The genre of Cyberpunk got the second part of its name for a good reason. The protagonists of Cyberpunk stories are worthy of the title. These characters have little respect for the rules and don’t always have very heroic motivations. Like anti-heroes from other stories they my not be out to save the world or serve the good of the people. Often they are just out for them selves. Just as frequently they are being manipulated and don’t really have a choice in their actions. These characters have a very good understanding of the system that they live in. They know what corners they can cut and what corners they can’t. Although they can manipulate the system to extent, they rarely believe they can take it down. They feel that they trapped just like everyone else, even if they have a bit more maneuvering room than the “sheep.” If the main character does eventually take down the system they rarely think they can at the beginning of the story. In this story I will analyze the classic Cyberpunk characters Neo (from the Matrix) and Case (from the Sprawl Trilogy).

At the beginning of the Matrix Neo is a jaded computer hacker with an “It’s only illegal if you get caught” mentality. We can see this in his encounter with Troy, his main concern is not breaking the law but in making sure that if Troy get caught it doesn’t trace back to him. Neo definitely feels trapped by the system, even before he finds out what the Matrix is, as evidenced by the scene with Neo’s boss at the cubical office. Even after he is extracted by the Matrix he feels trapped, not truly believing he is the One until the end of the film. Even though out the rest of the trilogy he feels helpless, not really understanding what he is supposed to be doing. Furthermore, he doesn’t really have a choice in his actions. This is expressed by his conversation with the Oracle in which he says he doesn’t like the idea of fate because he doesn’t like the idea of not being in control of his life. Yet he is fated to be the One.

Case is not exactly what you would call a wholesome individual. In fact his character is similar to that of a minor villein in other stories. He is a drug addict and dealer in illegal substances and goods. He admits to addicting a young woman to drugs and killing two people in his dealing in the black market. In the beginning he just wants to find someway to access cyberspace again. Later he just wants to prevent the toxin sacks in his veins from dissolving. His motivations are almost completely self serving. It is pretty obvious from the beginning of the story that Case doesn’t really like himself.

In my humble opinion, the character portraits that Cyberpunk paints are absolutely engrossing. They aren’t some white knight that rides to the rescue of some damsel in distress. They are gritty character with lots of street sense and questionable motivations. Perhaps the reason people like these characters is some desire to experience the life of someone in the underworld. Perhaps we identify with the feeling of helplessness that many of these characters feel. Whatever the reason, its characters are one of Cyberpunks strongest attractions.

Week Two, Assignment Two – P2PU – Neuromancer, Case & The Matrix Brian Williams brian.williams@gmail.com

“It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read.” (Gibson, at 239)

Imagine a book that presages (or at least “influences” or “imagines”) something as stupendous as the World Wide Web, and virtual reality,1 and your name isn’t Tim Berners-Lee! That’s what William Gibson does in Neuromancer. And, as if that weren’t enough, Gibson’s novel gives us the Sprawl, a slice of familiar world where every last space between Metropolitan Statistical Areas is filled up, built out, in a single continuous city/plague that obviously mirrors our species’ relentless growth and destruction of nature. Beyond the spectacle of Neuromancer’s prophetic core, we have the characters and the story and the story’s influenced by the original story, ad infinitum. This is an important book! In our digital present, imagining Gibson typing without benefit of computer or word processor is quite fantastic!2

One of the stories inspired by Neuromancer is a story told by film: The Matrix. We observe the protagonist Neo’s metamorphosis from a troubled, perhaps brilliant computer software engineer and hacker, a “person” entirely encapsulated within the Matrix’ simulacrum, a false world that is so real as to be The World, into a fully aware soldier in the insurgency against the Machines.

Neo chooses knowledge: that choice makes all the difference3 – a single red pill and down the rabbit hole and out through a birth sequence that is a film hybrid of Elephant Man, Steamboy, and Eraserhead. As a knowing being, tearing at the fabric of the late 20th Century virtual reality that enables the enslavement of his own species for Machine dominance, Neo is confronted with a traditional riddle. Is he or is he not The One prophesized by the Oracle, to save the human species from this relentless and total enslavement?

