Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.

Comics exploring cyberpunk themes began appearing as early as Judge Dredd, first published in 1977. Released in 1984, William Gibson's influential debut novel ''Neuromancer'' helped solidify cyberpunk as a genre, drawing influence from punk subculture and early hacker culture. Other influential cyberpunk writers included Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. The Japanese cyberpunk subgenre began in 1982 with the debut of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga series '' Akira'', with its 1988 anime film adaptation (also directed by Otomo) later popularizing the subgenre.

Early films in the genre include Ridley Scott's 1982 film ''Blade Runner'', one of several of Philip K. Dick's works that have been adapted into films (in this case, ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?''). The "first cyberpunk television series" was the TV series ''Max Headroom'' from 1987, playing in a futuristic dystopia ruled by an oligarchy of television networks, and where computer hacking played a central role in many story lines. The films ''Johnny Mnemonic'' (1995) and ''New Rose Hotel'' (1998), both based upon short stories by William Gibson, flopped commercially and critically, while ''The Matrix trilogy'' (1999–2003) and ''Judge Dredd'' (1995) were some of the most successful cyberpunk films.

Newer cyberpunk media includes '' Blade Runner 2049'' (2017), a sequel to the original 1982 film; ''Dredd'' (2012), which was not a sequel to the original movie; ''Upgrade'' (2018); '' Alita: Battle Angel'' (2019), based on the 1990s Japanese manga ''Battle Angel Alita''; the 2018 Netflix TV series ''Altered Carbon'', based on Richard K. Morgan's 2002 novel of the same name; the 2020 remake of 1997 role-playing video game '' Final Fantasy VII''; and the video game ''Cyberpunk 2077'' (2020), based on R. Talsorian Games's 1988 tabletop role-playing game ''Cyberpunk''.

Background

Lawrence Person has attempted to define the content and ethos of the cyberpunk literary movement stating:

Cyberpunk plots often center on conflict among artificial intelligences, hackers, and megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than in the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' or Frank Herbert's '' Dune''. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things"). Gibson, William from ''Burning Chrome'' published in 1981 Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction. There are sources who view that cyberpunk has shifted from a literary movement to a mode of science fiction due to the limited number of writers and its transition to a more generalized cultural formation.

History and origins

The origins of cyberpunk are rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, where ''New Worlds'', under the editorship of Michael Moorcock, began inviting and encouraging stories that examined new writing styles, techniques, and archetypes. Reacting to conventional storytelling, New Wave authors attempted to present a world where society coped with a constant upheaval of new technology and culture, generally with dystopian outcomes. Writers like Roger Zelazny, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer, Samuel R. Delany, and Harlan Ellison often examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution with an avant-garde style influenced by the Beat Generation (especially William S. Burroughs' science fiction writing), Dadaism, and their own ideas. Ballard attacked the idea that stories should follow the "archetypes" popular since the time of Ancient Greece, and the assumption that these would somehow be the same ones that would call to modern readers, as Joseph Campbell argued in ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''. Instead, Ballard wanted to write a new myth for the modern reader, a style with "more psycho-literary ideas, more meta-biological and meta-chemical concepts, private time systems, synthetic psychologies and space-times, more of the sombre half-worlds one glimpses in the paintings of schizophrenics."

This had a profound influence on a new generation of writers, some of whom would come to call their movement "cyberpunk". One, Bruce Sterling, later said:

Ballard, Zelazny, and the rest of New Wave was seen by the subsequent generation as delivering more "realism" to science fiction, and they attempted to build on this.

Samuel R. Delany's 1968 novel '' Nova'' is also considered one of the major forerunners of the cyberpunk movement. It prefigures, for instance, cyberpunk's staple trope of human interfacing with computers via implants. Writer William Gibson claimed to be greatly influenced by Delany, and his novel ''Neuromancer'' includes allusions to ''Nova''.

Similarly influential, and generally cited as proto-cyberpunk, is the Philip K. Dick novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'', first published in 1968. Presenting precisely the general feeling of dystopian post-economic-apocalyptic future as Gibson and Sterling later deliver, it examines ethical and moral problems with cybernetic, artificial intelligence in a way more "realist" than the Isaac Asimov ''Robot'' series that laid its philosophical foundation. Dick's protege and friend K. W. Jeter wrote a novel called ''Dr. Adder'' in 1972 that, Dick lamented, might have been more influential in the field had it been able to find a publisher at that time. It was not published until 1984, after which Jeter made it the first book in a trilogy, followed by ''The Glass Hammer'' (1985) and '' Death Arms'' (1987). Jeter wrote other standalone cyberpunk novels before going on to write three authorized sequels to ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'', named ''Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human'' (1995), ''Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night'' (1996), and ''Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon''.

''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'' was made into the seminal movie ''Blade Runner'', released in 1982. This was one year after William Gibson's story, "Johnny Mnemonic" helped move proto-cyberpunk concepts into the mainstream. That story, which also became a film years later in 1995, involves another dystopian future, where human couriers deliver computer data, stored cybernetically in their own minds.

