Less story inclined but just as cyber punk being the Watchdog games.
Cyber Punk and it's ideals are very much alive, however the medium of expression has changed to ones more fitting of Cyber Punk IMO.
Gibson found the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer exceedingly retro and 80s because its imagined future repeats anxieties and themes which were most relevant in the 1980s, when the genre first appeared.
The return to these “ancient futures” isn’t really punk, it’s kitsch. But to do the thing those early authors did would be to continually approach the present with the same mindset for interrogating it and see what appears.
Somebody's an essayist.
In any case, I'll grant you that the 80s cars and CRT theming are retro-futuristic, but those are all surface-level, as Gibson himself points out. However, I think the criticism loses steam if you try to apply it below the surface, even just a little.
Social media, political troll gangs, cheap drones, and military + police robotics played a big part in Watchdogs, and those are all modern or forward-looking. Deus Ex's human augmentation is still forward-looking. AI integration in Detroit Become Human is still forward-looking, even if it isn't terribly imaginative. The interactions of technology, poverty, and crime common to all of these are still forward looking, even if in hindsight they failed to predict some big trends (e.g. social media boosting conspiracy groups and the "traditional hustles" of self-help and alternative medicine).
Regardless, the artists are still using their imaginations. It's the critics who see an 80s car, call it kitsch to get engagement, and miss everything of substance.
Vast corporations doing what they want to the helpless working class started as an 80s fear in opposition to a largely hopeful view of companies from the 50s and 60s. Just because it's come true, or is still a fear, doesn't mean that it's still exciting or exploring a new frontier.
Bruce Sterling was writing eco-fiction thirty years ago, about humans struggling to survive post-climate-change... except that wasn't a phrase that meant what it means to people today. The edge he was riding on in his work has now headed towards the middle.
Vernor Vinge writing about true names in the early 80s was predictive; Become Human commenting about it now isn't.
It doesn't make it bad or not worthy or anything, but it definitely is a move away from the bleeding edge of a predictive SF movement.
"Snow Crash" and "Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson are interesting books in this sense. "Snow Crash" works best if you're a cyberpunk fan already, if it can relax into the tropes you already know and make an action movie out of it. "Diamond Age" moves away from that towards a definitely post-cyberpunk place with people who aren't criminals trying to make a buck but maybe good people trying to change the world with the power of technology. It's already shedding the trappings and trying to get somewhere else.
It's gotta be a little weird for these authors to see their "movement" co-opted into big media properties that make millions of dollars for big companies. Somebody else said it in these comments; that's not very punk.
It's gotta be a little weird for these authors to see their "movement" co-opted into big media properties that make millions of dollars for big companies. Somebody else said it in these comments; that's not very punk.
It's not weird at all. Consumerism has co-opted and commodified every single ideology; there's nothing wiser or more edgy or purer about cyberpunk that would have prevented this from happening to it. If anything, it's very apropos.
But that never happened to punk musi... oh, I see your point.
But it's okay to like things that aren't cutting edge or groundbreaking or Oscar-worthy, too. Critical discussion != criticism.
This is really about genre fiction as a whole and its never-ending struggle for legitimacy in the eyes of literary fiction readers. It’s all tied up in fashion and classism though, to be frank.
Jacques Derrida coined the neologism to describe narratives of the future. Hauntology is the idea that the present is "haunted" by lost futures, and refers to the return of elements of the past that "haunts" the present as a ghost. So imagined futures, instead of exploring new futures, itself becomes a form which is haunted by the exploration of past ideas of the future. This is the whole idea of retro-futurism that we often see these days.
Here's a vid that talks about exactly what people here are trying to analyze. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg
I'm intensely curious about what comes next in literature/music/movies but have very little insight into what it could be. I think focusing on marginalized experience could recontextualize the stories that came before (colonial narratives taking on a self-aware perspective when seen by different eyes), but then I wonder if that isn't just a re-packaging or a co-op or pandering. Time will hopefully tell.
I'm tempted to think that the larger system has to break down more to find those stories but I don't know what "break down" means -- and who's to say those media aren't there already? I maybe just can't see them or I'm rejecting them i.e. "the noise those kids listen to these days".
