psychoceramics: Towards a history of weirdness

[Mitchell Porter <qix @ desire.apana.org.au>]

>From a 1991 speech by Bruce Sterling, which can be found at
gopher://oak.zilker.net/00/bruces/computer_game_designers:

Follow your weird, ladies and gentlemen.  ...

If you want to woo the muse of the odd, don't read Shakespeare.  Read
Webster's revenge plays.  Don't read Homer and Aristotle.  Read
Herodotus where he's off talking about Egyptian women having
public sex with goats.  If you want to read about myth don't
read Joseph Campbell, read about convulsive religion, read
about voodoo and the Millerites and the Munster Anabaptists.
There are hundreds of years of extremities, there are vast
legacies of mutants.  There have always been geeks.  There will
always be geeks.   Become the apotheosis of geek.  Learn who
your spiritual ancestors were.   You didn't come here from
nowhere.  There are reasons why you're here.  Learn those
reasons.   Learn about the stuff that was buried because it was
too  experimental or embarrassing or inexplicable.