Specifically, I’m wondering why what we call “cyberpunk” fiction is so rare anymore. Granted, the term “cyberpunk” itself is outdated, since saying “cyber” anything is hopelessly passe.
But, why is that particular vision of the future increasingly less prevalent? Is it just that science fiction, like everything else, follows social trends, or generational shifts in perspective?
Or is it that, with the scary size of the current state of income inequality, that shiny neon-and-chrome futuristic world now seems unlikely for most of us?
Or did computing and virtual reality have a cachet of mystery in the 1980s and 1990s because of their liminal state at the time, that they have lost with their increasing ubiquitousness?
I should mention here that I will be working today until late in the evening, but will definitely return to this thread when I get home. Looking forward to hearing what you think.
How do you define Cyberpunk? If it means near-future stories with a noirish tone and dystopian setting, I feel like that Blade Runner-ish look, feel and tone has become so standard and general that the subcategory Cyberpunk has been rendered somewhat meaningless - ???
I think maybe it’s just blended into Sci-Fi. Ready Player One is, IMO, cyberpunk. While I can’t think of any name authors, there are quite a few imitations out there. Tad Williams Otherland came to mind but that’s from '96.
Basically, cyberpunk was a fashion, and current fashion has moved on to military SF and space opera. There are probably books in the cyberpunk style, but most authors have mined the vein and are trying other things. Plus SF readers are less interested in it.
Also, the all-time easy go-to is “now, but with one change,” right?
Everybody raved about BLACK MIRROR, which – usually did that. Folks hereabouts loved EX MACHINA, which – pretty much did that too. And so on, because – well, that’s the classic, right? Approachable because it’s “now,” and interesting because it’s “and then a device is invented, or a message from the future arrives, or an artificial intelligence becomes sentient, or a manmade disease breaks out…”
Massive wealth inequality has been a staple of Cyberpunk since Chiba City first housed Case back in Neuromancer. It’s key to the genre’s dystopian heart.
William Gibson makes fun of his cyberpunk world, where cyberspace is really just the Internet. The idea of the mafia injecting you with a poison that makes you unable to surf the web is a bit silly. I think in a lot of ways technology has surpassed, or outweirded, the 1980s vision.
WordMan: I’m thinking more of early William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and “The 5th Element”-type stuff. Flying cars, numinous hackers, sentient AI, that sort of thing.
G0sp3l: Read “Ready Player One.” Loved it! But maybe not quite the flavor I’m thinking of. However, at your mention of “Otherland” which I thought was unfamiliar, I looked it up and discovered that the wonderful novel I read a few years ago is now a tetralogy! Thank you! Woo!
RealityChuck: Ah, but how do they know readers are less interested in it if they’re not writing it? --But I think it is true that fiction, like television, does indeed follow fashions of its own.
Left Hand of Dorkness: Good point. You are absolutely right. However, the wealth-inequality thing with respect to science fiction seems to have morphed into a far more bleak and shut-out imagined future. Perhaps this has to do with the currently apparent alarming intention of the very wealthy to keep all the really cool stuff exclusively for themselves. (The Internet of Things does not count.)
I guess perhaps what I’m missing is the idealism even in dystopia that one found in cyberpunk fiction. Like “Snowcrash,” “Diamond Age,” and just about my favorite short story ever, John Shirley’s “Shaman.”*******
Zombie books and prepper fiction just don’t do it for me.
*******NOTE:HOLLYWOOD: “Shaman” would make a great movie!
If we’re talking movies, I’d say more recent films like Looper or Chappie fall within the realm of cyberpunk.
I’ve never read much in the way of cyber-punk genre literature, but in graphic novels the still on-going Battle Angle (Gunm) saga is about as cyber-punky as you can get (including ultra-violence, explorations of the dehumanizing effects of technology, and the questioning of what it means to be human).
I’d say the surface imagery and ideas of cyberpunk have continued to influence sci-fi films, while the themes of cyberpunk have perhaps matured beyond the early fascination with and uncertainty of technology to deeper explorations of human identity and morality.
Consider a film like “Her”. I doubt anyone would classify this as cyberpunk, but it explores the social and emotional impact of new technology in a near-future world where people are becoming disconnected from each other and turning to technology to fill the very void that it has created.
I haven’t seen it, but from the trailers, it looks like it has an aesthetic more similar the “flamboyantly bright and shiny future” as portrayed in films like 5th Element and Wachowski sci fi films like Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Rising (ironically not borrowing heavily from the original Ghost in the Shell like their Matrix films).
