Cyberpunk as a genre was as much about class disparity and the existence of a gritty underworld of improverished but technologically sophisticated underclass below an exceeding wealthy executive upper caste as it is flying cars, neon signs, and leather trench coats. It is largely a reframing of Victorian-style socioeconomic divisions under advanced computing technology which is so cheap it isn’t even a commodity (an analogy made explicit in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age) and the style of the underclass is a sort of 'Eighties punker combined with Maker nerd.
I would argue that while the term “cyberpunk” has fallen out of vogue, in part because of the poor adaptation and representation of classic cyberpunk stories like Johnny Mnemonic to popular media, the essential themes and much of the gritty underworld stylings of the cyberpunk genre have permiated modern science fiction in both cinematic and written form. Certainly shows like Firefly and The Expanse and movies like Minority Report and Looper borrow elements of style such as mixed cultures communicating in street pigeon, advanced technology which is accessible to unscrupulous people used for criminal purposes, and evident class divisions, all essentially originating in the film that Gibson considered a perfect cinematic representation of the cyberpunk genre, Blade Runner. And of course, there is a sequel to that film (the disappointingly uncreatively titled Blade Runner 2049) coming out later this year.
Some of the more fantastical elements of cyberpunk, such as being able to “jack” into digital computers with a computer-neural interface, have been largely discarded as being too advanced or unrealistic and some of the campier elements of “hacking” (flying through virtual skyscrapers of data and systems) are no longer frequently portrayed because they’ve become hackneyed, Gibson, et al continue to influence modern science fiction of this generation as much as A.E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov did for the post-Golden Age writers and filmmakers. And as the technology catches up with speculation, the details tend to seem less fantastical, e.g. networked computing augments versus jacking into a server, personal digital assistants rather than “avatars”, et cetera. My current favorite futurist role playing game, Eclipse Phase, is basically cyberpunk met Lovecraftian existential horror with some 2001: A Space Odyssey “alien technology indistinguishable from magic” thrown in, and frankly much of it seems all too plausible.
If you watch any of the cop shows or CSI shows or superhero shows that are so popular these days, you’ll still see your hacker-wizards [del]encanting spells[/del] spouting technobabble to catch the bad guys, break into a secure facility, find matching DNA. Difference is that instead of jacking into the datastream, they use Google. May as well be magic.
Awhile ago on another messageboard, a jackass bragged about keying a neighbor’s car. Folks said “Pix or it didn’t happen.” So the jackass posted a pic.
At which point my brother opened the picture’s properties and found the GPS coordinates. He cross-referenced that against the guy’s posts (where he said he’d keyed the car with his apartment number in revenge for the car parking in his spot), figured out the guy’s address, figured out the guy’s name, and posted it.
Later, through another story that’s way crazier, the dude posted that he was going to federal prison. My brother ended up tracking down his court case, figured out that part of his bail agreement was that he wouldn’t go on the Internet, and forwarded screencaps of the posts to the DA who was handling the case.
When you put it like that, I have to admit you’re right. Dang it. Them leather-duster-wearing, mirrorshade-having, long-haired master geeks were hot.
See above. Dang it. Also, your brother has indeed mad skillz.
Yes, but what if we’ve already bought those novels? Should we buy them two or three times, to make sure that publishers get the message? I seriously doubt that if Neal Stephenson wrote another epic cyberpunk novel, he’d have any trouble moving it. (I love his work. I think he’s brilliant. And I tried, but I just couldn’t plow through "The Baroque Cycle.’
I would love to rail against this cynical, market-driven point of view, but I know that’s how things work these days. After all, a successful cyberpunk(ish?) author like, say, Cory Doctorow can’t just give his novels away and expect to succeed… oh, wait…
I agree that the genre’s worldview seems to be doing very well in terms of movies. I cannot wait to see Ghost in the Shell, Valerian, and Guardians of the Galaxy II. Hell, I could even make a case for Rick & Morty being the inheritors of the mantle.
I have raised it to the status of a Law. All science fiction is about the present. (Though it really needs as asterisk. *The present is the time period that sits in the author’s head. All of Asimov’s worlds are set in 1930s Brooklyn. All of Heinlein’s worlds are responses to WWII. The first Buck Rogers story has a beautiful description of a flip phone but it’s just a Yellow Peril yarn from the 1910s. Cyberpunk is set an alternate world in which Japan takes over financially and culturally. At least Victorian England existed, so people can write a thousand Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Cyberpunk never was and looks increasingly outre for anybody who didn’t live through it.) Nobody can write those worlds any more, i.e. they literally don’t write 'em like they used to.)
