like BLACK ICE -- PRIVATE or SPEED DEMON ELITE. Hackers
themselves often adopt romantic and highly suspicious tough-guy
monickers like "Necron 99," "Prime Suspect," "Erik Bloodaxe,"
"Malefactor" and "Phase Jitter." This can be seen as a kind
of cyberpunk folk-poetry -- after all, baseball players also
have colorful nicknames. But so do the Mafia and the Medellin
Cartel.
PLAYER FOUR: The Simulation Gamers.
Wargames and role-playing adventures are an old and honored
pastime, much favored by professional military strategists and
H.G. Wells, and now played by hundreds of thousands of
enthusiasts throughout North America, Europe and Japan. In
today's market, many simulation games are computerized, making
simulation gaming a favorite pastime of hackers, who dote on
arcane intellectual challenges and the thrill of doing
simulated mischief. Modern simulation games frequently have a
heavily science-fictional cast. Over the past decade or so,
fueled by very respectable royalties, the world of simulation
gaming has increasingly permeated the world of science-fiction
publishing. TSR, Inc., proprietors of the best-known
role-playing game, "Dungeons and Dragons," own the venerable
science-fiction magazine "Amazing." Gaming-books, once
restricted to hobby outlets, now commonly appear in
chain-stores like B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks, and sell
vigorously. Steve Jackson Games, Inc., of Austin, Texas, is a
games company of the middle rank. In early 1990, it employed
fifteen people. In 1989, SJG grossed about half a million
dollars. SJG's Austin headquarters is a modest two-story brick
office-suite, cluttered with phones, photocopiers, fax machines
and computers. A publisher's digs, it bustles with
semi-organized activity and is littered with glossy promotional
brochures and dog-eared SF novels. Attached to the offices is
a large tin-roofed warehouse piled twenty feet high with
cardboard boxes of games and books. This building was the site
of the "Cyberpunk Bust." A look at the company's wares, neatly
stacked on endless rows of cheap shelving, quickly shows SJG's
long involvement with the Science Fiction community. SJG's
main product, the Generic Universal Role-Playing System or
G.U.R.P.S., features licensed and adapted works from many genre
writers. There is GURPS Witch World, GURPS Conan, GURPS
Riverworld, GURPS Horseclans, many names eminently familiar to
SF fans. (GURPS Difference Engine is currently in the
works.) GURPS Cyberpunk, however, was to be another story
entirely.
PLAYER FIVE: The Science Fiction Writers.
The "cyberpunk" SF writers are a small group of mostly
