Cyberpunk course

“Here be dragons” is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps. (Wikipedia, Here be dragons)

As a reaction to the Utopian science fiction (frequently set into a distant glorious future), cyberpunk projected all our fears into the uncharted territory of the very near future.

What separates us from the near dark future is a kind of unspecified, yet imminent apocalypse. Hence, most of the cyberpunk scenes are post-apocalyptic ones, where the apocalypse is a given, part of a forgotten history:

“…no one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won.” — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Chapter 2)

This lack of the time dimension, from disinterest in history to a “carpe diem” attitude towards life is the image of a chronic existential nihilism.

Actually various forms of nihilism are present in the cyberpunk settings: from the aforementioned existential nihilism, underlined by the timeless Mercer’s cycle in ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,’ to the metaphysical nihilism in The Matrix:

Boy: “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.”
Neo: “What truth?”
Boy: “There is no spoon.”

Moreover, The Matrix features Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” book, as a hollowed book from the chapter “On Nihilism,” beautifully underlying Baudrillard’s message. Later in the movie, Morpheus shows Neo “the desert of the real,” a clear reference to Baudrillard’s work (see first page here).

The “carpe diem” behaviour fuels the consumerism, which becomes extreme and devalues everything: Penfield mood organ devalues genuine feelings, plastic surgery devalues beauty, simstim edited reality replaces reality. Everything is available in too many ephemeral options, anchoring everyone in a perpetual present.

“…by the 1990, the variety of (android) subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.” — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

The lack of genuine items is underlined by the concept of ‘cheap copies of replicas.’ This and the continuous re-purposed antique objects illustrate almost a coprophagous society, feeding on its own detritus.

Paradoxically, these settings makes you experience a claustrophobic feeling in an open space, this is achieved in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy through the social and urban detritus; the ‘dessert of the real’ in The Matrix.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep the kipple, the radioactive fallout and the pressure to emigrate from Earth creates the claustrophobic environment on a depopulated Earth; with overlapping glimpses of agoraphobia triggered by the sound the empty buildings creates.

“And for a minute I shut off the (TV) sound. And I heard the building, this building. I heard the—” She gestured. “Empty apartments,” Rick said. — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

It is the same blending between extremes characteristic to cyberpunk, here blurring the physical space between claustro- and agoraphobia:

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls … From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out … It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it — the silence meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive!
— Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

This is the uncharted territory to which we know we’re heading to, the scariest future of all possible futures: the future without a future.