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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    True.

    But you avoid talking about the core, the heart here.
    Because I do not want to write an essay here.

    Cyberpunk has the punk aspect which is trying to find satisfaction while simultaneously feeling dissatisfaction at the hegemonic default.

    It is a genre that embraces hat there is no singular "meta-narrative" and when there is a meta-narrative it is used to control people. It can in one story being examining the dysoptic structure that creates people (and since no dystopia is the same you can have very different stories) or it can be a person moving through the story, moving through the structure with less emphasis on examining the culture that birthed the story. It can be a story about a person waking up, and their companion is a dog who loves them, they go to work and have a horrible day, and then the story ends with them returning home and at least their dog still loves them.

    Cyberpunk is not one thing but many things, but those many things have "family resemblances" where you can-NOT describe a single thing that unites them. It is like trying to describe what is "healthy" one does not try to list things like your fat content, or your blood pressure when you are describing the concept of health vs unhealthy.

    Of course one can explain what Cyberpunk has in common with its family resemblances, but that will not be a single line or two but instead an essay.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    I had never thought of Robocop as cyberpunk, but now that it is mentioned I would absolutely say it is. I think it does not quite match the usual visual conventions, but whwn you look at all the elements, it does check a good majority of the cyberpunk boxes.

    One work that I really feel captures all the aspects of cyberpunk is the game Mirror's Edge, which just happens to not have a single piece of futuristic tech. So there really is nothing cyber about it.
    But the story, tone, and aesthetics are all very pure cyberpunk anyway. Even though its visually completely dominated by pure clean white, a bright blue sky, and brutally glaring sunlight. It doesn't have the rainy streets of a filthy city at night, but the clean beightness is another representation of corruption and opression. No punks allowed in this dystopian hellhole.

    Another work that I think was not mentioned here yet is the classic movie Metropolis. It's almost a hundred years old by now, but it has all the elements of cyberpunk, except for digital communication. Metropolis does not just check all the boxes, it wrote the checklist:
    Corrupt rich elites in their ultra skyscrapers, exploited regular people living in their shadows in squallor, androids, cybernetic arms, japanese nightclubs. Blade Runner really just updated the visuals to the 80s.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Oh yeah. Fritz Lang absolutely invented the visual style and world background for Cyberpunk. Half of sci-fi, really.

    People have mentioned Snow Crash. Snow Crash was written in 1992. And quite clearly a lot of it is parody. Heck, there's that entire scene in the beginning where a gangster goes into an illegal body mod shop to buy a "skull gun", which is not only a phenominally stupid idea and doesn't really work, but also entirely played for laughs.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Dunno about "corruption" being such a central issue, if at all.

    Cyberpunk is very much about the inherent flaws of capitalism unchecked and of the downside of free markets. I wouldn't really call it "corrupt" when there's a very clear-cut playbook that details exactly what will happen, why and how it will come to pass.

    In my opinion, Gibson was actually the best writer for this, as he made no fuss about that stuff and simply integrated it into the background of his stories. Snow Crash is interesting, as it is a parody of the exact same tropes and ideas, as such, putting all that full center of the story.


    Just thinking aloud a bit: A bit further up, there was talk as to why cyberpunk often carries that 80s/90s vibe. I think that is partially because we've progressed too far towards the end point of capitalism, either making a lot of concepts/tropes meaningless, or force us to insert "retro stuff" to recreate the initial concept/trope.

    I think "hacking" is a good example for this. Part of cyberpunk is about the unchecked development and spread of technology without any thought on the damage that can bring and how that can be avoided/mitigated. The counter point being that "the street will find a use for it", turning the same technology around as a means of resistance beyond what the original inventors intended it for.

    Take the Internet as an example: Way back, there was so much hope that this will strengthen liberal societies, push democracy, foster ... ah, I could go on, but what we have is Facebook and 4Chan, which are basically the polar opposite.

    Itīs sad that we so often see the tropes of "Matrix" and "Deckers" come up, while we're way beyond that now. "Inception" and "Altered Carbon" (The novel, not Netflix), tho?

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    People have mentioned Snow Crash. Snow Crash was written in 1992. And quite clearly a lot of it is parody. Heck, there's that entire scene in the beginning where a gangster goes into an illegal body mod shop to buy a "skull gun", which is not only a phenominally stupid idea and doesn't really work, but also entirely played for laughs.
    Snow Crash is special for a reason. A lot of stuff and aesthetic started with Neuromancer and Snow Crash brought this particular development to a logical end point, in a sense, offering conclusion.

