Neuromancer-Part Five

Manifestos are the work of intellectuals (or pseudo-intellectuals), artists, and theorists, at the very least of people who see themselves at the leading edge of forward-evolution, progress, and new, fast-moving or fast-arriving developments. Manifestos precede action. Very often the action never arrives, but at least there is the manifesto.

One of the most famous--or infamous--of manifestos is Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, issued in 1848, or one hundred years before George Orwell wrote his dissection of socialism and the socialist's unceasing quest for ultimate power. (In Edgar Allan Poe's story, M. Valdemar's nom de plume is Issachar Marx. Ironically, given the context, one meaning of Issachar is "hired man.") Communism, or scientific socialism, is supposed to be about the future and the "force" of History. It is actually more nearly about the past. Marx's manifesto begins with a demonstrably false proposition regarding human society and historical events. What Marx proposed was actually a new-old class structure, with him on top and everybody else below him--preferably with his boot stamping on their faces forever.

Charles Fort wrote a kind of manifesto in the opening paragraphs of The Book of the Damned (1919). Like the Manifesto of Futurism, it reads as the work of a visionary, either that or a man gripped by fever. Alternatively, it's the work of a crazy person, or as H.G. Wells described Fort's writing, like that of a drunkard. Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting by Umberto Boccioni (1910) declares: "That the name of 'madman' with which it is attempted to gag all innovators should be looked upon as a title of honor." It also stated: "Nothing is immoral in our eyes," a statement anticipating the moral relativism of the twentieth century. And, like Fort, it argued in favor of continuity among all things, or in a lack of barriers between one thing and another.

Otis Adelbert Kline wrote "Why Weird Tales?" as a kind of manifesto. It came at the first ending of "The Unique Magazine," in the first and only quarterly issue of May/June/July 1924. In The New Weird (2008), editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (not Valdemar) introduced their work with a kind of manifesto. Theirs takes the form, more or less, of a corporate mission statement and is just as obscure. It uses words, but together they have little or no meaning. At least there is poetry in Martinetti's manifesto. By the way, both his surname and Marx's are from the god of war. Five years after Martinetti wrote, in the year that the Great War began, Gustav Holst wrote "Mars, the Bringer of War." A theme from "Mars" is almost repeated in the attack on the Death Star by speedy X-Wing fighters in Star Wars, which was released in 1977, or Year One of the new punk calendar. I will add that The New Weird was published by Tachyon Publications. Tachyons are for speed. And I guess I might as well add that Star Wars was retitled A New Hope. There must always be new things.

I don't know whether there was ever a New Wave manifesto. If there was, Michael Moorcock would seem its logical author. (Like William Gibson in "The Gernsback Continuum" [1981], Michael Moorcock made a connection between fascism and science fiction of the Golden Age in his essay "Starship Stormtroopers," from 1977, or, again, Year One.) I also don't know whether there was ever a punk manifesto, at least at its beginnings. There were, however, post-action punk manifestos. ("Why Weird Tales?" was a kind of post-action manifesto, too.) Again, a proper manifesto comes before the action and as a guide to action. It has to be thought out. It should be the work of a writer, a poet, or an articulate thinker. Punk rock rises to the anger necessary for a proper manifesto, but it seems to me inarticulate. It seems to me that it wasn't and isn't an intellectual or artistic movement. But there are punk songs and punk lyrics that might be interpreted as like a manifesto, for example "Anarchy in the U.K." (1976) or "God Save the Queen" (1977), which closes with these words:

No future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future
No future for me
No future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future for you

Instead of the Soup Nazi, the singer sounds like the Future Nazi: "No future for you!" he cries. His lyrics could almost be sung to "Mars, Bringer of War" by Holst. In any case, they are not the lyrics of science fiction, for they turn from the future and deny the future. They are not hopeful but despairing. They are apocalyptic, as in an irrational and violent disaster-fantasy, a Romantic or Gothic work taken to the extreme, or the climax of an epic weird tale.

That leaves cyberpunk. So was there a pre-action cyberpunk manifesto? According to American science fiction author Bruce Sterling (b. 1954) in an online essay entitled "Cyberpunk in the Nineties" (originally in Interzone #48, June 1991):

"The New Science Fiction" [in Interzone #14, Winter 1985/1986] was the first manifesto of "the cyberpunk movement." The article was an analysis of the SF genre's history and principles; the word "cyberpunk" did not appear in it at all.

Note the emphasis again on newness.

The author of  of "The New Science Fiction" was also Bruce Sterling, writing under the pseudonym Vincent Omniaveritas. His "Cyberpunk in the Nineties" is also something of a manifesto, but it was a post-action manifesto. Like the manifesto of the Italian Futurists, it predicted the artistic decline, demise, or  replacement of its own members: "The Nineties will belong to the coming generation, those who grew up in the Eighties." In other words, I guess, Generation X, those who would go on to create the so-called "New Weird."

To be continued . . .

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley