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If you're interested in reading about cyberpunk and why today it feels "dated" - or at least to me, how it didn't manage to reinvent itself and remains crystall

If you're interested in reading about cyberpunk and why today it feels "dated" - or at least to me, how it didn't manage to reinvent itself and remains crystallized in time -, there's a wonderful article here: https://forums.insertcredit.com/t/what-was-cyberpunk-in-memoriam-1980-2020/1721 https://forums.insertcredit.com/t/what-was-cyberpunk-in-memo... Be advised it's quite long

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
Is that your article? I'm afraid I think that it badly misses the mark. Literary cyberpunk is simple; it is nothing more or less than near-future crime fiction where technology (usually speculative) is central to the plot. That's the common thread; writing style, setting characteristics, etc., are diverse. Now I know that some people are going to say, "but what of social structures and evil corporations?!" Look no further than William Gibson’s Burning Chrome story collection: -The word "government" is barely used, and the features of the setting’s governments are wholly irrelevant to the stories. (In fact, the IRS and other Federal agencies are briefly mentioned, which does not imply total anarcho-capitalism.) -The word "corporation" is also barely used, and the stories (with one exception, of a sort,) have nothing to do with corporations controlling everything and making a mess of things. -The stories don’t suggest very much about the social structures of their settings, overall. If they’re "dystopian" at all, it is by necessity -- as most of the action takes place in the underworld, with hackers, rogue agents, washed up ex-military operatives, etc. Thus, whatever the setting is, the story takes place in its seedy underbelly. Yet surely nobody doubts that Gibson's collection is a work of cyberpunk, and an incredibly influential one at that. What's overused, and what have become dated, are some aesthetic tropes that have become associated with the genre. But you can certainly write good cyberpunk without them. Just write a near-future crime novel where technology is central to the plot.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  It's not my article and I don't 100% agree with it. But I think it's interesting to read. I think the article spends some time making your points about the esthetic over the contents
- AnonymousPlanet 1y ago
  I think you might be missing the mark. The "cyberpunks", the original authors who started the genre, raised eyebrows because in their stories technology wasn't described as something that invariably had a positive impact on people's lives, quite the contrary. That is was what set them apart from the techno optimistic utopianism that dominated science fiction at the time. The authors were called punks because they were going against the grain and, like punk, did a sort of reset of science fiction. Their works were also big on the impact of globalisation (corporations become more important than counties) and the cultural impact of technology. The caper plots are just a coincidence. If you write a crime novel with technology set in the near future, you might just end up with the kind of science fiction that the cyberpunks were trying to get away from.
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  Gibson isn’t the only person writing cyberpunk although he definitely gets most of the credit in internet forums. Tbh I feel like he only really has one story to tell which is about some manic pixie cyberpunk dream girl who is more daria than Elizabethtown existing alongside dudes doing things. His contribution is more about how he crafts the visuals from words like >> In the non-space of the matrix, the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective dimension; a child’s toy calculator, accessed through Case’s Sendai, would have presented limitless gulfs of nothingness hung with a few basic commands. ~ neuromancer Or >> There are bits of the literal future right here, right now, if you know how to look for them. Although I can’t tell you how; it’s a non-rational process. ~ idoru I think that a lot of what Gibson did was expose a world that almost exists to a reader who couldn’t access it. Gibson says when he writes a book he often goes to Tokyo to sit in a cafe or whatever and people watch. This is not a possible action for most teenagers in 1993. Gibson also said that he isn’t really prescient because they don’t even have cellphones in neuromancer. I would rather recommend books like PKDs ubik or a scanner darkly or the three stigmata of palmer eldritch to read over Gibson. Not because Gibson is bad but pkd is much more timeless and his books are about deeper ideas. Gibson seems more focused on making the words beautiful.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    Why not read both PKD and Gibson? Better use of your time than the average TV series.
    - mnky9800n 1y ago
      Yes I agree. But people usually want an opinion. In my opinion read everything. The more you read the more you appreciate everything you read.
- cubefox 1y ago
  > Literary cyberpunk is simple; it is nothing more or less than near-future crime fiction where technology (usually speculative) is central to the plot. I wouldn't call cyberpunk crime fiction. Some of it is, some of it isn't. Perhaps most of it isn't. For example, Bruce Sterling tends to have little to do with crime fiction (e.g. "Schismatrix"), yet he is a paradigmatic cyberpunk author. Or look at the prototypical cyberpunk anthology "Mirrorshades" from 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades I don't remember exactly, but I think most of these short stories aren't crime fiction. Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" definitely isn't.
keiferski 1y ago
Cyberpunk was essentially a sub-type of counterculture, and counterculture itself has pretty much been dead for a couple decades now. When the hackers are primarily interested in VC funds, the cryptocurrency ethos overtaken by the finance industry, and the goal of every artist to “make it” as a creator, there’s basically no room for culture that explicitly wants to operate outside the system. You could probably tie this to the general financial precariousness of the average young person today vs. in the 70s and 80s. It used to be much easier to get a solid income and housing from a random job, which left more time and mental space for things other than the profit motive. Not sure if we will ever get back to that. Maybe basic income, but that is almost inherently tied to the system, so probably not. You’d need an economic situation in which everyone feels comfortable enough without actually being dependent on a specific institution like the government.
- bloqs 1y ago
  fascinating insight
- throwpoaster 1y ago
  Another reading is that there is no more counterculture because it won and became the culture.
  - isoprophlex 1y ago
    I get where you are coming from but in my mind, when mutating into the dominant culture it loses vital, essential characteristics. Counterculture, modified by the relentless shameless drive to "make it", and the acceptance of operating within existing systems, is no longer a counterculture. My point being a question; did counterculture truly win or was it subsumed and perverted?
    - KineticLensman 1y ago
      "And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S Thompson
xvilka 1y ago
An example of cyberpunk that is not dated - Hyperion Cantos[1]. It might not look like cyberpunk at the first sight but it definitely is. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos
- Apocryphon 1y ago
  I'd say parts of the universe and one and a half of the pilgrim's tales are cyberpunk, but a lot of it isn't tonally so.
- duskwuff 1y ago
  I disagree. Hyperion has some of the surface elements of a cyberpunk work - primarily by way of "The Detective's Tale" (Lamia's story) - but it isn't cyberpunk overall, no more than it's a horror novel by way of Duré's story (for instance).
navane 1y ago
It's because punk died, which is half of cyberpunk. All the cyber is corporate now. We live in cyber corp. We live in the part that Gibson found, rightfully, totally uninteresting to write about.
- blogabegonija 1y ago
  [dead]
- ahartmetz 1y ago
  I don't know about that. There are very powerful corporations in Neuromancer, more like governments than corporations. They (or powerful people inside / owning them) largely drive the action in Neuromancer.
cyberpunk 1y ago
Hey, everyone gets older…
blincoln 1y ago
Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are the 21st-century evolution of cyberpunk, IMO.[1] It's really too bad he seems to have decided not to continue writing in that fictional world. [1] They're almost literally Bruce Sterling's corporations-would-turn-Frankenstein's-monster-into-a-product.

