There's no need to lock up your PC or your children, or both; it's not bloody mayhem on the World Wide Web. The blurb portentously warns us that "wherever technology takes us, you can be sure there will be a criminal waiting in the shadows".
Cyber-Killers is an anthology of twenty-four short stories by twenty-four prominent science fiction writers spanning four decades and contains all the bloody mayhem and criminality you might desire, but it has nothing to do with our beloved information revolution. It's just good old-fashioned science fiction, replete with aliens, androids and criminals going about their daily business a few centuries hence.
Science fiction succeeds best when it leavens the futuristic technology with dollops of plot, characterisation and humour. Many of these stories rely on the technology and little else. Greg Bear's doomed protagonist explains how he achieved the feat of letting his body be taken over by biochips (don't ask) with a collective mind of their own: "I developed a program that took advantage of electron tunnelling. Emphasised the heuristic aspects of the computer, used the chit-chat as a method of increasing complexity." "You're losing me," says his mate (also doomed) and the hapless reader concurs.
There are few optimistic stories here; but by far the most disturbing are those by John Shirley and William Gibson (coiner of the word "cyberspace" in his 1984 book Neuromancer). Both tales are set in inner-city Nighttowns of the future, places of utter darkness and violence.
Shirley portrays a world devoid of humanity where survival is the only goal; Gibson, in his Johnny Mnemonic (a recent film with Keanu Reeves) has his hero find refuge among the Lo Teks (geddit?) who, for a night out, favour "fangs and a bright mosaic of scars to present a mask of total bestiality". And these are the good guys.
It takes the only female author represented, Pat Cadigan, to introduce some gentleness. Hers is an everyday tale of asexual love between a misunderstood alien and a homeless hermaphrodite; the point of view (the hermaphrodite's) is refreshingly naive and, although love's course doesn't run smooth, we're left with a glimmer of hope.
Sex, indeed, is noticeably absent from these pages - although Joe Haldeman creates a stereotypical private eye who, without trying too hard, ends up with the beautiful heiress and her equally beautiful clone; our hero marginally prefers the former, as "you can't beat a real navel".
The writers are more interested in androids, i.e. artificial humans, and their antics; many stories make much of the confusion of identity between androids and humans - the androids don't always know their place, with chaotic results. Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester features a nasty android who turns killer when the temperature hits 90F; our climate has its advantages.
It is significant that the three most recent stories deal with the hot topic of virtual reality. Great fun is had with the notion of VR addicts disappearing into their own headsets, never to return. Ian Watson goes furthest in Virtually Lucid Lucy, where the entire artificial intelligence network preposterously comes to life as a thingy called AI; his story, however, never comes to life, as it's almost unreadable.
The best two stories are the longest two. Frank Herbert and Roger Zelazny are given space to develop dramatic plots, with a little philosophy on the side. Herbert (author of the Dune stories) presents a beautifully-written account - poetic at times - of the tribulations of a highly intelligent creature whose tremulous existence depends on jumping successfully from one human host to another.
Zelazny, in his Home is the Hangman, concocts a breathless plot with a totally unexpected final twist where the eponymous robot with his (her?) super-cooled neuristor-type brain proves more human than the humans.
These are good stories, but the humour and relevance of a Vonnegut are sadly missing from the collection, although Robert Sheckley - who has been compared to the master - does provide a good satire on futuristic police surveillance, and there is humour aplenty in Terry Pratchett's contribution. Pratchett's anti-hero is a virtual reality guru but prefers to "settle down of an evening with a good book". So it goes.
Tom Moriarty is an Irish Times staff journalist
