4 ms·

sure, that's a fair point. Neuromancer trilogy has European family offices, it has an American media/tech company Sense/Net, Zeiss and Braun are mentioned. but

sure, that's a fair point. Neuromancer trilogy has European family offices, it has an American media/tech company Sense/Net, Zeiss and Braun are mentioned. but the books really do feel like Japan is the dominant economic power, in a way that seems very stuck in the 1980s (the Nikkei still has never recovered to its peak in 1991). the way this gets translated is always rainy city streets with neon signs in kanji, and synthesizers. a lot of work that is heavily derivative of Neuromancer just copies these choices blindly rather than trying to convey the same spirit as it tells the story. i liked Void Star because it did the opposite. another thing underappreciated about Gibson is that much of his world is not particularly futuristic. there's implied to be plenty of buildings left around from the 21st century. the bars, hotels, motels, and restaurants are mostly described as being like normal restaurants today. stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 seems to miss this.

WorldMaker 6y ago
Cyberpunk 2077 has a very interesting position, there's a lot of interesting architecture detail and layers in what little I've seen of Night City so far (we'll see when the game comes out), including some parts of the city that look usefully old. It just has its own layers of the fact that Night City is an American city, here being designed by mostly Polish artists giving it a strange (accidental?) European sensibility, combined with the idea that in the source fiction (the RPG), Night City was a planned city that didn't ever exist before (the future year) 1994 (Cyberpunk itself was written in the 80s). So there are at least 70-ish years of layers and tarnish to put on the thing, but the fact that it is entirely distinct from a real place was a fictional conceit from the 80s fiction it inherits. Which is to say, that I think Gibson is absolutely correct that most "future places" are and will always be built on the tops of the bones of the old places. No one is going to demolish all of San Francisco or DC's haunts and landmarks. But also that's not a criticism that I think directly applies to Cyberpunk 2077 as a specific example because the fiction intentionally wanted and built a young city, with some of the EPCOT feels of the setting an intentional planned commentary of a different sort than most of the space Gibson enjoyed inhabiting in his books. Gibson did his own bits of entirely new construction such as space stations, too, to make various points/contrasts. Corporations building modern "cyber" company cities is a rich tradition of its own in cyberpunk fiction, evoking and reminding readers/players of the past dystopian company towns that did exist in a previous American century and could easily exist again. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City
- currymj 6y ago
  interesting -- i wasn't aware they were sticking that closely to the canon of the source material. it seems like in the promotional trailers released so far, they're definitely leaving anything non-futuristic-looking in the background, and going hard on 80s action movie tropes. but hopefully there will be more variety in the actual game. maybe we will get to see some real 1994 decor, even! https://jpegfantasy.tumblr.com/image/621139827359875072 https://jpegfantasy.tumblr.com/image/621139827359875072
- AkelaA 6y ago
  The original Blade Runner is a great example of a film that depicts the changing architecture of a city - while we see sweeping shots of mile high sky scrapers throughout the film, on the ground we still see the remains of historic architecture, repurposed and built over - the police station was built within Los Angeles's 1939 Union Station, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1924 Ennis House makes an appearance as Deckard's apartment, and of course the famous Bradbury Building was used as the set for the film's finale. The end result is a city that still feels like it has a history not too dissimilar then the Los Angeles of the real world, extrapolated out to 2019 based on 1980's fears of overpopulation and such. Something it's sequel wasn't really successful with, where instead the city looks unrecognisable, with architecture that looks alien rather then anything actually realistically plausible. If it wasn't for the frequent Coca Cola and Sony product placement you could be convinced the city was Coruscant from Star Wars or something.
ghostbrainalpha 6y ago
Thanks for the recommend, I just grabbed it off Audible. I feel like you are hitting on "Gibson based" Cyberpunk being now a specific aesthetic, that's now almost more of a genre fiction than sci-fi. It's a very lazy pallet to turn to for world building, but its a world that everyone likes visit so its probably going to be around for awhile. It's annoying from a logic perspective, but it certainly looks cool. The Netflix series "Altered Carbon" and did some of this same Cyberpunk borrowing that didn't really make sense as well.

WorldMaker 6y ago

Cyberpunk 2077 has a very interesting position, there's a lot of interesting architecture detail and layers in what little I've seen of Night City so far (we'll see when the game comes out), including some parts of the city that look usefully old. It just has its own layers of the fact that Night City is an American city, here being designed by mostly Polish artists giving it a strange (accidental?) European sensibility, combined with the idea that in the source fiction (the RPG), Night City was a planned city that didn't ever exist before (the future year) 1994 (Cyberpunk itself was written in the 80s). So there are at least 70-ish years of layers and tarnish to put on the thing, but the fact that it is entirely distinct from a real place was a fictional conceit from the 80s fiction it inherits. Which is to say, that I think Gibson is absolutely correct that most "future places" are and will always be built on the tops of the bones of the old places. No one is going to demolish all of San Francisco or DC's haunts and landmarks. But also that's not a criticism that I think directly applies to Cyberpunk 2077 as a specific example because the fiction intentionally wanted and built a young city, with some of the EPCOT feels of the setting an intentional planned commentary of a different sort than most of the space Gibson enjoyed inhabiting in his books. Gibson did his own bits of entirely new construction such as space stations, too, to make various points/contrasts. Corporations building modern "cyber" company cities is a rich tradition of its own in cyberpunk fiction, evoking and reminding readers/players of the past dystopian company towns that did exist in a previous American century and could easily exist again. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City

currymj 6y ago
interesting -- i wasn't aware they were sticking that closely to the canon of the source material. it seems like in the promotional trailers released so far, they're definitely leaving anything non-futuristic-looking in the background, and going hard on 80s action movie tropes. but hopefully there will be more variety in the actual game. maybe we will get to see some real 1994 decor, even! https://jpegfantasy.tumblr.com/image/621139827359875072 https://jpegfantasy.tumblr.com/image/621139827359875072
AkelaA 6y ago
The original Blade Runner is a great example of a film that depicts the changing architecture of a city - while we see sweeping shots of mile high sky scrapers throughout the film, on the ground we still see the remains of historic architecture, repurposed and built over - the police station was built within Los Angeles's 1939 Union Station, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1924 Ennis House makes an appearance as Deckard's apartment, and of course the famous Bradbury Building was used as the set for the film's finale. The end result is a city that still feels like it has a history not too dissimilar then the Los Angeles of the real world, extrapolated out to 2019 based on 1980's fears of overpopulation and such. Something it's sequel wasn't really successful with, where instead the city looks unrecognisable, with architecture that looks alien rather then anything actually realistically plausible. If it wasn't for the frequent Coca Cola and Sony product placement you could be convinced the city was Coruscant from Star Wars or something.

ghostbrainalpha 6y ago

Thanks for the recommend, I just grabbed it off Audible. I feel like you are hitting on "Gibson based" Cyberpunk being now a specific aesthetic, that's now almost more of a genre fiction than sci-fi. It's a very lazy pallet to turn to for world building, but its a world that everyone likes visit so its probably going to be around for awhile. It's annoying from a logic perspective, but it certainly looks cool. The Netflix series "Altered Carbon" and did some of this same Cyberpunk borrowing that didn't really make sense as well.