A_D_E_P_T 1y ago

Is that your article? I'm afraid I think that it badly misses the mark. Literary cyberpunk is simple; it is nothing more or less than near-future crime fiction where technology (usually speculative) is central to the plot. That's the common thread; writing style, setting characteristics, etc., are diverse. Now I know that some people are going to say, "but what of social structures and evil corporations?!" Look no further than William Gibson’s Burning Chrome story collection: -The word "government" is barely used, and the features of the setting’s governments are wholly irrelevant to the stories. (In fact, the IRS and other Federal agencies are briefly mentioned, which does not imply total anarcho-capitalism.) -The word "corporation" is also barely used, and the stories (with one exception, of a sort,) have nothing to do with corporations controlling everything and making a mess of things. -The stories don’t suggest very much about the social structures of their settings, overall. If they’re "dystopian" at all, it is by necessity -- as most of the action takes place in the underworld, with hackers, rogue agents, washed up ex-military operatives, etc. Thus, whatever the setting is, the story takes place in its seedy underbelly. Yet surely nobody doubts that Gibson's collection is a work of cyberpunk, and an incredibly influential one at that. What's overused, and what have become dated, are some aesthetic tropes that have become associated with the genre. But you can certainly write good cyberpunk without them. Just write a near-future crime novel where technology is central to the plot.