The term ''cyberpunk'' first appeared as the title of a short story written by Bruce Bethke, written in 1980 and published in ''Amazing Stories'' in 1983. It was picked up by Gardner Dozois, editor of ''Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', and popularized in his editorials.

Bethke says he made two lists of words, one for technology, one for troublemakers, and experimented with combining them variously into compound words, consciously attempting to coin a term that encompassed both punk attitudes and high technology. He described the idea thus:

Afterward, Dozois began using this term in his own writing, most notably in a ''Washington Post'' article where he said "About the closest thing here to a self-willed esthetic 'school' would be the purveyors of bizarre hard-edged, high-tech stuff, who have on occasion been referred to as 'cyberpunks'—Sterling, Gibson, Shiner, Cadigan, Bear."

About that time in 1984, William Gibson's novel ''Neuromancer'' was published, delivering a glimpse of a future encompassed by what became an archetype of cyberpunk "virtual reality", with the human mind being fed light-based worldscapes through a computer interface. Some, perhaps ironically including Bethke himself, argued at the time that the writers whose style Gibson's books epitomized should be called "Neuromantics", a pun on the name of the novel plus "New Romantics", a term used for a New Wave pop music movement that had just occurred in Britain, but this term did not catch on. Bethke later paraphrased Michael Swanwick's argument for the term: "the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly imitating ''Neuromancer''".

Sterling was another writer who played a central role, often consciously, in the cyberpunk genre, variously seen as either keeping it on track, or distorting its natural path into a stagnant formula. In 1986 he edited a volume of cyberpunk stories called '' Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology'', an attempt to establish what cyberpunk was, from Sterling's perspective.

In the subsequent decade, the motifs of Gibson's ''Neuromancer'' became formulaic, climaxing in the satirical extremes of Neal Stephenson's ''Snow Crash'' in 1992.

Bookending the cyberpunk era, Bethke himself published a novel in 1995 called ''Headcrash'', like ''Snow Crash'' a satirical attack on the genre's excesses. Fittingly, it won an honor named after cyberpunk's spiritual founder, the Philip K. Dick Award.

It satirized the genre in this way:

The impact of cyberpunk, though, has been long-lasting. Elements of both the setting and storytelling have become normal in science fiction in general, and a slew of sub-genres now have -punk tacked onto their names, most obviously steampunk, but also a host of other cyberpunk derivatives.

Style and ethos

Primary figures in the cyberpunk movement include William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Bruce Bethke, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, and John Shirley. Philip K. Dick (author of ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'', from which the film ''Blade Runner'' was adapted) is also seen by some as prefiguring the movement.

''Blade Runner'' can be seen as a quintessential example of the cyberpunk style and theme. Video games, board games, and tabletop role-playing games, such as ''Cyberpunk 2020'' and ''Shadowrun'', often feature storylines that are heavily influenced by cyberpunk writing and movies. Beginning in the early 1990s, some trends in fashion and music were also labeled as cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is also featured prominently in anime and manga ( Japanese cyberpunk), with '' Akira'', ''Ghost in the Shell'' and '' Cowboy Bebop'' being among the most notable.

Setting

Cyberpunk writers tend to use elements from crime fiction—particularly hardboiled detective fiction and film noir—and postmodernist prose to describe an often nihilistic underground side of an electronic society. The genre's vision of a troubled future is often called the antithesis of the generally utopian visions of the future popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Gibson defined cyberpunk's antipathy towards utopian science fiction in his 1981 short story " The Gernsback Continuum," which pokes fun at and, to a certain extent, condemns utopian science fiction.

In some cyberpunk writing, much of the action takes place online, in cyberspace, blurring the line between actual and virtual reality. A typical trope in such work is a direct connection between the human brain and computer systems. Cyberpunk settings are dystopias with corruption, computers and internet connectivity. Giant, multinational corporations have for the most part replaced governments as centers of political, economic, and even military power.

The economic and technological state of Japan is a regular theme in the cyberpunk literature of the 1980s. Of Japan's influence on the genre, William Gibson said, "Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk." Cyberpunk is often set in urbanized, artificial landscapes, and "city lights, receding" was used by Gibson as one of the genre's first metaphors for cyberspace and virtual reality. The cityscapes of Hong Kong has had major influences in the urban backgrounds, ambiance and settings in many cyberpunk works such as ''Blade Runner'' and ''Shadowrun''. Ridley Scott envisioned the landscape of cyberpunk Los Angeles in ''Blade Runner'' to be "Hong Kong on a very bad day". The streetscapes of the ''Ghost in the Shell'' film were based on Hong Kong. Its director Mamoru Oshii felt that Hong Kong's strange and chaotic streets where "old and new exist in confusing relationships", fit the theme of the film well. Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City is particularly notable for its disorganized hyper-urbanization and breakdown in traditional urban planning to be an inspiration to cyberpunk landscapes. Portrayals of East Asia and Asians in Western cyberpunk have been criticized as Orientalist and promoting racist tropes playing on American and European fears of East Asian dominance; this has been referred to as "techno-Orientalism".

