If you don t take advantage of a hole in traffic， someone else will<br > across Jack Kerouac Alley from the funky old beatnik bar/cafe called squirm around you to get at the hole. Once， in Santa Cruz， when I<br > Vesuvio. WheneverlgointoCityLights， lgetsoexcitedseeingall thecool paused flounderingly in an intersection in our big old Chevy station<br > booksandmagazinesthatlcanbarelyevenbreathe. One particular nrag- wagon， twoseparatedrwerscalledmeanasshole. Iwasblockingahole<br > azine that caught my eye on this visit was a huge pink thing with a Ben- and I was driving an American station wagon with Virginia plates; there-<br > Day dot picture that seemed to be a cross between ISm Leafy and Art Lin- fore I was an asshole. I notice a fair amount of standoffishuess and impa-<br > kleher. ArtLinkletterwasthehostofafiftieseandid-cameraTVshowcalled tienceamongCalifornians. It slikeCaliforniansknowt~a hereisthe<br > "People Are Funny，" and he authored the book Kids Say The Darmfest possibility of getting REALLY GOOD STUFF out here， and when they<br > Things. Lirddetter s daughter had a mental illness which may or may not have to settle for something inadequate--like seeing a whale-wagon in<br > havebeencompoundedbytheuseofLSD， andsheendedupcommitting the middle of an intersection--they get very miffed. When l first got<br > suicide by jumping out a window， so Art Linkletter became a prominent here， I was so happy to see restaurants that weren t Red Lobsters and<br > spokespersonagainstpsychedelia. Sonowhere`stheseCalifontiaweirdos Pizza Huts that 1 was bewildered by all the "Very Best Restaurauts"<br > putting out this big pink magazine--which is called High Frontiers--and guides I kept seeing in the paper. "Hell，" I d sa~，; "1 don t need the VERY<br > they have Linkletter s face merged with Leary s， and out of the mouth is BEST. I m perfectly happy with something that s REASON ABLY ADE-<br > condng a shaky speech-balloon saying，"Kids do the d， m~dest drags!" And QUATEY But now， of course， after six years here， 1 don t feel that way<br > if that weren t enough， walking across the top of the picture is a drooling， anynmre. I m a Californian， and I want the very best all the time! My<br > three-eared Mickey Mouse holding out the logo of the Central Intelli- guiding philosophy in making the selections for this User s Guide has<br > genceAgency. ThemagaziueHighFrontiersbecameRealityHackers， wl dch been simply that: to get the very best things I could find in all the<br > became the magazine MOND02000， and now I m coediting the MONDO issues of the magazine High Frontiers/Rcality Hackers/MONDO 2000.<br > 2000 User s Guide to the New Edge. Software packages always come with a Some of the first Californians I befriended were fellow science-fic-<br > book that says "user s guide" on it， even though in the rest of the culture tion writers. There s few enough SF writers that we re always glad to<br > a "user" is usually using drugs. Are people who buy software the same see each other. The one thing that my new SF friends were most inter-<br > as the tx~ple who buy drugs? People are funny! ested in telling me about was Mark Pauline of SRL (Survival Research<br > At first California was hard to get used to. My family m~d I were coming Labs) and the cool things Ire did with machines. They knew， of course，<br > hum a small town in central Virginia， you m~derstand， a place called that I like machines a lot--my novel Software is about the first intelli-<br > Lynchburg， the home of that notorious God-pig Jerry Falwdl， always on gent robots， and Wetware is about the rnbots using bioengineering<br > TK preaching fear and asking for money. The main thing you notice first processes to build people like machines. Cyberpunk fiction is really<br > aboutCaliforniaishowmuchyouhavetodrive. At first l d see aU these ABOUT tha fusion of humans and machines. That s why cyberpunk<br > little ~topphlg centers along the highways， mad I d be thinking， "Oh， lbetter is a popular literature for this point in time--this is a historical time<br > come back here sometime and check out those nice stores." It took me when computers are TAKING OVER many human functions， and<br > awhile to realize that the little shopping centers， the strip malls， were all when humans are TAKING IN much more machine-processed infor-<br > ilwsame， andflmttherewasnolx，intingoingintooneexceptforaninstan- marion. There is a massive human/computer symbiosis developing<br >z tanenus purchase， In this great American urban mega-suburb， shopping faster than we cau even think abmtt it realistically. Instead of thinkiug<br > is a parallel， distdbuted pro~ess. Shopping for ordinary things， that is. For realistically， we cm~ think science-fictionally， and that s how we end uP<br > spet.ial things you need special， nonmallsourcesliketheaddressesinthe writing cyberpunk near-future seieuce fiction. Cyberpunk is really<br >;- "Mall" sectkm at tile back of this User s t;uide， about the present.<br >