Cyberpunk course

Is Cyberpunk Dead? No. It is, in fact, alive and well, thank you very much. Has Cyberpunk evolved? Yes. It has indeed evolved. To look at this question more closely we need two things. A working definition of cyberpunk, and a work produced recently to prove that the genre is still alive and thriving. I will use Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother as an example of a successful modern day Cyberpunk novel. My definition of Cyberpunk I take directly from our Class Description and it is a definition that I assume was written by our fair teacher Rebecca Kahn:

“Cyberpunk literature, in general, deals with marginalized people in technologically-enhanced cultural ‘systems’. In cyberpunk stories’ settings, there is usually a ‘system’ which dominates the lives of most ‘ordinary’ people, be it an oppressive government, a group of large, paternalistic corporations, or a fundamentalist religion. These systems are enhanced by certain technologies (today advancing at a rate that is bewildering to most people), particularly ‘information technology’ (computers, the mass media), making the system better at keeping those within it inside it. Often this technological system extends into its human ‘components’ as well, via brain implants, prosthetic limbs, cloned or genetically engineered organs, etc. Humans themselves become part of ‘the Machine’. This is the ‘cyber’ aspect of cyberpunk. However, in any cultural system, there are always those who live on its margins, on ‘the Edge’: criminals, outcasts, visionaries, or those who simply want freedom for its own sake. Cyberpunk literature focuses on these people, and often on how they turn the system’s technological tools to their own ends. This is the ‘punk’ aspect of cyberpunk””

Although, on the surface Little Brother may not appear to be Cyberpunk (it’s marketed as YA not SF or Cyberpunk). It really does fulfill all the requirements of the above definition. The reason that it may not seem cyberpunk at first glance is that it takes place in almost the present day. Most of the tech describes in the book exists. Some of the tech is even identified by a particular brand name or product name of something that is on the market and available to consumers right now. The rest of it is either stuff that exists, but not in the specific form that is described in the book, or is not at all hard to see being made four or five years from now. But the rest of the elements of Cyberpunk are there. There is an oppresive system, in this case the Department of Homeland Security, that infiltrates many of the lives of the people in the story. They operate a surveillance society where the DHS tracks everyones movements and everyones expenditures. People are stopped and questioned by the police if their “histograms” are non-standard. They take people off the street and wiretap the Internet. The main character of the story is a cyberpunk in the finest tradition. He is not really an anti-hero. Neo from the Matrix is not really an anti-hero either. The main character, Marcus Yallow, finds ways of using the DHS’s technology against them. He starts a techno-revolution that uses the same technology that the DHS is using to oppress people to liberate them.

Little Brother is not an older book like Neoromancer or Snow Crash, it was published last year. Furthermore, it was highly successful. It was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards for best novel. It got great reviews from several publications including the New York Times which named it as one of the best books for young people of the year. Does it look like classic cyberpunk? Not really. It is modern Cyberpunk. Today you don’t really need to invent a futuristic technology to write a cyberpunk story. You can use today’s tech just fine. That is not to say that you can’t write about futuristic technologies. There are plenty of stories that involve entoptic displays and bioware implants and nanobots. But in a few decades these may very well be real and commonplace technologies.