    Think about it: In Neuromancer, Case is a "Hacker". The Matrix is basically the only space where the "outlaws" are ahead of the corporations in any meaningful way. Played straight, you get something like Ghost in the Shell. Motoko is often referenced as being classified as "Wizard-Level Hacker". While the GitS Matrix is way more sophisticated, it follows the same concept that it is more or less the last space of freedom because itīs beyond the control of tournaments and corporation.

    In Snow Crash, Hiro is also a "Hacker", but "The Street" has become entirely meaningless because it became fully commercialized by corporations. There's quite a powerful statement here: Hiro is a "damn good hacker" because he was one of the crew that started their version of the Matrix, so is intimately familiar with the underlying code/structure, but the same crew sold out their creation, getting pretty rich by doing so, with only Hiro refusing for punk reasons (The whole stuff about Da5id).

    Neuromancer, Virtual Light and Idoru even more so, started the thing about the sameness that will happen once corporations are powerful enough to replace actual culture. Hilton, Starbucks, Rat Burger (McDonalds), they are powerful enough to dominate any market and replace local players with themselves. The up- and downside of this should be quite obvious.

    Snow Crash goes all-out in this with the concept of "Burbclaves". Instead of "just shops", corporations offer entire lifestyles in the form of specialized gated communities.

    And so on.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Further thinking aloud:

    The Zaibatsu stage. Our concept of free markets is a simple one. Itīs basically a Grand Melee of ideas and concepts, with the better ones winning out the conflicts. This should be to our advantages, offering the best product/service for the best price and so on. In truth, that's not how it works, as no corporation has any interest in it. Therefore, the one goal is establishing a monopoly and itīs not reached by being the last one standing after a fierce battle, but rather by swallowing up and incorporating all competitors in the field. Zaibatsu are something based on japanese history. As I understand it, they were wholly family-owned businesses that managed the same feat.

    Death of the "american dream". No matter what you do, no brilliant idea/concept, start-up, whatever, has any chance to enter the actual market and see whether it can compete. The gap has simply grown to large to be bridged in any way. The main actors have grown to be so huge and domineering, that the only chance you have is to sell out to them to raise the kind of funding that is needed to go up against them.

    Sarariman. Actually, it means "Salary Man". The only way to be inside the system is to bow your head and get employed by one of the corporations. Either that, or you are entirely outside the system.

    The cult of self-improvement. So, as established, only way for there to have something like "a good life" is to be a sarariman for one of the zaibatsu. Well, competition for jobs is quite harsh, so you need to be the "best you that you can be". Meaning that you have invest heavily in yourself, hoping you gain it back, starting with fitness, yoga, meditation, going further with school and education, escalating to the point that you willingly have surgery on those boobs and ass, escalating a bit more to get that brain done, your optics enhanced, your reflexes and pheromones wired/altered and so on.

    Disruption is the only way. Basically, every market will reach the saturation phase come time. Basically, once everyone owns a car, the need to buy further cars ceases and car sales will drop. The solution is to either speed up the rate something new is turned out, or attack the fundamentals of something already existing.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Don't forget the drugs under self-improvement. Starting with ritalin, meth and coke, and ending with electrochemical brain enhancement. Can't possibly keep that company job if you can onl work 16 hours a day.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    *Laugh*

    You know that you list stuff that entered the Mainstream way after the fact, right? Snow Crash is so long down the road, it is often regarded as a caricature of "Neuromantics".
    If one were to pick the most influential cyberpunk book and movie respectively, it'd probably be Snow Crash and Bladerunner. I could see a case being made for other books, such as Neuromancer being pretty influential as well...but those are largely similar. The protaganist may be outside the system initially, but a tale of outsiders bringing down the system it ain't.

    You could also poo poo The Matrix as being later, and look at say Jonny Mnemonic as being an earlier version of it, but The Matrix is far more polished and influential. It's iconic in a way the other film isn't. It's the finished product, the whole show.

    Cyberpunk may respect individuality as a value, but it is not optimistic for what the future has in store for it.

    If we're looking at influences such as Metropolis, I'd also suggest looking at Dark City. It isn't exactly Cyberpunk, but it's certainly adjacent.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Oh yeah. Fritz Lang absolutely invented the visual style and world background for Cyberpunk. Half of sci-fi, really.