Protagonists

One of the cyberpunk genre's prototype characters is Case, from Gibson's ''Neuromancer''. Case is a "console cowboy," a brilliant drug addicted hacker who has betrayed his organized criminal partners. Robbed of his talent through a crippling injury inflicted by the vengeful partners, Case unexpectedly receives a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be healed by expert medical care but only if he participates in another criminal enterprise with a new crew.

Like Case, many cyberpunk protagonists are manipulated or forced into situations where they have little or no control. They often begin their story with little to no power, starting in roles of subordinates or burnouts. The story usually involves them breaking out of these lowly roles early on. They typically have bittersweet or negative endings, rarely make great gains by the end of the story.

Protagonists often fit into the role of outcasts, criminals, misfits and malcontents, expressing the "punk" component of cyberpunk. Due to the morally ambiguous nature of the worlds they inhabit, cyberpunk protagonists are usually antiheroes. They often engage with their society's drug subcultures or some other vice. Though they may morally or ethically oppose some of the more bleak aspects of their worlds, they are often too pragmatic or defeated to change them.

Society and government

Cyberpunk can be intended to disquiet readers and call them to action. It often expresses a sense of rebellion, suggesting that one could describe it as a type of cultural revolution in science fiction. In the words of author and critic David Brinreveals that they nearly always portray future societies in which governments have become wimpy and pathetic ...Popular science fiction tales by Gibson, Williams, Cadigan and others ''do'' depict Orwellian accumulations of power in the next century, but nearly always clutched in the secretive hands of a wealthy or corporate elite.

Cyberpunk stories have also been seen as fictional forecasts of the evolution of the Internet. The earliest descriptions of a global communications network came long before the World Wide Web entered popular awareness, though not before traditional science-fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and some social commentators such as James Burke began predicting that such networks would eventually form.

Some observers cite that cyberpunk tends to marginalize sectors of society such as women and Africans. It is claimed that, for instance, cyberpunk depicts fantasies that ultimately empower masculinity using fragmentary and decentered aesthetic that culminate in a masculine genre populated by male outlaws. Critics also note the absence of any reference to Africa or an African-American character in the quintessential cyberpunk film ''Blade Runner'' while other films reinforce stereotypes.

Media

Literature

Minnesota writer Bruce Bethke coined the term in 1983 for his short story "Cyberpunk," which was published in an issue of ''Amazing Science Fiction Stories''. The term was quickly appropriated as a label to be applied to the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan and others. Of these, Sterling became the movement's chief ideologue, thanks to his fanzine ''Cheap Truth.'' John Shirley wrote articles on Sterling and Rucker's significance. John Brunner's 1975 novel ''The Shockwave Rider'' is considered by many to be the first cyberpunk novel with many of the tropes commonly associated with the genre, some five years before the term was popularized by Dozois.

William Gibson with his novel ''Neuromancer'' (1984) is arguably the most famous writer connected with the term cyberpunk. He emphasized style, a fascination with surfaces, and atmosphere over traditional science-fiction tropes. Regarded as ground-breaking and sometimes as "the archetypal cyberpunk work," ''Neuromancer'' was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. ''Count Zero'' (1986) and ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988) followed after Gibson's popular debut novel. According to the Jargon File, "Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly naïve and tremendously stimulating."

Early on, cyberpunk was hailed as a radical departure from science-fiction standards and a new manifestation of vitality.Brians, Paul.
Study Guide for William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
" Washington State University Shortly thereafter, however, some critics arose to challenge its status as a revolutionary movement. These critics said that the science fiction New Wave of the 1960s was much more innovative as far as narrative techniques and styles were concerned. Furthermore, while ''Neuromancer'''s narrator may have had an unusual "voice" for science fiction, much older examples can be found: Gibson's narrative voice, for example, resembles that of an updated Raymond Chandler, as in his novel ''The Big Sleep'' (1939). Others noted that almost all traits claimed to be uniquely cyberpunk could in fact be found in older writers' works—often citing J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Stanisław Lem, Samuel R. Delany, and even William S. Burroughs. For example, Philip K. Dick's works contain recurring themes of social decay, artificial intelligence, paranoia, and blurred lines between objective and subjective realities. The influential cyberpunk movie ''Blade Runner'' (1982) is based on his book, ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?''. Humans linked to machines are found in Pohl and Kornbluth's '' Wolfbane'' (1959) and Roger Zelazny's ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'' (1968).

In 1994, scholar Brian Stonehill suggested that Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel ''Gravity's Rainbow'' "not only curses but precurses what we now glibly dub cyberspace." Other important predecessors include Alfred Bester's two most celebrated novels, ''The Demolished Man'' and ''The Stars My Destination'', as well as Vernor Vinge's novella ''True Names''.

Reception and impact

Science-fiction writer David Brin

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