Genre Discussion: Cyberpunk

[Paul Farquhar]

If I like to display the Mona Lisa

Aside from being the world’s most overrated artwork, that painting was more reworked by the original artist than George Lucas and Star Wars.

 

[MGibster]

On the whole, no. I would expect a supplement to do something different with the original idea. Otherwise there is no point, unless the original was missing stuff.

I don't know if we're having some sort of miscommunication here. The example I used was a Bladerunner supplement where you play a replicant or a human on the lam, i.e. members of the replicant resistance, which would be something both different from and in alignment with the core materials of the game. i.e. No need for "slavishly imitating" what came before. If someone plans on making a supplement that isn't at all in alignment with the core game then they're not making a supplement they're making a new game.

 

[Reynard]

Cyberpunk was gobbled up by Transhumanism. I would play Eclipse phase instead of Cyberpunk 2020. The later feels like retro-sci-fi at this juncture.

Other than the chrome, we are pretty much living the Cyberpunk future now. Transhumanism, by contrast, is pure fantasy and doesn't really tell us anything about the immediate future like Cyberpunk did in the mid 80s.

 

[Scribe]

Other than the chrome, we are pretty much living the Cyberpunk future now. Transhumanism, by contrast, is pure fantasy and doesn't really tell us anything about the immediate future like Cyberpunk did in the mid 80s.

Transhumanism also runs counter to one of the core (imo) aspects.

Cyberpunk is about how tech makes everything worse, not better.

 

[MGibster]

Cyberpunk is about how tech makes everything worse, not better.

Is it though? In books like Gibson's Sprawl trilogy as well as Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired, comics like Judge Dredd, and movies like Blade Runner, it isn't the tech itself making people miserable. If people are miserable it was because they live under a system where they are dehumanized, treated as commodities. Zhora was gunned down in public because she stopped letting other people treat her as an inanimate object. Molly Millions became a puppet, allowing others to use her body just so she could afford to pay for her cyberware. Millions of Mega City One's citizens are depressed because they feel useless as there's no meaningful work available to them.

I've never gotten the impression from any cyberpunk work I've consumed that technology is bad.

 

[Scribe]

Is it though?

I mean yeah, to me anyway, not that the tech itself HAS to be bad, but that what tech has enabled, the centralization of power, communication, wealth due to tech leads to...well you know bad things.

We live it now, we just lack the cool things.

CY_BORG is the over the top exaggerated end state of cyberpunk's manifesto.

 

[Autumnal]

Yeah, about the closest I can think of are stories where a harsh Singularity drastically dehumanizes its victims, turns the planet into grey goo, or something like that. And even some of those show that better outcomes may still be possible.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

there's no meaningful work

Which is a clear consequence of technology.

 

[Deset Gled]

Cyberpunk also makes tech look cool. Like, seriously rad, far out, and even artistic. There is no anti-tech cyberpunk in the same way that there are no anti-war movies. Even when it says "this is bad" it's making it a fantasy.

Which is stretching the truth a bit (I could name about 5 true anti-war movies, I'm sure someone will name a sufficiently nihilistic cyperpunk example), but I think the sentiment holds true.

 

[Cergorach]

We live it now, we just lack the cool things.

Some random dude, back in '86, called Bruce Sterling coined it as "low-life and high tech".

Maybe in the part of the world where you live it's now 'low-life', but certainly not where I live. And even in the US, the wealth distribution might have gotten more extreme, but not drastically so (1% from 23%=>35%, lowest 50% from 3.5% to 2.5%). That is not to say that is good, now, but that it wasn't significantly better in the '80s when most of the Cyberpunk was written, the 'low-life'was certainly there in the US during the '80s. And we've all seen the shocking news images of people living on the street. We had those back in the '80s as well...

As for 'high tech', from a '80s perspective, sure. But what we mean by 'high tech' from an '80s cyberpunk perspective, most certainly not. We're getting there, sure, but that kinda tech isn't (commonly publicly) available yet. And I've seen promising DNI from 30+ years ago, it's now just instead of a big cable running from your head, it's some chip implanted that communicates wirelessly.

The collection of Elon companies might be some of the most cyberpunk like companies out there, self-driving cars, DNI implants, colonies on Mars, but to date, it's just been empty hopes and promises from one man...

People are not cutting off limbs to replace them with stronger versions. Drones are still essentially radio controlled toy aircraft and cars, sure there are military variants that do a LOT more, but military drones have been around for decades. The net is more widespread, there is more hacking, there is more cyberdefense. In all cases not at the levels of Gibson technology, we've just been progressing, faster in certain areas, far, far slower in others (see the Jetsons). The only real difference is that back in the '80s we were limited by newspapers and tv/radio news, today we (can) know a lot more about what's going on all over the globe, there is also a LOT more sensationalism and misinformation isn't as regulated... It was already bad in the early '90s if you ever followed the Gulf War and did so by watching/recording all news channels, in multiple countries, from all political views, plus many different news papers. If you were exposed to all the negativity in the world back in the '80s (beyond everything you already where), your outlook in the '80s would have been even bleaker.

Also keep in mind that most of the early Cyberpunk was formed, made, and released during the Cold War, with the real possibility of WW3 looming, nuclear war, etc. Companies, multinationals are extremely powerful, sure. But are they more powerful then in the past? Again, most of the shenanigans you didn't know about due to communication limitations. And while working for a company in the US is often 'at will' employment, that is not the case in every country or continent. The powers of Asian companies in their home countries have been curbed by their governments, which in the '80s was the actual inspiration of the Mega corporations, not US companies...

Cyberpunk in many media try to distinguish them from the old '80s stuff, sometimes that feels extremely toned down (maybe a result of it wanting mass market appeal), or there are parts you recognize as Cyberpunk, but others not. It also doesn't help of course that everyone and their (cyber)cat gives their own 'meaning' to what Cyberpunk actually is...

As such, Arcane (TV animation) is Steampunk, not Cyberpunk. Westworld, dystopian science fiction, but not necessarily Cyberpunk (haven't yet watched the later seasons).