Sadly, I’m going to also ask you to retire your nu-metal drum & bass techno trip hop NIN Rage Against the Machine Prodigy Crystal Method Dust Brothers RZA from Wu Tang Clan soundtracks as well.
The posts at 16 and 26 (Little Nemo and Exapno Mapcase) covered most of what I was going to say. I only want to add one more element, which is that “genre’s” and other labels are almost never created by those who are being labeled. Outside observers, such as historians, art critics and the like, are the ones who declare that “movements” or “fads” or whatever, have come to exist.
Sometimes, the fact that a label is created, directly causes or sets off an expansion of what was just a happenstance phenomenon, and it literally takes on a life of it’s own for a while. Sometimes giving a label to something, can even cause it to come into existence, when it really didn’t exist before then. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of human history (my own central area of fascination). I think of it sometimes, as akin to the image of people running across deep pits filled with liquefied corn starch.
Though a significant number of cyberpunk authors did consider themselves to be part of a movement and published manifestos and in-group magazines, while the cyberpunk movement was going on.
Cyberpunk never really seemed to have a lot to say.
It was deeply paranoid – trust no one! – and that limits its dramatic potential.
It also really shot its bolt with the grand revelation of the hacker meeting the AI and realizing it was a “first encounter with alien intelligence.” Okay, great scene: monumental! But where do you go from there?
Cyberpunk may deserve credit for helping us, in the real world, avoid some of the effects of a data-intensive dystopia. It made us aware of data-mining, net-bots, the need for better password protection, the need for better data encryption, etc. It red-flagged a number of real-world dangers, which we have not totally avoided, but perhaps reduced, in part because of this fictional emphasis.
(Just as nuclear-war dystopian fiction has, possibly, reduced the likelihood of nuclear war in real life.)
Yes, absolutely. Also no, absolutely. Yes, getting a label slapped on a group that is apparently cohesive, whether they are or not, happens all the time. Many artists loudly decry this nonsense. And yet, artists getting together with a common interest in changing their art in a somewhat parallel and cohesive way also happens all the time. Most of them loudly spend the next ten years decrying the nonsense and then twenty years out realize how wonderful those times were and proudly embrace them.
Science fiction was until recently a small and thoroughly incestuous social club. People did get together and declare manifestos almost in the way that the avant garde art movements of the early 20th century did. Cyberpunks, led by Bruce Sterling, absolutely had a house organ, Cheap Truth. “The newsletter was critical towards what its editors regarded as the “stagnant state of popular science fiction”.”
The New Wave movement of the 1960s had centers in Milford, PA (note the influence on Sterling) and London, especially Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine. 1962’s * SF Horizon*, a journal of criticism, (and, wow, was it critical), had this on its cover: “The establishment must die and rot…”
The Futurians of the 1940s literally met in each others’ houses and most of them married one another serially. They all wanted to be in John Campbell’s Astounding, which defined what is now called the Golden Age of Science Fiction and he wanted a new, more modern type of science fiction than Hugo Gernsback had instigated. Most of the Futurians were kids who didn’t make it until later, but most of the adults in California’s Mañana Literary Society.
Throw a rock at a group in science fiction, and with luck you’ll hit two of them.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make. Buying multiple copies of a book is going to be a drop in the bucket in sales.
Authors who have established themselves can buck the trend and write whatever they want, even if no one else can get it published. Stephenson and Doctorow have established audiences; their name is more important than the genre.
And it always worked this way. The only real differences was the audiences used to be more open minded and try things that were outside their usual reading. The cost of books – like the cost of any art form – causes the audience to be less willing to try new things.
I completely agree…great thread and posts from all as well.
I’ve been a sci fi reader since I could read, late 50’s early 60’s, but cyberpunk really grabbed me. Perhaps it also coincided with my early computer use?
(google? thats a weird name…it makes a library of things for you…I asked back then)
When I get sick or need to rest my brain, every few years, I reread all the early Gibson books. the Neuromancer and Bridge series… I think part of Gibsons draw, for me at least, is his descriptive abilities as a writer, seems to really make it real for me. Isnt there an old Villa Straylight shell circling ovehead?
I used to love Neil Stevenson’s work as well, but…I dont know, he started to have so much wordy output…just weird… I kinda gave up on him.