    People have mentioned Snow Crash. Snow Crash was written in 1992. And quite clearly a lot of it is parody. Heck, there's that entire scene in the beginning where a gangster goes into an illegal body mod shop to buy a "skull gun", which is not only a phenominally stupid idea and doesn't really work, but also entirely played for laughs.
    There is absolutely satire in it. Everything from literary conventions(named the dude Hiro Protaganist, lol) to capitalism gets pretty viciously skewered. Most of the book is mocking something. However, it is not a comedy.

    The skull gun thing you may be thinking about from Diamond Age, the author's kind-of sequel. Snow Crash begins with enthusiastic pizza delivery.

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Just thinking aloud a bit: A bit further up, there was talk as to why cyberpunk often carries that 80s/90s vibe. I think that is partially because we've progressed too far towards the end point of capitalism, either making a lot of concepts/tropes meaningless, or force us to insert "retro stuff" to recreate the initial concept/trope.
    Not merely capitalism. Most of the stuff is there. People distrusting each other in public, wearing masks on public transit, crazy tech.... I literally just watched a demo on a brain/computer integration device being tested on pigs last night while there was a tornado outside. The world has simply become too cyberpunk for it to feel like fiction.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    One work that I really feel captures all the aspects of cyberpunk is the game Mirror's Edge, which just happens to not have a single piece of futuristic tech. So there really is nothing cyber about it.
    I think this also apply to Demolition Man, which wasn’t surprising since the producer and the writers said that they wanted to subvert the “high crime, grim, and dirty dystopia” common in 90’s and 80’s (Escape from New York, Escape from LA, and cyberpunk genre) by showing a clean, well-ordered, and bright future of San Angeles as utopia-but-dystopia.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Accelerator View Post
    When you look at cyberpunk, what do you think of?
    Gibson, Favela and Squatting. Here in Germany "punk" has always had a lot to do with "squatting" and while a lot of "Futurism" has these well planned sleek designs, cyberpunk favors a chaotic architecture that grows naturally. Cyberpunk looks at the pretentious designs made by (retro-)futurists, then points to the slums of today and says: 60% of the population lives in poverty. The future is like that but with more electronics and cybernetics.

    William Gibsons second trilogy features a shanty town build on the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco after it was closed to the public due to being run down and damaged and no one paying for a renewing or destroying it. But think less "tents below a bridge like hobos in 2020" and more like Favelas build on top.

    In Johnny Mnemonic there was a shanty town build below some geodesic domes, once a big project planned to experiment with space engineering to be sold it as high value air conditioned living space, the whole project was ill conceived: planning mistakes, faulty technologies, bodged-up construction, over-promising designs and corrupt handling created an unfinished abandoned ruin that got taken over by those who could never have afforded to rent even a small apartment there.

    In Mona Lisa Overdrive we meet Slick Henry who is squatting in Dog Solitude, a large, poisoned expanse of deserted factories and dumps, building robots and using energy another inhabitant has siphoned from the grid while hacking some industrial smart meters so the electric company doesn't come and investigate.

    In Neuromancer the protagonists fly to Zion, a space station run by pot smoking rastafarians. Basically some bankiers noticed that space is not very regulated which opens some interesting opportunities and started building hotels, casinos and other recreational entertainment, as well as their own permanent residence there. That even worked out, more or less. However they moved so much stuff up there, that it created a freight harbor and "temporary worker settlement" with lots of greasy, dirty, heavy machinery. See the Tessier-Ashpool Clan wasn't running some ISS style project build in laboratories and moved by NASA finest. They hired people who had the money sent to their families and didn't complain about health and safety violations. The kind of people who build a tourist resort in a third world countries nowadays. Anyway that temporary settlement has become permanent and there are some makers there who have a livelihood and an interest in keeping it habitable, but most of it... let me cite an article about Kibera: "There is lots of garbage everywhere and the hygienic conditions are awful."

    Cyberpunk is the idea that we manage to colonize space ... and then have a slum there, too.

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    I could get into many other aspects, why i think that Neon-Tokyo and its chaotic growth of blinking lights trying to advertise brands or nearby shops are as much part of cyberpunk as are retro-futuristic arcologies and brutalist concrete temples of corporate bureaucracy or how i visited the regional headquarter of an international corporation last year and was both impressed and terrified by the number of flags with their logo and screens looping brand advertisment ....

    but this post is about slums, squatting and a bit of punk culture and is by far long enough already ;-)

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Some more idle musings: How would I design a "generic" cyberpunk world?

