Bruce Sterling - The Wonderful Power of Storytelling

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Bruce Sterling

bruces@well.sf.ca.us

Literary Freeware -- Not For Commercial Use

Game conference speech: "The Wonderful Power of Storytelling"

From the Computer Game Developers Conference, March 1991, San Jose CA

Thank you very much for that introduction. I'd like to thank the

conference committee for their hospitality and kindness -- all

the cola you can drink -- and mind you those were genuine

twinkies too, none of those newfangled "Twinkies Lite" we've

been seeing too much of lately.

So anyway my name is Bruce Sterling and I'm a science fiction

writer from Austin Texas, and I'm here to deliver my speech now,

which I like to call "The Wonderful Power of Storytelling." I

like to call it that, because I plan to make brutal fun of that

whole idea... In fact I plan to flame on just any moment now, I

plan to cut loose, I plan to wound and scald tonight.... Because

why not, right? I mean, we're all adults, we're all

professionals here... I mean, professionals in totally different

arts, but you know, I can sense a certain simpatico vibe....

Actually I feel kind of like a mosasaur talking to dolphins

here.... We have a lot in common, we both swim, we both have big

sharp teeth, we both eat fish... But you look like a broadminded

crowd, so I'm sure you won't mind that I'm basically, like,

*reptilian*....

So anyway, you're probably wondering why I'm here tonight, some

hopeless dipshit literary author... and when am I going to get

started on the virtues and merits of the prose medium and its

goddamned wonderful storytelling. I mean, what else can I talk

about? What the hell do I know about game design? I don't even

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know that the most lucrative target machine today is an IBM PC

clone with a 16 bit 8088 running at 5 MHZ. If you start talking

about depth of play versus presentation, I'm just gonna to stare

at you with blank incomprehension....

I'll tell you straight out why I'm here tonight. Why should I

even try to hide the sordid truth from a crowd this

perspicacious.... You see, six months ago I was in Austria at

this Electronic Arts Festival, which was a situation almost as

unlikely as this one, and my wife Nancy and I are sitting there

with William Gibson and Deb Gibson feeling very cool and rather

jetlagged and crispy around the edges, and in walks this

*woman.* Out of nowhere. Like J. Random Attractive Redhead,

right. And she sits down with her coffeecup right at our table.

And we peer at each other's namebadges, right, like, *who is

this person.* And her name is Brenda Laurel.

So what do I say? I say to this total stranger, I say. "Hey. Are

you the Brenda Laurel who did that book on *the art of the

computer-human interface*? You *are*? Wow, I loved that book."

And yes -- that's why I'm here as your guest speaker tonight,

ladies and gentleman. It's because I can think fast on my feet.

It's because I'm the kind of author who likes to hang out in

Adolf Hitler's home town with the High Priestess of Weird.

So ladies and gentlemen unfortunately I can't successfully

pretend that I know much about your profession. I mean actually

I do know a *few* things about your profession.... For instance,

I was on the far side of the Great Crash of 1984. I was one of

the civilian crashees, meaning that was about when I gave up

twitch games. That was when I gave up my Atari 800. As to why my

Atari 800 became a boat-anchor I'm still not sure.... It was

quite mysterious when it happened, it was inexplicable, kind of

like the passing of a pestilence or the waning of the moon. If I

understood this phenomenon I think I would really have my teeth

set into something profound and vitally interesting... Like, my

Atari still works today, I still own it. Why don't I get it out

of its box and fire up a few cartridges? Nothing physical

preventing me. Just some subtle but intense sense of revulsion.

Almost like a Sartrean nausea. Why this should be attached to a

piece of computer hardware is difficult to say.

My favorite games nowadays are Sim City, Sim Earth and Hidden

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Bruce Sterling - The Wonderful Power of Storytelling

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