The answer is hardly in doubt because it’s a movie starring Keanu Reeves, of course, but the story line does suggest a traditionally heroic (rather than anti-heroic) naval gazing arc whereby Neo cannot know whether he is or is not The One. He can only move forward and presumably keep faith with his cohort against the machines. Ultimately he will save Morpheus, rise from the dead and destroy the Machine agents … To be continued ()

Is there an anti-hero in the Matrix film? I know the insurgent who turns on his team is repulsive, but he’s hardly anti-heroic. Trinity is a feminist hero — The Oracle and Morpheus and Neo all trend toward the traditional hero myth… The Machine agents are simply pure, unadulterated evil.

In contrast to Neo’s heroic trajectory, Case is the sin quo non of anti-heroes. He spends much of his life screwing people over. Among Case’s favorite pastimes: risking his life in a suicidal rush to rip off employers and customers alike in Chiba City, Japan, killing them, drinking with them, drugging constantly, bedding lovers in “coffins”… [It’s a Wonderful Life!] … Yet he has the strength, intelligence and exceptional skills to rise above base criminality. He is the quintessential beautiful loser, a hunger artist (“meat”) chained to a sequence of events, determinism collapsed into the infinite, invisible fold of the inner-space of cyberspace.

The protagonist’s alienation is complete as he wanders into and out from the haze of an infinite cyberspace, “fueled by self-loathing.” Yet there is the confounding complexity of Case that makes him constantly beautiful. As Gibson observes,

“For me, … the key to Case’s personality is the estrangement from his body, the meat, which it seems to me he does overcome… There’s a long paragraph there where he accepts the meet as being this infinite and complex thing. In some ways, he’s more human after that.” (Rucker, Rudy, et al. Mondo 2000: The User’s Guide to the New Edge. New York: Harber Collins, 1992, at 170). And that passage, at 239, gives Case the largest measure of his vulnerable humanness, critical to the heroic representation: “It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read.”

Transcendence for some one or some thing may be achieved but it comes if at all only through an alliance with the AI Wintermute and Neuromancer. For the antihero Case, a “sentimental futurism” pervades, representative of Gibson’s perceived ambivalence toward machine and human relationships (Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. at 231). The antihero Case affirms violence, loses love, and inevitably Molly: “I don’t need you,’ he said.”

And finally there is the existential tuning when Case meets the Wintermute / Neuromancer AI presence, FINN, drinking all the while (of course), expressing his essential human desolation …”

CASE: “So what are you.” He drank from the flask, feeling nothing. FINN: “I’m the matrix, Case.”  Case laughed. “Where’s that get you?”  FINN: Nowhere. Everywhere. I’m the sum total of the works, the whole show.”  CASE: “So what’s the score? How are things different? You running the world now? You God?”  FINN: “Things aren’t different. Things are things.”

And, “He never sees Molly again.”

There is no happy ending. Simply an oblique reference to Case’s endless seeking, movement (the life force), speed (cyberspace), and a hallucination (drugs), the feeling of voyeurism as we watch humans spiraling away from those things we most associate with humanness.  Case’s tragedy unfolding as he watches tragedy become “real” — the artful, lovely writing painting the heroic courage requisite to live and to truly see:

“He’d watched her personality fragment, calving like an iceberg, splinters drifting away, and finally he’d seen the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction.” (Gibson, at 8).

 

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1Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. “The Sentimental Futurist: Cybernetics and Art in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.  Critique (Spring 1992) at 221.

2Gibson, William. “The Neurotyper: William Gibson Blog.” Post Friday, Oct. 16, 2006. “ available at http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2006_10_01_archive.asp

3“I took the one less traveled by.” Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Mountain Interval. 1920. Available at http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html.

Before examining both Neo and Case in more detail, I want to first begin begin by suggesting that the key protagonists in most cyberpunk stories are anti-heroes and that this, in of itself, may be the most significant and commonly recurring attribute or characteristic of an archetype — if one exists. When we consider that cyberpunk, as a sub-genre, deals with post-modernism, then we have to acknowledge and recognise that with post-modernism comes an inherent distrust of the sorts of ‘absolute truths’ which classical heroes embody, and which are at the heart of the hero-myth cycle, so instead of a flawless idealised hero, we now have the anti-hero. Robin Van Cleave discusses this in her essay entitled Anti Heroes:

“With his normal-person character flaws and failures at everyday living, the anti-hero is someone with whom readers of the 21st century can identify. Where heroes appeal to the inner child’s dreams for the future, the anti-hero appeals to the inner pessimist’s reality. The anti-hero often possesses flaws in his or her character with which readers can identify. We are expected to understand, or at least sympathize with the anti-heroes negative qualities because of his or her redeeming heroic qualities or intentions. Because of this realise nature of the typical anti hero, it has become an increasingly popular character in modern literature, and especially the relatively new genre of cyberpunk.”