    The continents are still divided up into individual nation states, quite a lot of them even democracies. The initial boost in welfare brought by globalization has stopped quite a while ago, the, say, 5 most powerful nation states have switched to full-on imperial mode, but feel under siege nonetheless. Whole regions have devolved into failed states and constant civil war, generating wave after wave of refugees.

    The internet became fully integrated with the physical world. There's no place without the equivalent of wifi coverage and next to nothing that isn't connected to it - the concept of an offline mode is absurd. That also strongly affected the concept of media as a whole. With the ability to fully record human senses and emotions also comes the ability to enter one of the recordings and get to "be there", instead of just getting data transferred in a form. Instead of watching the news or a sitcom, you get to be right in the middle of it.

    That gave religion a powerful boost when someone found out how to create the feeling of shared community. Masses of humanity use the "Choir" to link into a shared feeling of rapture each day.

    Corporations are a curious affair. As a result of some decades of increasing economic and financial crisis, the big players initiated massive stock buy backs, but also massive stock swaps to get a hold on their supply chains and major resources. This had two massive side effects. Only few had the power to hold on to their stocks and now are more or less in control. As this happened on all relevant levels, instead of some kind of "mega corporation", these conglomerates rather follow a more feudal structure with the equivalent of vassals and lieges, based on how stock is distributed.

    Now the corp leaders understood, that even while their respective conglomerates had reached global size, their employees numbered more than citizens of some nation states combined and their revenues often beat tax income of basically all nation states, they didn't want to become the equivalent of one.

    Most of humanity is now more or less the equivalent of indentured servants, without realizing it. They have come to internalize "you have to spent coin to earn coin" as the fundamental truth.Part of that has to do with the internet.

    A short detour: Basically, a "Green Deal" had to happen and the corporations were the major force behind it. Energy is now from regenerating sources, H2 is the main replacement for fossil fuels, the high orbit is full of "solar farms" with the equivalent of massive "laser canons" as means to transfer the collected power down to the planet. The reason for this is simple: The energy demand of the internet grew on a massive scale, the core infrastructure alone needing as much power as the nation states of a smaller continent combined.

    Advances in cybernetics played a major role here, too. Huge "data farms" proved to be massive energy hogs, but could work with rather cheap hardware. Then some brilliant engineer took a closer look at how Bitcoins and such worked, how the recording and sharing of senses/emotions work and came up with the solution to just use humanity as a whole as a massive decentralized data processing structure. You just had to connect every brain....

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Fyraltari View Post
    Cyberpunk is a genre of futuristic/dystopian fiction where runaway capitalism and technology has made the world a terrible place. It generally incorporates transhumanist elements but played for horror as they are used to dehumanize/control the people rather than unlock their potential. Other common traits are huge corporations operating at state-level with their own army and propaganda machines.
    I'd argue the most core concept is a near-apocaliptic or post apocaliptic world were technology has developed expotentially, and morals standards have either vanished or transmuted into something unrecognisable by a modern person.

    So, in the perspective of someone who lived a centuary ago, our modern times would be kinda cyber-punk in nature in a way.

    An other core theme is ghetos, outcasts and in general the less prosperous, non-sheltered aspects of society. You don't see a cyber-punk setting focusing it's story on the elite, rather than the underdogs of society.

    Cyborgs, telepaths etc are used as a narative tool, not so much to depict the future discoveries and inventions, but more to give an alegory of the dependance of mankind on technology; often, some downside is given, usually in the form of a scarce resource, to further focus on control of society by the government; A telepath may need some pills or loose their mind, a cyborg may need a special power source. All things that the government controls, and makes the person in question dependent on it for it's suply, or face grave consequances.

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    Part 2:

    The escalating conflict between country and city brought a lot of nations states near to their breaking point. New technical advances always seemed to favor cities, like the huge network of hyperlook stations linking them, entirely bypassing the countryside and so on.

    While there is the simple truth that the population has to be fed, the other truth is, that raw resources, counting agriculture amongst those, have entirely lost their economic worth.

    Most nation states took to one form of drastic measure or the other, mainly turning anything outside of the cities into state-owned land and minders, farmers and such into state employees, or using convicts for those jobs.

