John Shirley, Composing Cyberspace

John Shirley,
"Wolves of the Plateau"

John Shirley (b. 1953) is a science fiction writer and musician, most recently with the San Francisco rock group Panther Moderns. His novels and short story collections include City Come a-Walkin' (orig. 1980, Eyeball Press 1996), Wetbones (Mark V. Ziesing, 1991), New Noir (Black Ice, 1993), The Exploded Heart (Eyeball Press, 1996), and Silicon Embrace (Mark V. Ziesing, 1996). His screenplays include The Crow (Pressman/MIRAMAX, 1995) based on a comic by James O'Barr, and he has written TV scripts for shows such as "Poltergeist," "Deep Space Nine," and "VR5." "Wolves of the Plateau" originally appeared in the literary journal Mississippi Review in 1988 and was part of Shirley's 1989 collection Heatseeker (Scream/Press).

"Wolves of the Plateau" (Composing Cyberspace p. 132) is not available online.

1. Aside from their being prisoners all accused of the same crime, how do the story's characters appear to occupy the social margins of this future society? Describe Jerome, Jessie, Eddie, Bones, and Swish in terms of their cultural identities -- race or ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, etc. Based on these marginal characters and other clues in the story, how would you describe the social and political mainstream that apparently exists in year 2022?

2. When the prisoners consider working together to escape, Bones says, "It's either the chain that holds us or the chain that pulls us out" (¶ 82). But the powerful "systems link" that they form requires that they first share a "brutal intimacy." What's the nature of that required intimacy, and why do you think it's important to the story? What do you think the story implies about the relationship between personal identity and collaboration or community?

3. Jerome grew up "with a sense that media events were real, and personal events were not" (¶ 121). To what extent do you think Jerome's media-intensive background reflects social conditions and trends of today, extrapolated into the future? What other aspects of the story do you think reflect and comment on current social conditions, and how so?

4. According to Jerome, why are the authorities fearful of the Plateau? What "possibilities" (¶ 66) does the Plateau seem to contain? Based on clues in the story and your own experience or other reading, how would you compare the fictional Plateau with today's real-life Internet?

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