Cyberpunk, as depicted in 80s and 90s films like Blade Runner, Alien, The Matrix, Terminator, Max Headroom, Johnny Mnemonic and Ghost in largely presents a dark “not to distant future” of ubiquitous and intrusive technology, cyborgs, overly powerful abusive megacorporations, information overload, terrorism (both cyber and normal), threat of nuclear war, economic collapse and even questions on what it means to be “human”.
That world is largely no longer science “fiction”. IOW, to a certain extent, the dark, techno-noir cyberpunk aesthetic has gone the way of shiny rockets and silver jumpsuits.
**Not Carlson ** makes an excellent point about films like “Her”. Much of science fiction is a reflection of our fears and hopes for the future. Ours is a world where, if not actual AI, at least very smart machines are becoming more commonplace. Probably why films and shows like Her, Ex Machina, Battlestar Galactica, and Westworld are popular.
To add to the aesthetic conversation: in cyberpunk, hackers tend to be super-cool dudes wearing leather trenchcoats and wielding their rigs like six-shooters. You can almost see the cowboy hats.
I wonder if it’s hard for us to see hackers as super-cool, now we know what hackers really look, and act, like. Now that the future is on us, and we know that yer average hacker ain’t exactly oozing sex appeal, maybe it’s not as compelling a genre.
Readers buy it. They drive trends. If you publish a cyberpunk novel and no one buys it, then, as a publisher, you’re less likely to publish another. The current trend of space opera and military science fiction occurred because those books were popular and I guarantee authors didn’t just stop writing cyberpunk and move on (some did, but many wrote it and failed).
The cost of a book also drives public taste. This happens in all arts – as things become more expensive, people become more conservative in their tastes. You’d take a chance on a 95-cent paperback, but not on at $25 hardcover (or $16 trade paper). eBooks have helped slightly, but the mindset is still the same, and eBook sales tend to parallel those of physical books.
Authors who want to write cyberpunk go into it knowing it’ll be a tough sell and you have to come up with something amazing to have a shot. Book editors can buck trends, but they need to show the money people there’s a really good reason to.
In addition, there is only so much you can do with cyberpunk. It really was only a relatively small number of books, and steampunk quickly overtook it (Even Gibson ended up cowriting a steampunk novel). The problem is that it’s difficult to come up with new concepts for it. What was fresh and exciting in the 1980s seems derivative today.
Although I haven’t read any cyberpunk in a while, there’s also a lot of wizard in the image. They have some special arcane knowledge and use the power of their mind (plus a spell-book/wand like computer) to project their consciousness and explore a world normals cannot see to find hidden information and make things happen. I think the elite hacker-wizard trope has fallen out of favor not so much because real-world hackers are boring (real-world cowboys and pirates were also mostly boring) but because the internet is something everyone uses, it’s not a strange place that you need a special brain modifications to get use out of, and you explore it with a web browser, not with a game-like interface of flying around looking for data stores behind firewalls.
This also touches on the issue of familiarity with the technology portrayed.
While computers and robotics and cybernetics and whatnot were still mostly unfamiliar to most people, it would have been much easier for an author to take artistic license in the depiction of those technologies.
Now that computer technology and automation have become ubiquitous, an author lacking a good understanding of these technologies might feel unqualified to incorporate and extrapolate them into a fictional work.
A tech-savvy author might be able to pull it off. Otherwise there is a risk of tech-savvy readers finding fault with an unconvincing depiction of near-future technology.
I don’t know much about it, but a few things I’ve stumbled across lately suggest that the hot new genre nowadays is “LitRPG,” and Ready Player One is listed as anywhere from a prime example to a distant cousin of this genre.
Science fiction may be written about other times and places but it’s written in a particular time and place. And it’s inevitably going to be a reflection of the time and place it was written in. That’s why stories written by British SF authors have a distinct flavor that’s different from stories written by American SF authors even when the stories are set on another planet. Or why stories written in the forties, stories written in the seventies, and stories written in the nineties are all different even if the stories are all set in the year 3000.
So cyberpunk went away because the society that was writing cyberpunk went away. Authors in 2017 don’t write about the future the way that authors in 1987 did. Even a 2017 author who chooses to write in a cyberpunk style is not writing it in the way that a 1987 author did. The 1987 author was simply writing in the style of his time; the 2017 author is writing in a style from his past.
I’m not familiar with LitRPG either but from looking at that link I’m led to believe at lot of it will be awful.
The only thing I can think of why Ready Player One wouldn’t be cyberpunk is you’re not hit in the face with how terrible the world is. You’re TOLD in a few instances and shown a couple of references but you’re not shown any bleakness. I love the book but the world building isn’t there, it’s mostly the quest. Which is great, the book is a love letter to nerds.