    A quirky development was the emergence of "new natives". Some people left the cities, occupied a piece of land and tried to build an entirely autarky existence, others formed up into sorta-kinda nomads, with caravans of motor homes.

    Cities became the places of hope and despair in equal measures.Most city governments, even those from the oldest, most antique ones, came to realize that the need to house millions of people far outweighed the need to preserve history. In a bold move, major reconstructions were given the green light and the face of cities changed forever. Traffic was more or less entirely moved underground or way up into the air.
    Beautiful gated communities stand side by side with vertical slums and corporate arcologies.

    Then, there are the refugees. Millions upon millions of them flood the cities each year. Their camps make up entire suburbs, their parallel economy turned parks into markets, apartments into shops, clubs, drug dens, discos.

    As they are not citizens, they're entirely cut of, establishing "black links" to the internet or hosting parallel structures.

    And so on...

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Cyberpunk:
    • Capitalism controls technology; so those with money control it
    • Corporations become wealthy enough to have the authority of government
    • Modifying the human body is only possible with capitalists' tech, ergo unless you go out of your way to avoid anything too intrusive, capitalists can take control of your very body (some simplify this with the Cybernetics Eats Your Soul trope).
    • Often the story will be about the working class retaining some small amount of freedom


    It's basically a critique of how technological progress is good, but capitalism will ruin it by allowing the 1% to take the productivity and turn it in their bottom line (much in the same way the average menial worker is many times more efficient in their work than a century ago, but employers still pay them as little as possible to work the same hours and keep the extra profits for themselves).

    If you take the view those with power (or with some power) can fix the system (or at least be benevolent), you get post cyberpunk. If you use alternate histories instead of future tech, you get the various other punks (steampunk, dieselpunk, etc), if people take control of technology and use it for the common good, you get Solarpunk.
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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    I had never thought of Robocop as cyberpunk, but now that it is mentioned I would absolutely say it is. I think it does not quite match the usual visual conventions, but whwn you look at all the elements, it does check a good majority of the cyberpunk boxes.

    One work that I really feel captures all the aspects of cyberpunk is the game Mirror's Edge, which just happens to not have a single piece of futuristic tech. So there really is nothing cyber about it.
    But the story, tone, and aesthetics are all very pure cyberpunk anyway. Even though its visually completely dominated by pure clean white, a bright blue sky, and brutally glaring sunlight. It doesn't have the rainy streets of a filthy city at night, but the clean beightness is another representation of corruption and opression. No punks allowed in this dystopian hellhole.

    Another work that I think was not mentioned here yet is the classic movie Metropolis. It's almost a hundred years old by now, but it has all the elements of cyberpunk, except for digital communication. Metropolis does not just check all the boxes, it wrote the checklist:
    Corrupt rich elites in their ultra skyscrapers, exploited regular people living in their shadows in squallor, androids, cybernetic arms, japanese nightclubs. Blade Runner really just updated the visuals to the 80s.
    Another movie that, in retrospect, if isn't cyberpunk, at least has a lot of cyberpunk elements is Soylent Green.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by dps View Post
    Another movie that, in retrospect, if isn't cyberpunk, at least has a lot of cyberpunk elements is Soylent Green.
    Donīt mistake "Dystopia" with "Cyberpunk", as happened already with Metropolis.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Donīt mistake "Dystopia" with "Cyberpunk", as happened already with Metropolis.
    Yeah, but Soylent Green isn't just dystopia, it's a dystopia set in the near future that has a high tech level, corporations with a lot of power, and extreme social stratification, and even a bit of transhumanism (at least, I think the stuff surrounding the death of E.G. Robinson's character counts as transhumanism).

    On a complete side note, this was Robinson's final role. He knew he was dying, but no one else involved with the movie did, and his character's death scene was the last scene he ever filmed. Which I find kind of spooky.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    "Neuromantics".
    Interesting word. Is there a relation between Cyberpunk and Dark Romanticism?

    In 1983 Bruce Sterling started to write the Cheap Truth fanzine in which he gave an overview of recent SF stories. In Zine 2 he writes about Gibsons Burning Chrome (1982): "This is the shape for science fiction in the 1980s: fast moving, sharply extrapolated, technology literate and as brilliant and coherent as a laser". Burning Chrome then won a Nebula award. Sterling viciously attacked the Science Fiction and Fantasy literature of the late 70 and early 80s as being boring, run of the mill, following literary formalities and being so far off the technological realities they are pretty much magic make believe.