With this in mind I’d like to examine Neo, from the Matrix, and Case from William Gibson’s Neuromancer. When we are first introduced to Neo he is living a duel life, by day he’s a computer programmer for a large company, and by night he is a hacker who steals information, which he sells. In fact when he is captured we are told that he is “guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for“. He is also very quiet, and when challenged by his employer to make a choice he appears to be contrite and non-confrontational. Neo lives alone, and we get the sense that there is an emptiness in his life as he searches for something, or as Trinity puts it:

“TRINITY: I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing … why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me , he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question, Neo. It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.

NEO: What is the Matrix?”

He has heard of the ‘Matrix’, but does not know what it is, but he does believe, as Morpheus later vocalizes, that “there is something wrong with the world“, and its that that drives him to seek out answers. We start to see a different, more confrontational, side of Neo when he is arrested by Agents, who ask him to help them apprehend Morpheus to which Neo responds:

“Yeah. Well that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger [He does] and you give me my phone call.”

This disrespect for authority is a quintessentially punk. As one anonymous commentator noted, and I find myself agreeing with:

“Cyberpunks … have taken the punk ethic of disrespect for authority (and often for self, even to the point of nihilism)
and applied it to the real world. Cyberpunks are those who think that the street has its own uses for technology … they think that corporations are often a bigger threat than government … sometimes to the point of breaking laws … The only freedom these people are interested in is the freedom to be left alone, both physically and, in the data world, to be left out of the ubiquitous info files being accumulated on us all. This combination often leads to a “fuck you, jack” attitude.”
– Quote taken from a debate from e-zine Computer Underground Digest, 1991

Case, from Gibson’s Neuromancer, shares some of the same qualities but is a very different, darker character. When we first meet him, Case is a burned out, drug addicted, self-destructive, former ‘data cowboy‘. He used to ‘jack’ into cyberspace and steal information from high security corporate databases, but prior to the events in the novel, his ability to jack into the matrix was taken from him as punishment when he was caught stealing from his employers – who using a mycotoxin damaged his nervous system making it impossible for him to connect to the matrix. Case operates at the fringes of his society, he is ammoral, murderous, cynical, desperate to find a cure and on the brink of suicide –to escape the prison he now finds himself in:

“For Case, who had lived in the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall … The body was meat. Case fell into a prison of his own flesh”

Like Neo, Case, is also offered a choice, albeit a Faustian one, when Armitage offers to repair Case’ neural damage and in exchange Case has to work for him. The desperate Case accepts, and in so doing joins Armitage without really understanding what he’s signing up to – or really caring. However once cured he is told that he has to complete the tasks that Armitage gives him, or small sacs of poison, which have been left in his bloodstream, will burst and cripple him again ( as an aside, I cant help but think of how much this reminds me of Cyber City Oedo 808, in which cyber criminals are coerced into becoming police officers through the use of explosive collars – complete your mission or die),  thus Case is recruited against his will to help an Artifical Intelligence, Wintermute, free itself from containment.

The progression of the two characters in their respective story-lines is also different. Although an anti-hero, Neo’s progression is more traditionally aligned with the hero-myth cycle, he goes on a quest, receives aid from an outside source, struggles with obstacles, appears to fail at some point, fulfills the quest, and returns a changed man. Case’ progression doesn’t feel quite so formulaic ( or perhaps I’m not looking hard enough ? ), once he’s entered into his faustian arrangement with Armitage, its the very nature of that relationship, and I think the notion of control, which forces Case to find out more about Armitage and what it is they are actually working towards, Case is of course trying to figure out the conspiracy before it determines him to be expendable. When he does figure it out, the journey he takes in understanding Wintermute’s motivation, and desperation to be free, Case realises that it’s not really any different to him or any human, it wants freedom, life, the ability to explore and discover, and through this Case develops a better understanding of what it means to be human – How different are Case and Wintermute, really?