Zoomers and younger millennials don't (as an aggregate class) seem as interested in working through challenging material, given the infinite fire hose of more easily consumed alternatives.
I've shown Kurosawa, Leone, and Tarkovsky films to the demographic, and it was literally like they didn't possess the capability to focus for the requisite durations.
I try to avoid being alarmist from limited sample sizes, but it honestly worries me about what "app-ification" is doing to a generation's brains.
Your description of intentional is interesting there. I guess the opposite isn't "unintentional" but "adhoc" or "reality"?
The problem may be just political awareness; the more attention you pay to that kind of thing the more alarmed you get, and that may well be a reasonable response.
The best I can describe the alternative is (most of this via conversations w/ kids in the 12 and 18 age ranges) essentially as you've said: "adhoc" or "reality" (in the post-Instagram, staged-but-effecting-effortless sense).
Perhaps a better dialectic basis is "desire" vs lack of same.
It seems innocuous to say you can have more and less edited media creation styles. But the distinction I'm groping for is more in intent of the creator.
What do they want? What is your average YouTuber trying to get across via their creative choices?
It feels like democratization of publishing has resulted in Facebook for the arts: consumption driven primarily by catering to baser human neurological ticks, rather than via an author's studied intention. And the latter being drowned out by an infinite mass of the former.
And worst of all, audience / consumers being re-baselined with the expectation that creators aren't actually exercising intent in their choices, and so lose the ability to recognize it when it does exist.
I'm likely of the same age group as you and have encountered similar observations in just about all other age groups, there simply is a lack of desire for hard-nosed optimism in exchange of numbing escapism (be it in the form social media of contrived/trite traditional media and video games) as its what is sought out most.
I'm not going to try and portray that my early readings of philosophy or even my deep fascination with Aldous Huxley and Neal Stephenson books are solely what compelled me to view the World in an optimistic manner, and then later act up on for most of my young to adult life be it in environmentalism or activism. That came from a lot of often perception shattering and heart-breaking experience of Humanity's myopic toll on this Planet.
But what those books did do is give me a coping mechanism found in a great deal of story telling. It allowed me to endure and try to come to terms with the very uncomfortable truths about the Human Condition that were being discussed since the advent of Western Society in Greece and similarly found in Huxely's novels as well as many other cyberpunk genres which is best summed as the following: In the World of the insane, the rational man doesn't become King, he gets lynched!
And we see that today with the situation with Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, many activists in Hong Kong, citizen journalists and physicians in China during the outbreak of COVID etc...
I think the experiences taken away from those books and novels are that an individual's success (or survival) may not be possible, but the Human Spirit to defy that and try against all odds an inspire others to follow is a worthy and noble path, but it's an entirely ignored aspect for so many.
Which leads to wide-spread pessimism, and even misanthropy, which if I'm honest makes me as worried of the impacts of climate change and warfare sometimes because it makes me re-evaluate if its even worth the MASSIVE undertaking if that is what remains of the Human Spirit for so many.
In short: it's not an age thing, its a Person thing; one that has been exploited by major media (be it traditional or social) as an institution to foment a culture addicted to outrage and cancel culture to onboard them on to their platforms/goods/services which if looked objectively and detached from emotion kind of serve as a pressure release to an otherwise very unjust World.
I can't help but recall the role of Roman circuses, the death of Archimedes or even the burning of the Library of Alexandra in saying all of that and how ingrained that's been in Humans.
What would be the new ones? Universal surveillance? Pretty sure that was covered. Ubiquitous AI becoming malevolent or just generally shifty? Done to death.
Did Altered Carbon have anything new with technological advancements leading to immortality? I'm sure that was done at some point... and the book came out almost 20 years ago.
The latest season of Westworld was fun, but most of the cyberpunk elements are recycled, with a veneer of solarpunk. Fancy techno-drugs have certainly been done before.
When I read the books I was struck by Quellcrist Falconer's approach to guerilla warfare. She thought that immortality allowed guerillas to use time as cover, the way guerillas of past ages had concealed themselves in urban crowds or the remote countryside. It was the first time I had encountered that idea. (Someone who's read even more SF than me may cite earlier antecedents.)