    In 1986 Michael Swanwick wrote “A User's Guide to the Postmoderns”, in part as a response to Sterlings mad ramblings. He categorizes the SF writers in Humanists, who prefereed characterization and traditional prose, and Cyberpunk, which focused on energetic, intense dataflood.

    most influential cyberpunk books
    I like to add The Illuminatus Trilogy (1969-71) by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson on that pile, or better, under it. It is not in the genre, but without it the 1980 science fiction might be very different. The book is a major piece of neo-anarchist culture and was big the 80s hacker scene.

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Think about it: In Neuromancer, Case is a "Hacker". The Matrix is basically the only space where the "outlaws" are ahead of the corporations in any meaningful way ... In Snow Crash, Hiro is also a "Hacker", but "The Street" has become entirely meaningless because it became fully commercialized by corporations.
    I don't agree with that: Gibsons Cyberspace is as locked down and commercialized by the corps as meatspace. But like meatspace it is decentralized, fragmented and there are grey areas and black markets. Some systems are more protected (banks) and others are less protected (gardening robots). As in "Burning Chrome" the people in Neuromancer (1984) spend a good part of the story preparing their heist: Case has skill, but even he can't just walk into some high security zone. There is actually a very important point in the book about the cyberspace equivalent of having a gun pointed at ones head, but i don't want to spoil too much for those who haven't read it but are somehow reading this. Let me just say: any type of crime requires to be, in some sense, ahead of those who enforce the law, because otherwise the crime would not be possible and one would just get arrested trying it.

    There is a point to be made about the aheadness of outlaws in the Technomancer story in Count Zero (1986), but that is another book ;-)

    A bit of context for the uninitiated: the Sprawl Series has 10 stories, each focusing on one person, that play in the same world. They meet each other and other figures of the world and their stories tie in with each other. It starts with "Burning Chrome" (Jack), and "Johnny Mnemonic" (Johnny) both short stories that happen before "Neuromancer" (Case) and have backstory for some people Case interacts with. "Count Zero" has three plot lines: (Turner) and (Bobby) start a new saga, (Marly) ties it in with Neuromancer. "Mona Lisa Overdrive" has four stories that continue the second saga (Henry), (Kumiko), (Mona) and (Angie) and have some bits of epilogue for characters in the earlier books. Looking at the patterns Kumiko is the hook for a new saga, but the last book is the weakest of the series and Gibson then took a step back and wrote a steampunk novella together with Sterling before starting a new series.

    If one has to pick one book of the sprawl series, it is Neuromancer, and if one can only recommend one book of the whole genre, then that one is obviously a good pick as well.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyndmyr View Post
    If one were to pick the most influential cyberpunk book and movie respectively, it'd probably be Snow Crash and Bladerunner. I could see a case being made for other books, such as Neuromancer being pretty influential as well...but those are largely similar.
    Neuromancer has those dark romantic elements of escapism, love, depression, drugs and insanity. That works very well when confronted with rampant capitalism creating poverty and industrialized rape. Snow Crash (1992) wants to be more upbeat and between mocking kafkaesque forms of capitalism and descriptions of the cadavers of the poor piling up like trash that leaves an almost sociopathic aftertaste of disconnectedness. Well that is cyberpunk for you xD Neuromancer is a film noir, Snow Crash is an action-flick with lots of narration. They are actually making it into a movie and i bet many people will be very annoyed because a lot of details about Enki and Babylon will end on some corporate cutting room floor for being too cerebral.

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    Snow Crash is special for a reason. A lot of stuff and aesthetic started with Neuromancer and Snow Crash brought this particular development to a logical end point, in a sense, offering conclusion.
    Stephenson earned a place in the Cyberpunks hall of fame for his works, i would not deny that, but i do not consider Snow Crash a well rounded perfect form of the genre. I read it, i like it but I honestly don't see it on that pedestal. (Edit: yes i saw the anarcho-capitalisms final form aspect in Florians post, but i am going to ignore it.)
    Maybe i am giving Stephenson too less credit? Is he responsible for the jacket wearing, wakizashi bearing, skateboard riding too cool for school "rebel without a cause" form of cyberpunk? No one in their right mind would want to be a rundown burned out Gentleman Loser. Maybe Snow Crash simply is a more palatable to a mass audience of young men because "Hiro Protagonist" is hip and easy to identify with.

