Bruce Sterling visiting Victor Yanukovych. Interview with the father of cyberpunk

The father of cyberpunk, Bruce Sterling, came to Mezhyhirya to visit Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and told him what he thought about Kyiv, EuroMaidan and the future of science fiction.

When I saw the name of the founding father of American cyberpunk on the list of speakers at the #mezhyhiryafest conference, held in the former residence of Yanukovych, I could not believe my eyes. “Is this probably some other Sterling?” I asked one of the Serbian organizers. I was assured that Sterling was exactly the one, and we soon met.

Why did you decide to come to Ukraine and even visit the residence of former President Yanukovych?

My wife is involved in the work of the Belgrade Share Foundation. She knows a lot of activists from there. Mezhyhirya Fest is one of many events supported by the Share Foundation. They sent me a letter inviting me here, and I was very glad to have the opportunity to visit Ukraine. I’m here for the first time. I came to Yanukovych’s residence at the request of my Belgrade friends, because I trust them. We, of course, did not go to their event in Beirut, but we constantly participate in Belgrade meetings. They told me that it would be very interesting in Kyiv, and it’s true — it’s really very cool here!

Have you already visited somewhere other than Mezhyhirya? Yes, today we visited the Maidan. And what are your impressions? A couple of months ago there was a very popular photo “Cyberpunk in Kyiv” on the Internet. Have you noticed anything like this?

I hate to say, “I’ve seen worse things,” but that’s true. Of course, traces of serious destruction are noticeable in the vicinity of the Maidan to the government quarter. This is an impressive area with its catastrophic appearance; traces of recent serious clashes are clearly visible there. The fact that the protesters won this kind of battle is generally quite unusual. I was also impressed by the size of Kyiv. I didn’t even realize that he was so huge. Probably like Berlin or Dallas in Texas, where I’m from. Just a huge area. And he also has great shape. It is simply a miracle that all the clashes in the center did not cause any damage to the rest of the city.

There was a real bloody massacre in the center.

Yes, but it doesn’t look the same as it might after, say, a tank attack or carpet bombing. Of course, there were more than a hundred corpses there, but the city was not sacked. I didn’t notice the consequences of the huge fires, all the bridges were preserved, the traffic lights were working, the shops were open, people were selling souvenirs on the streets. This is very unusual and surprising.

What would you say about the spirit of Kyiv, its mood?

I saw a short period of the interim government when people said: these are the first hundred days, let’s see what happens next. In general, everything is very reminiscent of the typical society of an Eastern European capital after the events of 1989.

Is Kyiv a typical Eastern European capital?

I wouldn’t say it’s typical. I have been to many cities in Europe, both eastern and western. Everything is very diverse there. Millions of people live between the Balkans and the Baltic countries, professing various religions, speaking different languages, and having their own culinary preferences. But Kyiv, of course, is not typical, because it is huge. A huge city indeed. As big as the cities in Texas with their really big buildings. There is a huge Dnieper River, a lake that is before our eyes — after all, it is simply colossal in size, it looks like a sea. Its size is simply amazing. Perhaps there are a dozen more similar lakes in Ukraine, but this is simply incredible.

Will you somehow reflect what you saw in your articles?

I didn’t have a special assignment for this, no one ordered anything like this, but of course I took a lot of photos here and will post them on my Flickr account, blog and Twitter. I have over 50 thousand followers on my Tumblr blog and another 30 thousand on Twitter. I’m not going to write a book about Ukraine, of course, because I don’t have a good idea of ​​the situation here yet, but I’ll find out about everything very quickly.

Is cyberpunk relevant today, when most of the fantastic innovations that make up its world have literally turned into household appliances?

It’s a funny show. It’s as if, let’s say, everyone started saying: “Well, why should we read the work of the beatniks, we all now live like beatniks, we all already smoke marijuana, we’re all getting divorced, so we can say that we’re done with all these beatniks. They died out. Let’s forget.” We definitely live in a cybernetic world, but it is not yet as cyber as it is going to become. Simply unprecedented technologies await us ahead. In twenty years, we will look at our world today as we now look at the 1990s.

It seems to me that writing something in the cyberpunk style is very old-fashioned today.

I agree, but I don’t care. However, I write science fiction without thinking about it. I recently wrote for Technology Review Magazine. A lot of people write in this style, trying to predict the future. This is exactly what I will talk about in my lecture to journalists tomorrow, about the future in media technologies, about their evolution.

I just published my novel “Kagarlik”, which has elements of cyber-punk and is about copying consciousness in Ukraine in 2114 .

People love to read about such things, there is a tradition of such literature in Ukrainian, Polish and Russian literature, there are many great science fiction writers there. Eastern Europe and the USSR are famous for their writers and film directors who worked in the science fiction genre.

Do you know any of them in the post-Soviet space?

Once I was in Moscow and interviewed one of the Strugatsky brothers. In general, I once re-read a lot of Soviet science fiction. When people ask me about my favorite science-fiction film, I always say: “Aelita, Queen of Mars” by Yakov Protazanov, filmed back in 1924. This film is very different from everything we are used to, primarily in its design, in the consistent style of Soviet constructivism. They say that cyberpunk is a kind of dystopia, and Soviet people lived in this dystopia and even made films about it. Nothing like this can be found anywhere in the world.

I have with me a book by a writer whom I consider my literary mentor. Take a look, this is a collection of essays by Brian Aldis. Brian once told me something that I remember for a long time: “Science fiction writers depict life on Mars in detail, but they are not at all worried about what is happening, for example, in Malaysia.” This is great advice for a good literary career. And then I said to myself: “I will worry about Malaysia.” I travel a lot and am interested in what is happening abroad. Even if I manage to learn a little, I then fill in the gaps by reading about this country. I will definitely remember this trip to Ukraine, and my wife will remember it too.