amarcheschi 1y ago
It's not my article and I don't 100% agree with it. But I think it's interesting to read. I think the article spends some time making your points about the esthetic over the contents
AnonymousPlanet 1y ago
I think you might be missing the mark. The "cyberpunks", the original authors who started the genre, raised eyebrows because in their stories technology wasn't described as something that invariably had a positive impact on people's lives, quite the contrary. That is was what set them apart from the techno optimistic utopianism that dominated science fiction at the time. The authors were called punks because they were going against the grain and, like punk, did a sort of reset of science fiction. Their works were also big on the impact of globalisation (corporations become more important than counties) and the cultural impact of technology. The caper plots are just a coincidence. If you write a crime novel with technology set in the near future, you might just end up with the kind of science fiction that the cyberpunks were trying to get away from.
mnky9800n 1y ago
Gibson isn’t the only person writing cyberpunk although he definitely gets most of the credit in internet forums. Tbh I feel like he only really has one story to tell which is about some manic pixie cyberpunk dream girl who is more daria than Elizabethtown existing alongside dudes doing things. His contribution is more about how he crafts the visuals from words like >> In the non-space of the matrix, the interior of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective dimension; a child’s toy calculator, accessed through Case’s Sendai, would have presented limitless gulfs of nothingness hung with a few basic commands. ~ neuromancer Or >> There are bits of the literal future right here, right now, if you know how to look for them. Although I can’t tell you how; it’s a non-rational process. ~ idoru I think that a lot of what Gibson did was expose a world that almost exists to a reader who couldn’t access it. Gibson says when he writes a book he often goes to Tokyo to sit in a cafe or whatever and people watch. This is not a possible action for most teenagers in 1993. Gibson also said that he isn’t really prescient because they don’t even have cellphones in neuromancer. I would rather recommend books like PKDs ubik or a scanner darkly or the three stigmata of palmer eldritch to read over Gibson. Not because Gibson is bad but pkd is much more timeless and his books are about deeper ideas. Gibson seems more focused on making the words beautiful.
- nottorp 1y ago
  Why not read both PKD and Gibson? Better use of your time than the average TV series.
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    Yes I agree. But people usually want an opinion. In my opinion read everything. The more you read the more you appreciate everything you read.
cubefox 1y ago
> Literary cyberpunk is simple; it is nothing more or less than near-future crime fiction where technology (usually speculative) is central to the plot. I wouldn't call cyberpunk crime fiction. Some of it is, some of it isn't. Perhaps most of it isn't. For example, Bruce Sterling tends to have little to do with crime fiction (e.g. "Schismatrix"), yet he is a paradigmatic cyberpunk author. Or look at the prototypical cyberpunk anthology "Mirrorshades" from 1986: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades I don't remember exactly, but I think most of these short stories aren't crime fiction. Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" definitely isn't.

keiferski 1y ago

Cyberpunk was essentially a sub-type of counterculture, and counterculture itself has pretty much been dead for a couple decades now. When the hackers are primarily interested in VC funds, the cryptocurrency ethos overtaken by the finance industry, and the goal of every artist to “make it” as a creator, there’s basically no room for culture that explicitly wants to operate outside the system. You could probably tie this to the general financial precariousness of the average young person today vs. in the 70s and 80s. It used to be much easier to get a solid income and housing from a random job, which left more time and mental space for things other than the profit motive. Not sure if we will ever get back to that. Maybe basic income, but that is almost inherently tied to the system, so probably not. You’d need an economic situation in which everyone feels comfortable enough without actually being dependent on a specific institution like the government.

bloqs 1y ago
fascinating insight
throwpoaster 1y ago
Another reading is that there is no more counterculture because it won and became the culture.
- isoprophlex 1y ago
  I get where you are coming from but in my mind, when mutating into the dominant culture it loses vital, essential characteristics. Counterculture, modified by the relentless shameless drive to "make it", and the acceptance of operating within existing systems, is no longer a counterculture. My point being a question; did counterculture truly win or was it subsumed and perverted?
  - KineticLensman 1y ago
    "And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S Thompson

xvilka 1y ago

An example of cyberpunk that is not dated - Hyperion Cantos[1]. It might not look like cyberpunk at the first sight but it definitely is. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos

Apocryphon 1y ago
I'd say parts of the universe and one and a half of the pilgrim's tales are cyberpunk, but a lot of it isn't tonally so.
duskwuff 1y ago
I disagree. Hyperion has some of the surface elements of a cyberpunk work - primarily by way of "The Detective's Tale" (Lamia's story) - but it isn't cyberpunk overall, no more than it's a horror novel by way of Duré's story (for instance).

navane 1y ago

It's because punk died, which is half of cyberpunk. All the cyber is corporate now. We live in cyber corp. We live in the part that Gibson found, rightfully, totally uninteresting to write about.

blogabegonija 1y ago
[dead]
ahartmetz 1y ago
I don't know about that. There are very powerful corporations in Neuromancer, more like governments than corporations. They (or powerful people inside / owning them) largely drive the action in Neuromancer.

cyberpunk 1y ago

Hey, everyone gets older…

blincoln 1y ago

Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are the 21st-century evolution of cyberpunk, IMO.[1] It's really too bad he seems to have decided not to continue writing in that fictional world. [1] They're almost literally Bruce Sterling's corporations-would-turn-Frankenstein's-monster-into-a-product.