I think he–and Sterling before him**–are wrong about the relative impossibility of this “bohemia”. I’m reminded of my favorite Gibson book, Virtual Light, about a near-future Bay Area. He came to town and did his journalistic thing, and some bike messengers he talked to, it is reputably rumoured, saw this square, decided he was a putz, and fed him some truly lame fake slang to use. Which he did, and which provides the only lame bits in a brilliant piece of work.

My point is that Gibson & Sterling are basically middle-class nice guys (like me***) who simply don’t know anything about (say) face-tattooed guys making their living almost completely outside normal channels, or warehouse shows where you see middle-school kids sweeping up while their parents drink & pogo.

A more coherent, comprehensive, and interesting rebuttal will have to wait, as I have pals in town who I need to hang out with tomorrow am, before heading to work for my 6th 10-hour shift out of the last 7. Besides, who says I’m the one to write one?

*Poor guy just can’t buy an interview where people don’t ask “why now you write in present used to be you write in future”. Even though he answers that question brilliantly and in the exact same way every single time, and has for most of a decade now.

**Sterling has a wonderful story called something like the Bicycle Mechanic (maybe Bicycle Repairman–collected in A Good Old-Fashioned Future) where he drops this theory in some very explicit ways.

***Sterling is explicit about this in his foreword to John Shirley’s early story compilation The Exploded Heart. Too much material to type up at the moment, but well worth a look.