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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

In these times with the popularity of Westworld, Altered Carbon and the imminent release of the Cyberpunk 2077 game, we live in a golden era of cyberpunk-themed near future scifi. I hope that if they ever adapt the Gibson sprawl trilogy of books to a TV series, they don't ruin it.

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Altered Carbon actually disappoints me, a bit. I loved cyberpunk back in the '90s, but watching something like that now feels almost... dated? The Asian fetishism, the cartoonishly evil corporate overlords, the pageantry of making everything so deliberately cool, in a sort of '80s way. At least Snow Crash had interesting and contemporaneous things to say about anarcho-feudalist suburbia.

I love the heck out of Snow Crash, but I think it was one of the last hurrahs of Cyberpunk, and part of its success was that it described a future that was disgustingly uncool. It wasn't a world of chrome skyscrapers bedazzled in holograms and surrounded by sexy cyborgs in Italian three-piece suits. It was trashy - a world of ugly walled-village box-cutout suburbs full of minivans and roided-up teenagers and pizza-delivery vehicles.

Snow Crash is a product of its time, since the characters all exude the excessive coolness of the '80s (which came from its origins as a comic, I imagine) but it also created the more modern setting. Modern dystopian lit wallows in the banality of evil.

Retro-futurism has been attempted recently and done quite well, though the examples I'm thinking of (Blade Runner 2049 and Alien: Isolation) are both far more spartan, utilitarian, and darker than Snow Crash. There's even cultural elements associated with the 80s to early-90s that will either have to be modernized or accepted as an anachronism the bimbo boxes, the Texan televangelist, Ed Meese and Ronald Reagan on currency, the Vietnam vet character.

> Altered Carbon actually disappoints me, a bit. I loved cyberpunk back in the '90s, but watching something like that now feels almost... dated?

Agreed with the thoughts on Altered Carbon. Worth noting that the books are fairly different from the TV show.

The TV and movie industry continues to ruin the literary integrity of almost everything, despite budgets that allow great production values. Every story gets reduced to one of the conventional formulas. They couldn't even remake decent versions of the "The Andromeda Strain" or "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Did you ever see NBC's "The Martian Chronicles?", or the two versions of "Brave New World" (soon to be joined by a third version)? There are only so many Stanley Kubricks out there (currently out of stock) who are capable of doing these kinds of stories well.

Let's hope that Villeneuve's Dune will prove you wrong.

Yet Sky was able to make true-to-the-book Pratchett adaptations. I wonder why others can't follow suit?

Amazon picked up the Ringworld franchise too for a series.

I'd love to see an attempt at a Schismatrix series.

Altered Carbon was disappointing trash. In the end, it was just a sitcom with a cyberpunk backdrop.

Season 2 was so overly dark and broody that it was boring.

What part of Altered Carbon struck you as a comedy?

The part where far far into the future, the protagonist(?) takes out a SWAT(more like 75th rangers?) team that has him surrounded with cover with the tactics of firing from the hip. The funny thing is that it all started so well. The apartment scene is almost believable.

Altered Carbon was just cyberpunk eye-candy. There was no technology explored in a meaningful way besides the stacks.

Abeula.

(and it was glorious)

That episode is a mighty study in contrasts!

I liked the first season, but the second season was absolute garbage.

It is a particularly egregious case of the book being better than the series (and maybe even faster to finish).

It keeps the "cool" action parts while simplifying the world building and plot complexities down to a lowest common denominator that robs it of all nuance and subtlety of character relationships and motivations.

The second season was bizarrely unwatchable.

I didn't like it, but I don't recall it having gags or a laugh track.

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