    There is another, far more influential book, that made that type of cyberpunk popular: Shadowrun (1989)

    When that copyrighted mix of high-fantasy + cyberpunk hit the tabletop gaming stores the FASA Corporation franchised the setting out to multiple authors. In 1990 "Into the Shadows" and "Never Deal With A Dragon" were released and over fifty books followed, some of which are good, not even counting the RPG, just the novellas. If those fall into the cyberpunk genre, then the single most influential cyberpunk book ever was the first Shadowrun rulebook.

    Personally i see them as different genres and for me that means

    Quote Originally Posted by Accelerator View Post
    What are the defining attributes of a cyberpunk world?
    there is no magic, only technology


    - - - edit - - -
    - obviously not a complete list of defining attributes, just an opinion.
    - there is a paragraph about Shadowrun directly above that sentence.
    - i know Clarkes 3rd law, but distinguishing words strengthens their meaning.
    - it was not my intention to claim that anything which has magic can not be cyberpunk.
    - more like: on the "spectrum of hard sci-fi to space fantasy" cyberpunk is close to realism.
    - any definition by exclusion using hard words like "no" and "only" will create harsh reactions.


    I should have left it with Sterling:
    Cyberpunk is fast moving, sharply extrapolated, technology literate and as brilliant and coherent as a laser
    Last edited by Lo'Tek; 2020-09-09 at 06:26 PM.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lo'Tek View Post
    there is no magic, only technology
    I'd say that's true of cyberpunk, but it's not a sufficient definition--if it were, then The Hunt for Red October would be cyberpunk, which it certainly isn't.

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    that was not intended as a complete list xD

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    Quote Originally Posted by dps View Post
    I'd say that's true of cyberpunk, but it's not a sufficient definition--if it were, then The Hunt for Red October would be cyberpunk, which it certainly isn't.
    It's also not true. One of the most prominent cyberpunk settings is the Shadowrun setting, which absolutely has magic.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lo'Tek View Post

    Stephenson earned a place in the Cyberpunks hall of fame for his works, i would not deny that, but i don't consider Snow Crash a well rounded perfect form of the genre. I read it, i like it but I honestly don't see it on that pedestal. (Edit: yes i saw the anarcho-capitalisms final form aspect in Florians post, but i am going to ignore it.)
    Maybe i am giving Stephenson too less credit? Is he responsible for the trenchcoat wearing, wakizashi bearing, skateboard riding too cool for school "rebel without a cause" form of cyberpunk? No one in their right mind would want to be a rundown burned out Gentleman Loser. Maybe Snow Crash simply is a more palatable to a mass audience of young men because "Hiro Protagonist" is hip and easy to identify with.
    No, absolutely not. Snow Crash only came out in '92. The first editions of the RPGs Shadowrun and Cyberpunk* came out a few years before and already had players doing all that ridiculous stuff. And examples in the books. Stephenson is largely parodying that kind of thing by going competely over the top with it.

    *I think the first edition was called Cyberpunk 2000, then it became Cyberpunk 2013, then Cyberpunk 2020 and now the CD Projekt Red computer game is called Cyberpunk 2077. The date keeps moving.
    Last edited by Eldan; 2020-09-07 at 08:52 AM.
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    And I would call Shadowrun Urban Fantasy with some Cyberpunk-like elements. It's also far too hopeful to be true Cyberpunk, at least in the newer editions.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    And I would call Shadowrun Urban Fantasy with some Cyberpunk-like elements. It's also far too hopeful to be true Cyberpunk, at least in the newer editions.
    Then that makes you the first person I've ever heard of that doesn't consider Shadowrun cyberpunk.

    It sounds like you're re-defining what the genre includes on the fly to better fit your definition.
    Last edited by CharonsHelper; 2020-09-07 at 10:38 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    Then that makes you the first person I've ever heard of that doesn't consider Shadowrun cyberpunk.

    It sounds like you're re-defining what the genre includes on the fly to better fit your definition.
    Consider me the second.

    Shadowrun used to be a curious case. On the U.S. side, FASA worked with their authors to advance the meta plot, on the DE side, they worked with FanPro to advance the setting and the rules, but kept both teams strictly separated. That led to a curious situation: The system as published on my side of the pond was way more advanced and the setting more detailed. Stuff that was released under the tag of, say, SR 2.01D was then folded back into the U.S. version of SR2.

    That got pretty much scaled-down when SR went to Catalyst. My side of 4.01D and 5.01D is still more advanced because the local team updates the rules to actually work, which is what the U.S. side later publishes as errata, but they are not involved with the setting anymore.

    The difference is quite noticeable. While 1st (the edition I started with) and early second were clearly cyberpunk with elves, the U.S. devs wanted to go for the "Grand Epic" relatively early. 4E and onwards really is way more Urban Fantasy with a bit of cyberpunk trappings than anything else.

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    Basically, the Tag Line for cyberpunk is "High Tech, Low Life" prior, science fiction was all a very clean, very optimistic.

    Cyberpunk is the opposite. It's the assertion that the evils of our lives are due to human nature, and that advancing our technology does give good people the means to make things better, it also gives those bad actors the means to make things worse, and often much worse than the good people can make things better.

    For example, you add a brain-machine interface to the world. Good people can use it to fix various physical problems with the disabled. And also some jerk could use it to literally read his employees minds and police your thoughts.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    And I would call Shadowrun Urban Fantasy with some Cyberpunk-like elements. It's also far too hopeful to be true Cyberpunk, at least in the newer editions.
    Eh, it's a fairly even mashup. Also, Cyberpunk doesn't always end up in Despair, some of the classic Cyberpunk stories are fairly hopeful. Though I would agree that late 4e onwards, the story was less about Cyberpunk and more about fantasy invasions from the stars.
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    Quote Originally Posted by AvatarZero View Post
    I like the "hobo" in there.
    "Hey, you just got 10000gp! You going to buy a fully staffed mansion or something?"
    "Nah, I'll upgrade my +2 sword to a +3 sword and sleep in my cloak."

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    Shadowrun is a fairly plain genre crossover: it is cyberpunk. It is also high fantasy. Due to nature of the former, it naturally blends into urban fantasy. Arguing that it's one but not the others is missing forest for the trees.

    The same is true of something like the Matrix franchise. The virtual reality of the Matrix has obvious cyberpunk aesthetic, even if the actual plot segues into post-modern existentialism and religious allegory.

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    Quote Originally Posted by CharonsHelper View Post
    Then that makes you the first person I've ever heard of that doesn't consider Shadowrun cyberpunk.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    It's also not true. One of the most prominent cyberpunk settings is the Shadowrun setting, which absolutely has magic.
    As i said: i see Shadowrun as its own genre that is a mix of Cyberpunk and Fantasy

    For me Cyberpunk does not include magic, elves and dragons.
    Shadowrun includes them, because Shadowrun inherits them from Fantasy.

    How about an example: Let's say we meet an elf. Why is the elf an elf?
    Shadowrun: because of the magic awakening some metahumans were born as elves
    Cyberpunk: because some sub-culture gets plastic surgery to look like elves.
    Classic SF : because it came from planet elf

    I see it like Bruce Sterling and define cyberpunk as sharply extrapolated and technology literate.
    This is not only about magic: any complex form of technobabble can be handwaved as magic.
    and yet "Count Zero" (1986) really resonates with me, even if it's a bit thick on the voodoo.

    So ... I do not intend to die on this hill ... i am sorry for making a definition by exclusion.
    For you Cyberpunk is a vague genre and Shadowrun a setting in it? Have it your way.
    I can agree that Cyberpunk is a genre and Shadowrun a setting in it.
    Last edited by Lo'Tek; 2020-09-09 at 07:03 PM. Reason: I wasn't happy with the last sentence,

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    To me, all genres are inherently pretty vague. You can boil them down to core elements, but ultimately there will be "genre breakers" that are quite obviously part of X genre even though they don't necessarily tick all the boxes, or might tick boxes you otherwise wouldn't expect.

    For a quick and easy example, most people classify Star Wars as a sci-fi work, even though the "science" part is dubious at best. People might cheekily call it Space Fantasy or some such instead, since it shares far more DNA with Epic Fantasy works than science fiction...but at the end of the day if you ask most people what the top 10 sci-fi films of all time are, a Star Wars film will be on there somewhere.

    Genres are a lot like that old adage about pornography: they might be hard to define, but you know 'em when you see 'em.

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    Default Re: Cyberpunk - What exactly is it?

    I once asked a few writer friends how they could concisely define Cyberpunk, and the most elegant way we had to express the theme of cyberpunk as a genre is "Fight against the Machine"

    The Machine can be capitalist society. Or it can be cybernetics transhumanism. Or it can be artificial intelligence.

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