4 ms·

At least with Gibson, I think cyberpunk idolized actual punk culture. The coolness was found, brought, or arranged by these characters. The scifi backdrop wasn

At least with Gibson, I think cyberpunk idolized actual punk culture. The coolness was found, brought, or arranged by these characters. The scifi backdrop wasn't inherently cool. It was often soulless and dystopian. The crass commercialism and the teeming masses were often depicted as uncool, at least to the narrator's eye. The coolness was found in the counter culture niches, in the urban underbellies, and in the little noir vignettes where the poets and rebels infiltrated.

antonvs 1mo ago
There was some coolness in the tech, though. The Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII deck, the mirror shade digital glasses (cut Gibson some slack, it was the 1980s), artificial limbs finished in onyx or chrome. Meanwhile in the real world we get Nvidia DGX Spark which has a front finished in beige carpeting, or Meta glasses which make you look like either a dork or a pervert.
- saltcured 1mo ago
  These things were cool when coveted or adopted by the cool characters. The tech devices were also used as markers of uncool rich people. Symbols of excess disposable income, rather than carefully invested aesthetics. In the seedy areas, the implants and augmentations were depicted across an array of cool and uncool characters. Some character were meant to think they themselves were cool, while the narrator or the main characters saw them as part of the uncool backdrop. Try-too-hards, wannabes, etc.
- Apocryphon 1mo ago
  There are attempts to make stylized "coolness" in tech. That's how you get the Cybertruck, or RGB lights everywhere in custom desktops. Be careful of what you wish for.
  - antonvs 1mo ago
    You get the Cybertruck because we are far too accomodating of nepobabies.
Apocryphon 1mo ago
That was before it was discovered that every single counterculture could be marketed to and commercialized.
pessimizer 1mo ago
It's important to mention that the counterculture "punk" part was simply an totally extraneous embellishment to make the story "cool." The noir part is a perennial pulp crutch to make things seem dark; it's simply a coloring of addiction and betrayal. Gibson is doing something with that: he's saying that technical culture has ceased to be exclusive and elevated, and has become part of the fabric of human existence. Just like his broken prism-Hemingway prose says something about the nature of identity when there so much of it is virtual and artificial. But if there hadn't been a "punk rock" substrate in the mid-70s to mid-80s to associate with people who weren't wealthy - if there hadn't ever been garage rock - then he'd probably have had to express the same thing through Steinbeck-style techno-field workers and Upton Sinclair derived techno-socialist plotters. He's inspired by computer criminals, which are really an unimaginable thing right before then - the closest analog might have been counterfeiters. A subculture immersed in high technology. Maybe clandestine LSD chemists are somewhere in there. He still, as most all vulgar "cyberpunk" derived stuff still lazily does, would have been able to rely on noir tropes. And note how the "Yakuza" is simply a stand in for 1920s Chicago gangster tropes, but given a global edge because of his vision that the virtual future would collapse distances. The "coolness" was utterly shallow, and instantly became assholes stapling circuit boards to leather jackets. Or "steampunk," which was exclusively a surface aesthetic for people who thought that technology was too hard to reason about, so they just decided that if tech was simply magic, why not just do fantasy at the dawn of the industrial age? Dispose of all of those pesky questions about identity(s) and just ask "wouldn't it be cool if..." edit: there were people working in the same vein at the time, the Semiotext(e) SF anthology and the Mirrorshades anthology showed what cyberpunk (and cyberpunk-adjacent) thought of itself; questions about identity, reality, and linearity; and their interactions with communication and simulation technology. They were ignored for noir retreads with circuitboards and leather jackets. Almost immediately it was saturated with childish fantasy - actual hackers working on Tolkienesque "cyberpunk" roleplaying scenarios for Steve Jackson Games. Ironically the situation ("E911") around creation of a childish, escapist "cyberpunk" product was a historical expression of the actual themes that the cyberpunks were largely chasing. No wonder Sterling (also fairly pulpy writer) wrote the definitive account.
- saltcured 1mo ago
  I agree on the style and influences particularly in the trilogy. Yes, there are pulpy aspects and tropes. To me, there are strong dashes of beat poet and impressionism as well. This shallowness is a style, but I think the themes carry through. I had the pleasure of reading Neuromancer in a college course on Gothic horror, so we read it alongside the likes of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Freud. And we looked at it through that lens. To me, the core theme of Gibson's storytelling is that the human condition persists. You'll have this spectrum of personalities and behaviors regardless of the technological backdrop. To me, this is an antidote for the delusional fantasy that one clever plot device is going to bring Utopia and somehow erase our evolved human foibles. I'm not sure we have any disagreement, except perhaps in the subtext of your latter paragraphs. I don't think the shallowness is a flaw. I am not disappointed to find technology normalized and trivialized as set pieces for stories that could otherwise exist in almost any era. I think that's the whole point...

antonvs 1mo ago

There was some coolness in the tech, though. The Ono-Sendai Cyberspace VII deck, the mirror shade digital glasses (cut Gibson some slack, it was the 1980s), artificial limbs finished in onyx or chrome. Meanwhile in the real world we get Nvidia DGX Spark which has a front finished in beige carpeting, or Meta glasses which make you look like either a dork or a pervert.

saltcured 1mo ago
These things were cool when coveted or adopted by the cool characters. The tech devices were also used as markers of uncool rich people. Symbols of excess disposable income, rather than carefully invested aesthetics. In the seedy areas, the implants and augmentations were depicted across an array of cool and uncool characters. Some character were meant to think they themselves were cool, while the narrator or the main characters saw them as part of the uncool backdrop. Try-too-hards, wannabes, etc.
Apocryphon 1mo ago
There are attempts to make stylized "coolness" in tech. That's how you get the Cybertruck, or RGB lights everywhere in custom desktops. Be careful of what you wish for.
- antonvs 1mo ago
  You get the Cybertruck because we are far too accomodating of nepobabies.

Apocryphon 1mo ago

That was before it was discovered that every single counterculture could be marketed to and commercialized.

pessimizer 1mo ago

It's important to mention that the counterculture "punk" part was simply an totally extraneous embellishment to make the story "cool." The noir part is a perennial pulp crutch to make things seem dark; it's simply a coloring of addiction and betrayal. Gibson is doing something with that: he's saying that technical culture has ceased to be exclusive and elevated, and has become part of the fabric of human existence. Just like his broken prism-Hemingway prose says something about the nature of identity when there so much of it is virtual and artificial. But if there hadn't been a "punk rock" substrate in the mid-70s to mid-80s to associate with people who weren't wealthy - if there hadn't ever been garage rock - then he'd probably have had to express the same thing through Steinbeck-style techno-field workers and Upton Sinclair derived techno-socialist plotters. He's inspired by computer criminals, which are really an unimaginable thing right before then - the closest analog might have been counterfeiters. A subculture immersed in high technology. Maybe clandestine LSD chemists are somewhere in there. He still, as most all vulgar "cyberpunk" derived stuff still lazily does, would have been able to rely on noir tropes. And note how the "Yakuza" is simply a stand in for 1920s Chicago gangster tropes, but given a global edge because of his vision that the virtual future would collapse distances. The "coolness" was utterly shallow, and instantly became assholes stapling circuit boards to leather jackets. Or "steampunk," which was exclusively a surface aesthetic for people who thought that technology was too hard to reason about, so they just decided that if tech was simply magic, why not just do fantasy at the dawn of the industrial age? Dispose of all of those pesky questions about identity(s) and just ask "wouldn't it be cool if..." edit: there were people working in the same vein at the time, the Semiotext(e) SF anthology and the Mirrorshades anthology showed what cyberpunk (and cyberpunk-adjacent) thought of itself; questions about identity, reality, and linearity; and their interactions with communication and simulation technology. They were ignored for noir retreads with circuitboards and leather jackets. Almost immediately it was saturated with childish fantasy - actual hackers working on Tolkienesque "cyberpunk" roleplaying scenarios for Steve Jackson Games. Ironically the situation ("E911") around creation of a childish, escapist "cyberpunk" product was a historical expression of the actual themes that the cyberpunks were largely chasing. No wonder Sterling (also fairly pulpy writer) wrote the definitive account.

saltcured 1mo ago
I agree on the style and influences particularly in the trilogy. Yes, there are pulpy aspects and tropes. To me, there are strong dashes of beat poet and impressionism as well. This shallowness is a style, but I think the themes carry through. I had the pleasure of reading Neuromancer in a college course on Gothic horror, so we read it alongside the likes of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Freud. And we looked at it through that lens. To me, the core theme of Gibson's storytelling is that the human condition persists. You'll have this spectrum of personalities and behaviors regardless of the technological backdrop. To me, this is an antidote for the delusional fantasy that one clever plot device is going to bring Utopia and somehow erase our evolved human foibles. I'm not sure we have any disagreement, except perhaps in the subtext of your latter paragraphs. I don't think the shallowness is a flaw. I am not disappointed to find technology normalized and trivialized as set pieces for stories that could otherwise exist in almost any era. I think that's the whole point...