The TV adaptation replaced this interesting character and her ideas with the well-worn Noble Reactionary telling us that Technology Is Bad.
Edit: Though on quick second thought I think there is at least one instance where he does contact her in that space.
So far I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Detroit Become human do the best job of re-contextualizing and extending cyberpunk ideas for a modern audience along with Ghost in the Shell SAC and 2nd Gig as a little earlier on works.
I think if you differ too far from the original ideas you're not in Cyberpunk anymore and now you've entered into a new genre. Perhaps that is appropriate, just not if you're trying to make a Cyberpunk work imo because necessarily they must share some core ideas from the original works to remain in the genre. That said this makes it a very fine line to walk between a work that makes points of its own drawing from the original works and derivative crap.
Let’s suspend judgment of Cyberpunk 2077 until it’s released in a couple months. They surprised everyone with how awesome Witcher 3 was, so let’s give CD Projekt the benefit of the doubt.
that's a weird point of view. would steampunk in a non Victorian retro-future even work? are we gonna rename futurism if it doesn't keep up with times?
then why is this fixation with cyberpunk being rooted in the now?
To be fair Gibson is often critical of works inspired by his novels and the genre he created.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030811223349/http://www.willia...
It's understandable in that a genre's pioneer might scoff at descendent works. But that sort of purism also feels gatekeeping and snobby. I certainly can't imagine Sterling or Stephenson being so purist about the genre.
The genre itself actually dates back to the 60s.
The other day an ad for "Mom Hacks" played over the Walmart store intercom. It doesn't seem so long ago that my own mother warned me that normal people only understood the term "hack" to refer to cybercrime. Somewhere between then and now, ideas from our little corner of the world colonized the rest of it, and I don't think I realized how thoroughly it had happened until "Mom Hacks" made me reflect on it.
Cyberpunk 2077 is designed for 12 year olds, they are the #1 customer of these single player console games. They will not have read any Gibson by that point (maybe Hunger Games). If you think about what has been successful with that audience, looking at Grand Theft Auto for example, it has to feel like parents wouldn't like it. And it has little to do with genre, because there is no genre to GTA. CD Projekt Red was incredibly clever with a particular piece of art it marketed which specifically invoked something in the zeitgeist that makes parents angry and uncomfortable in 2019-2020.
This is what GTA did, what South Park did, Modern Warfare, and long before that, Ren and Stimpy did, what Spongebob did, etc. - do something that pisses off parents. When making a product for 12 year old boys, which is what these books and games are, pissing off parents such an integral part of the product's success. Gibson pissed off parents then, he just doesn't really piss them off now. Anything commie or anti-authoritarian in that period was anti-parent. It just goes to show that the article is way off the mark when it comes to understanding what is actually novel in contemporary work, and how tough it is that kids, especially boys, don't read anymore.
Pretty sure the 12 year olds are all on call of duty & fortnite. I suspect single player games are in a slightly older age bracket these days
> The average age of a U.S. gamer is 35, the average number of years a U.S. gamer has been playing games is 13, and only 29% of the gamer population is under 18 years old.
Given you’re listing some of the most popular games, I think it’s fair to assume those games are targeting the average age?
As I was made aware of today Cyberpunk 2077 is being adapted from source material that is a tabletop RPG that's been around for like 30 years. With that thought in mind I expect the story to be much less vacant and more adult focused with compelling narrative.
I think your suggestion is off the mark for this work knowing who is producing it. That said only time will tell.
Unfortunately this means that if you do have a more vested interest in works that respect and extend classical cyber punk thoughts you have to work a little harder to separate wheat from chaff.
A recent example of this is Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045 that revives characters and art from earlier more idealistic works that are much more in line with the ethos and work hard to make points about sociopolitical events and where they could lead us, but this iteration really falls short, in my opinion, of making any of it's own strong points. Instead they rely on the flashy tech, scenary and tropes we've come to be familiar with in Cyberpunk. Not to say they didn't try though but they couldn't carry it like previous writers in the series.