In their own way both Neo and Case are fighting for their own freedom. Neo is fighting against an artificial construct that is used to control and enslave himself and the rest of the human race. Case is battling against the situation he finds himself in, as someone elses pawn. But both characters want to be in control of their own lives. I think this too must be a key characteristic of any archetype.

In examining these two characters it appears that there are similarities, they are both loners, both looking for answers, both desire to be in control of their own lives, both operate outside the the legal boundaries of their societies: they are both considered criminals. One final thing, neither one of them strikes me as being someone who is happy to live a mediated existence, simply consider how significant a part the media plays in our lives. Neo eschewed a mediated life in search of Morpheus, and Case, would probably say its full of shit. Our anti-heroes are independent thinkers, they want to see with their own eyes, not through someone elses, or through some sanitised government or corporate veil: but then this has always been key feature of any hacker culture.

I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded in  defining anything that resembles a classical cyberpunk archetype, or come close at all. But I do think that investigating this piece, has helped me gain a better understanding of why I find these characters so compelling.

Additional Resources

As with last assignment I have tagged a number of resources on Delicious account as “cyberpunk” and “week2″, which I used to research this piece. Hopefully others will find them useful too. You can view them here.

Picture of Neuromancer Cover by Myles! CC-BY NC-SA: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35034347347@N01/3347216115/

Picture of Matrix- Is This The Real Life  by Kaptain Kobold CC-BY NC-SA: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/2682250700/

In comparing and contrasting science fiction versus cyberpunk, I think it is important to look at the labels themselves.  As much as both genres have had great success in defying definitions, some broad generalizations can be made simply by analyzing words used to tag them.

From the two words science and fiction, which one is more representative of the field?  Fiction comes in many forms, but adding the word science instantly identifies a particular type of fiction.  Merriam-Webster Online defines science as a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study[1].  Science is a large topic covering many fields of study, and science fiction tends to portray ideas on a grand scale.  Worlds, galaxies, universes; these are all fair game for the science fiction writer.  Obviously, there are plenty of individual characters populating these worlds and telling their stories, but they are usually part of a much larger picture.

Taking that same approach and breaking cyberpunk down to its roots we again have two choices.  Cyber relates to technology, computers and networks, but adding punk on the end changes everything and once more identifies a certain genre.  One of the definitions for punk in that same Merriam-Webster Online is a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian[2].  In other words, this is someone who breaks the rules, someone who doesn’t follow “the system”.  The focus here is on the individual and more introspective by nature.

In the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the protagonist Rick Deckard is immersed in a world of technology.  But it is the fallout from science that paints such a haze over that technology and brings the reader in to a closer examination of Deckard and what it means to be human.

Ironically, one of the first analogies that occurred to me when thinking about these two types of literature was that of the mainframe computer versus the PC.  Science fiction is like a mainframe shared by many users, and cyberpunk is like a PC that is by definition more personal.  Is it a coincidence that science fiction gave birth to cyberpunk not long before mainframes spawned PCs?

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[1] science. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Retrieved September 15, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

[2] punk. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Retrieved September 15, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/punk

“Critics, myself included, persist in label-mongering, despite all warnings; we must, because it’s a valid source of insight-as well as great fun.”

– Bruce Sterling, from the introduction to Mirrorshades¹

The topic of this essay is – I believe – something of a red herring. How can one differentiate between a genre that has steadfastly withstood attempts at defining it, from one of its most rebellious sub-genres? Encyclopedia Britannica attempts to define science fiction as:

“a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term science fiction was popularized, if not invented, in the 1920s by one of the genre’s principal advocates, the American publisher Hugo Gernsback.”²

But any aficionado of the genre will tell you it’s so much more than that, encompassing themes that range from space-adventure, to psychic abilities, to alternative realities. From the amazing, to the bizarre. Stories that examine human nature, politics, and social issues.

And then we come to the subject of our study, cyberpunk: Britannica takes a valiant stab at defining cyberpunk thus:

“The word cyberpunk was coined by writer Bruce Bethke, who wrote a story with that title in 1982. He derived the term from the words cybernetics, the science of replacing human functions with computerized ones, and punk, the cacophonous music and nihilistic sensibility that developed in the youth culture during the 1970s and ’80s. Science-fiction editor Gardner Dozois is generally credited with having popularized the term.” ³

Once again, the cold definition falls far short of reality. