Jump to content

Cyberpunk: how did it change?


Ragitsu

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 113
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Me, I would not characterize science fiction in which planets are dismantled to create matrioshka brains as "cyberpunk", similar to the way I wouldn't say a novel about children caught in the battle between supernatural good and evil in the countryside was "urban fantasy". This Is Not A Game is classed as a "thriller" by the marketing wonks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Metagame by Sam Landstrom is a novel I've recently read, but it struck me as more transhumanism than cyberpunk. It was interesting in how it incorporated wireless social networking into futuristic life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Don't hate the player character. Hate the role-playing game.

 

So... Friday Night Firefight it is...

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who don't know, "Friday Night Firefight" is the name of the Cyberpunk 2013/2020 combat engine... :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

So... Friday Night Firefight it is...

 

For those who don't know, "Friday Night Firefight" is the name of the Cyberpunk 2013/2020 combat engine... :)

 

Actually you kind of bring up an important point. RPG's did change my perceptions of Cyberpunk. Both R-Tal's Cyberpunk 2020, and then Shadowrun changed what I expected from Cyberpunk. Also Shadowrun had a ton of fiction books supporting it and those had the RPG feel to them.

 

Also Anime and Manga Cyberpunk changed the genre somewhat too. Just having the visuals and the Japanese take on what a cyberpunk would would look like.

 

Tasha

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

One of the mistakes, IMO, CP gaming has always made was thinking corp-wars would revolve around the tech, the mil-tech, and all that.

 

It's the marketing, the consumer. Megapop stars, and it's evolved. Now we have social-networking wars. Facebook hiring ghost PR firms to slam Google.

 

As for the need for 'urban'? - another gaming only muddle.

 

Chunks of Islands In The Net (Sterling) are on an oil rig, and resort hotels.

Neuromancer is half in space. Count Zero is in the desert for most of the first 1/3.

Snowcrash ends on a giant flotilla at sea.

Heavy Weather is in the dust bowl.

Software (Rucker) is half on the moon, half in a FL retirement community.

 

CP is anywhere it needs to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Oh, little tidbit I just remembered regarding Cyberpunk and Gaming - since someone brought up CP2020;

 

Cybergeneration - in the forward to that successor to CP2020 the authors come out and say, flat, "We got it wrong - CP2020 became something Cyberpunk wasn't." to paraphrase they watched CP2020 gaming become about the tech, and running, and corps, and actually all but apologized in the Cybergeneration book about that. Even the authors of the gaming book that effectively defined Cyberpunk in the early 90s (especially in relation to gaming) said they missed the mark.

 

It was an intro to a gaming book I found infinitely interesting, from a literary point of view at least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Much like D&D, CP2020 and Shadow Run created its own genre. Kazei 5 can be said to be part of that genre, although I was borrowing a lot from anime tropes, which is often about the tech.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Much like D&D' date=' [i']CP2020[/i] and Shadow Run created its own genre. Kazei 5 can be said to be part of that genre, although I was borrowing a lot from anime tropes, which is often about the tech.

 

Yes they did, sadly, they got it all over Cybeprunk. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

I've been writing down a list of Cyberpunk Books, some I own, some I've read, some I've always meant to read but never did, some I've never heard of up until now.

 

And I ran across a list of "Post Cyberpunk" .... it included Neuromancer (and even more amazingly Shockwave Rider, long considered THE proto-cyberpunk novel).

 

I can now safely say that everyone here is wrong. Everyone. Including me. No one knows what Cyberpunk is.

 

Like pornography - you can't define it but you know it when you see it.

 

I have almost 200 books on my list spanning from 1980 to Now. When I feel is sufficiently done and organized I'll share it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

Back once again - because I'm in the category of Rabidly Psychotic Fan... I said I had a list of recent Cybeprunk; this is 65 Novels and Story Collections published since 2002 that I consider (or a number of people I know consider) Cyberpunk. Since CP is ultimately just Science Fiction, there is obviously going to be some contested works, and naturally Bruce Sterling felt the need to differentiate Post and Pre 9/11 "Cyberpunk" by creating the term NowPunk. Sterling can be, IMO, effectively ignored on any topic that isn't a piece of fiction he wrote (find his futurist book "the next fifty years" or something, I have it gathering dust on a bookshelf - it's full of his self important ramblings..... The pheezer's done lost it). BUT - as I said, a list. I haven't yet read everything here (I'd stopped reading for several years at one point and just let a list of books "I should read" accumulate. . .) The list, I would imagine, is hardly exhaustive. I know that Russia has kicked out a lot in the genre, but almost none of it is translated to English.

[note: the last book on the list, Rule 34, is not out yet, publication date is July - but you can pre-order it]

 

2002

Altered Carbon (Richard Morgan)

Whole Wide World (Paul McCauley)

Blood Electric (Kenji Siratori)

Broken Angels (Richard Morgan)

Jennifer Government (Max Barry)

alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo anthology [Collection] (Che Dunlop [ed.])

 

2003

The Ultimate Cyberpunk [Collection] (Pat Cadigan)

Pattern Recognition (William Gibson)

Clade (Mark Budz)

The Digital Dead (Bruce Balfour)

Angel Scene (Richard Kadrey)

 

2004

The Zenith Angle (Bruce Sterling)

Broken Angels (Richard Morgan)

River Of Gods (Ian McDonald)

Crache (Mark Budz)

 

2005

Market Forces (Richard Morgan)

Hammerjack (Marc D Giller)

Woken Furies (Richard K Morgan)

Eastern Standard Tribe (Cory Doctorow)

Accelerando (Charles Stross)

Nylon Angel (Marianne de Pierres)

The Traveler (John Twelve Hawks)

New York Dreams (Eric Brown)

~ [swung dash] (Ray Ogar)

alt.cyberpunkchatsubo.anthlogy 2 (Peter Timusk [ed.])

 

2006

Prodigal (Marc D Giller)

Acidhuman Project (Kenji Siratori)

Visionary In Residence [Collection] (Bruce Sterling)

Glasshouse (Charles Stross)

The Exlis Kiss (George Alex Effinger)

Idolon (Mark Budz)

Better Than Real: Sensual Solutions for the Discerning Client (Huw Lyan Thomas)

Infoquake (David Louis Edelman)

 

2007

Brasyl (Ian McDonald)

Pink Carbide (E.S. Wynn)

Spook Country (William Gibson)

The Electric Church (Jeff Somers)

Halting State (Charles Stross)

Rewired [Collection] (James Patrick Kelly)

Grey (Jon Armstrong)

 

2008

Under the Amoral Bridge (Gary A Ballard)

The Mirrored Heavens (Walter Jon Williams)

The Dark River (John Twelve Hawks)

Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)

Street: Empathy (Ryan Span)

Multireal (David Louis Edelman)

 

2009

Cyberbad Days (Ian McDonald)

Black Glass (John Shirley)

The Golden City (John Twelve Hawks)

Brain Jack (Brian Falkner)

Chemical Illusions: Anthology of Cyberpunk Tales from Eastern Europe (Christian As. Kirtchev)

Makers (Cory Doctorow)

This Is Not A Game (Walter Jon Williams)

 

2010

Acts Of The Apostles (John Sundman)

Zero History (William Gibson)

Moxyland (Lauren Beukes)

Black Swan (Bruce Sterling)

Song Of Scarabaeus (Sara Creasy)

Queerpunk: Cyberpunk Erotica [Collection] (Cecilia Tan [ed.])

Street: Clairvoyance (Ryan Span)

Yarn (Jon Armstrong)

Geosynchron (David Louis Edelman)

 

2011

Resurrection Code (Lyda Morehouse)

Deep State (Walter Jon Williams)

Rule 34 (Charles Stross)

 

 

I have a much larger list that spans over 200 Cyberpunk works dating from 1980 onwards. The body of work is not insignificant and is broad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

I've read the following:

 

Jennifer Government (Max Barry)

Pattern Recognition (William Gibson)

Accelerando (Charles Stross)

Halting State (Charles Stross)

This Is Not A Game (Walter Jon Williams)

 

And want to read:

 

Deep State (Walter Jon Williams)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

 

I don't think cyberpunk has changed. Some of the cosmetic details didn't come to pass, like the idea that Japan would dominate the free world (looks like China stole their lunch on that one), or that rock and roll would be the dominant music form of the next social revolution just as it was for the boomers (this generation is less classy; its all gangsta rap, pop crap, and nu metal), or that corporations would be like unto border-less pseudo-nations that are a law unto themselves (turns out they're just people and want to dodge their taxes but still benefit from infrastructure provided by a wealthy federal power just like Joe Lunch-box), or that people would be more defined by how much technology they had embedded into them than by their own personality and self worth (turns out its more practical to keep the tech external but portable, so that you can upgrade every year thanks to short-cycled planned obsolescence).

 

But that is just details.

 

Cyberpunk is about the immediate future being worse than the immediate past, about the things that are supposed to make our lives better making them worse, about centralization and homogenization being bad and individualistic self determination and sticking it to the man being good, about technology being empowering but dangerous to people-psychology-society-humanity, and about knowing that its hopeless and you are @%#!-ed but still having the moxy to strike a bold pose while doing your own thing to grab a little piece for yourself, and refusing to give the universe the satisfaction of consenting to its pitiless victimization of you and everyone you know.

 

That is just as relevant today as it was 20 odd years ago...maybe more so given the state of the world today. But the problem is, cyberpunk was a collection of cautionary tales...that the world largely did not listen to; and nobody likes to hear "I told you so". It's like we got all the boring work-a-day economy crushing parts foretold in CP, and none of the kewl stuff like being able to get cyber'd out and walk around armed to the teeth and have wild cyber-sex with a psycho razor girl like Molly Millions. Cyberpunk was cool...but now that we are living a watered down version of it it's just grim and depressing.

 

So...cyberpunk isn't dead, but it's tricky to tell a cyberpunk story when it it sometimes seems like it belongs in the non-fiction / current events section.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...