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>>> Now imagine a cyberpunk version of Frankenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrochicken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrochicken

mutant 3y ago
https://chat.openai.com/share/3d5d3fd1-57d3-4d17-b367-acbd17aa660a https://chat.openai.com/share/3d5d3fd1-57d3-4d17-b367-acbd17... Ok. I imagined it.
Animats 3y ago
...the Monster would likely be the well-funded R&D team-project of some global corporation. Resident Evil, the Umbrella Corporation. Or, further back, Bubblegum Crisis, Genom Corporation.
stevenwoo 3y ago
Almost every significant character in the recent limited series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a Frankenstein's monster and there were multiple doctor Frankensteins, some corporate and some freelance, competing against each other.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  I disagree: Frankenstein's monster is new life bereft of history or precedent, as opposed to a regular man converted into strangeness and exiled by acquired differences. Most of those cyborg stories (Edgerunners, the newer Deus Ex's games, Ghost In The Shell) are more like... Hmm, perhaps Phantom of the Opera.
  - chupasaurus 3y ago
    Ghost in the Shell's main storyline is about a rogue AI which thinks of itself as the next step of evolution.
    - Terr_ 3y ago
      That's true for Project 2501, but not the cyborg protagonists of Section 9. They aren't Frankenstein's monsters, especially not in a society where some degree of augmentation is so normal. That includes Motoko Kusanagi--even when it's been hinted she has relied on artificial bodies since childhood, that's still a very human form of alienation.
      - chupasaurus 3y ago
        Agree on that, but my point is still that GitS isn't a good example because cybernetics are there because of setting, not necessary the "modern Prometheus" thingy.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      GiTS creator Masamune Shirow's earlier works also feature androids or other sorts of synthetic life. Particularly Buaku's gang and Crolis in Dominion, and the military androids in Black Magic M-66.
hotnfresh 3y ago
I’m not really sure how you’d put the parts of Frankenstein that really matter into cyberpunk and come out with anything but a farce, unless you ditch all the awful-but-sympathetic-creature bits somehow. Motherhood (and an intertwined nigh-irresistible drive toward and revulsion of pregnancy and giving birth), responsibility for one’s works in the world, the nature of man, abandonment, revenge, sympathetic villains… it’s great stuff, but I think if you try to do that in cyberpunk and keep anything like the Creature you’re gonna be drawn into parody or some other unfortunate hole.
- flir 3y ago
  I'm unconvinced that motherhood is a theme of Frankenstein? The subtitle ("The Modern Prometheus") suggests "a second, technological Creation" is more the intent. I'm hoping you're going to be able to convince me I'm wrong, though. Alien/s, now that's SciFi about motherhood. I guess if I was going to approach "cyberpunk Frankenstein" I'd end up somewhere adjacent to Michael Marshall Smith's Spares ("human clones, the ultimate health insurance").
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    The simultaneous nigh-unavoidable impulse toward creation (which takes some months, of course) coupled with body horror and more than a little revulsion, and sudden, transformative “birth” at the end (the monster isn’t intolerably, fundamentally, stomach-turningly repulsive until that spark of life enters it) is rather on the nose. It’s a man giving birth, more or less, and parental responsibility (which he whiffs at—he can’t tolerate the monster, especially at first, either) of a sort follows. Given that, and that particularly fatherhood-connected motifs and themes are not strong in the book, I think one would have to justify all that not having having to do with motherhood. Given the author’s bio and stuff like her mom dying from giving birth to her, yeah, I’d say it’s there. A very particular point of view and concern with it, not exactly “ain’t pregnancy and motherhood beautiful?”, yes, but it’s there. “Death of the author”, sure, but it’s there in the book even if you don’t know Shelley’s bio.
    - flir 3y ago

mutant 3y ago

https://chat.openai.com/share/3d5d3fd1-57d3-4d17-b367-acbd17aa660a https://chat.openai.com/share/3d5d3fd1-57d3-4d17-b367-acbd17... Ok. I imagined it.

Animats 3y ago

...the Monster would likely be the well-funded R&D team-project of some global corporation. Resident Evil, the Umbrella Corporation. Or, further back, Bubblegum Crisis, Genom Corporation.

stevenwoo 3y ago

Almost every significant character in the recent limited series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a Frankenstein's monster and there were multiple doctor Frankensteins, some corporate and some freelance, competing against each other.

Terr_ 3y ago
I disagree: Frankenstein's monster is new life bereft of history or precedent, as opposed to a regular man converted into strangeness and exiled by acquired differences. Most of those cyborg stories (Edgerunners, the newer Deus Ex's games, Ghost In The Shell) are more like... Hmm, perhaps Phantom of the Opera.
- chupasaurus 3y ago
  Ghost in the Shell's main storyline is about a rogue AI which thinks of itself as the next step of evolution.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    That's true for Project 2501, but not the cyborg protagonists of Section 9. They aren't Frankenstein's monsters, especially not in a society where some degree of augmentation is so normal. That includes Motoko Kusanagi--even when it's been hinted she has relied on artificial bodies since childhood, that's still a very human form of alienation.
    - chupasaurus 3y ago
      Agree on that, but my point is still that GitS isn't a good example because cybernetics are there because of setting, not necessary the "modern Prometheus" thingy.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    GiTS creator Masamune Shirow's earlier works also feature androids or other sorts of synthetic life. Particularly Buaku's gang and Crolis in Dominion, and the military androids in Black Magic M-66.

hotnfresh 3y ago

I’m not really sure how you’d put the parts of Frankenstein that really matter into cyberpunk and come out with anything but a farce, unless you ditch all the awful-but-sympathetic-creature bits somehow. Motherhood (and an intertwined nigh-irresistible drive toward and revulsion of pregnancy and giving birth), responsibility for one’s works in the world, the nature of man, abandonment, revenge, sympathetic villains… it’s great stuff, but I think if you try to do that in cyberpunk and keep anything like the Creature you’re gonna be drawn into parody or some other unfortunate hole.

flir 3y ago
I'm unconvinced that motherhood is a theme of Frankenstein? The subtitle ("The Modern Prometheus") suggests "a second, technological Creation" is more the intent. I'm hoping you're going to be able to convince me I'm wrong, though. Alien/s, now that's SciFi about motherhood. I guess if I was going to approach "cyberpunk Frankenstein" I'd end up somewhere adjacent to Michael Marshall Smith's Spares ("human clones, the ultimate health insurance").
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  The simultaneous nigh-unavoidable impulse toward creation (which takes some months, of course) coupled with body horror and more than a little revulsion, and sudden, transformative “birth” at the end (the monster isn’t intolerably, fundamentally, stomach-turningly repulsive until that spark of life enters it) is rather on the nose. It’s a man giving birth, more or less, and parental responsibility (which he whiffs at—he can’t tolerate the monster, especially at first, either) of a sort follows. Given that, and that particularly fatherhood-connected motifs and themes are not strong in the book, I think one would have to justify all that not having having to do with motherhood. Given the author’s bio and stuff like her mom dying from giving birth to her, yeah, I’d say it’s there. A very particular point of view and concern with it, not exactly “ain’t pregnancy and motherhood beautiful?”, yes, but it’s there. “Death of the author”, sure, but it’s there in the book even if you don’t know Shelley’s bio.
  - flir 3y ago