Cyberpunk
September 14th, 2009 at 20:50Science fiction—before the cyberpunk split—was more or less different retellings of the same archetypes where aliens replaced ghosts and monsters, space replaced the oceans and technology replaced magic. This provided the grounds for scientific speculations,—and for a long time that was the main theme—and that was the fuel of the (technical) imagination of the mankind. We reached the Moon in a story first in Kepler’s “Somnium,” then with Jules Verne’s “From Earth to Moon.”
Those stories were mostly glorious in nature, promoting technology and not investigating its side effects. Cyberpunk looked closely at the human nature, at how we manage technology. Technology not only enables but also disables; technology can be stolen, abused, misunderstood, misapplied, smuggled and counterfeit. Technology can fuel ideologies and enable coercion and control.
MORPHEUS “What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.”
[holds up a Duracell battery]
Those dreams from common science fiction become nightmares in cyberpunk; not by turning good into evil but through the blurring of the distinction between good and evil, day and night (the sky in “Neuromancer”), between predator and prey (Blade Runner), between flesh and metal, human and non-human (the Voight-Kampff test is not infallible). The mere dimensions/values of the world collapse, there are no stable metrics nor references.
This claustrophobic atmosphere is amplified by layers of detail, “kipple” and parallel story lines with idiosyncratic characters. Moreover the protagonists are drifting in these worlds with almost no free will, fact that contributes to the characteristic dystopic atmosphere.
[Do you wonder why people would read such things? A cyberpunk-like answer would be that the cyberpunk meme is a specially designed highly addictive drug; and the first book is always free…]
Actually reading cyberpunk is quite an experience—it is an immersive one—where you have to live in those dystopic worlds (otherwise you would not understand them) and you have to fight your way out of there. The fascinating thing is that it is so easy to dive into those worlds as their terrifying features are so familiar (with our dark predictions of our near future), and your fight along with the protagonist to get out of there is liberating. Oddly, writing this brought this scene into my mind:
Ghost in the Shell, Scene where Motoko is diving in the harbour and then talking on board a boat with Batou.
BATOU “A cyborg who goes diving in her spare time. That can’t be a good sign. When did you start doing this? Doesn’t the ocean scare you? lf the floaters stopped working…”
MOTOKO “Then l’d probably die. Or would you dive in after me? No one forced you to come out here with me.”
BATOU “So, what’s it feel like when you go diving?”
MOTOKO “Didn’t you go through underwater training?”
BATOU “l’m not talking about doing it in a damned pool.”
MOTOKO “l feel fear. Anxiety. Loneliness. Darkness. And perhaps, even hope.”
Common science fiction is ‘fictional.’ Cyberpunk is about fictional settings ran in real-world simulations. It is theory versus practice (read simulation), and practice (read simulation) feels real.
September 15th, 2009 at 3:41 am
These divisions between genres are tricky. I’m wondering where Harlan Ellison fits into these categories. I think much of his work was written before the cyberpunk split? Are 1984 or Brave New World cyberpunk (can you be part of a genre before the genre exists)?
September 15th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Lovely post, Laurian. I agree with what you say about cyberpunk being, in some ways, more “real” than scifi. I think one of the things I love the most in cyberpunk is the humanism, and the very real depictions of people’s feelings. Certain cyberpunk novels can make me either laugh out loud or cry very real tears, which means, I guess, that it’s all pretty powerful stuff.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Both Science Fiction and Cyberpunk deals with the effects that science and technology have on individuals and society. Cyberpunk does tend to be more negative, though certain Science Fiction novels are negative as well. The technology in Cyberpunk novels is usually wielded by some powerful authority to control and manipulate the lives of the people; however, the protagonist very often uses the same technology to fight back. Technology is a tool, neither good nor evil in nature, that human beings put to use for their own ends. Whoever has the best tools often get their ends achieved. In cyberpunk the best tools are very often in the hands of people who use them towards their own selfish ends.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:17 am
“…dreams from common science fiction become nightmares in cyberpunk;…”
I like this line very much. It explains very much about the nature of Cyberpunk.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:05 am
I agree that reading cyberpunk is an immersive experience and I think you’re right, its the fact that what frightens us is those features that we see emerging in our own. I think cyberpunk at at its most engrossing offers more than a prophetic warning, it offers a future that you can almost reach and touch because for all the talk about technology its actually the nature of our humanity that cyberpunk forces us to question.
September 16th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I loved your statement that “those dreams from common science fiction become nightmares in cyberpunk.” I don’t know that I would agree about the mechanism – the blurring of good and evil, insomuch as the role of the cyberpunk author seems to be to take us to the logical end of the path we are on and show us the unanticipated consequences. Perhaps another way of differentiating between the two is that sci-fi shows the outcomes of technological progress we desire (almost always positive) while cyberpunk shows the outcomes we never anticipated (some positive and many negative).