For me, I think the problem is that cyberpunk pretends to show a gritty, realistic glimpse of dystopian near-future. The feel of realism is part of the appeal,

For me, I think the problem is that cyberpunk pretends to show a gritty, realistic glimpse of dystopian near-future. The feel of realism is part of the appeal, and it costs more when the illusion is broken. Nobody's gonna care about bandwidth if your hero is trying to save mankind from galactic chaos by reinventing history, but let's say, if you're in a spy action thriller set in the middle of WW2, you can't just take a flight from Heathrow to Budapest: there must be at least some pseudo-plausible explanation.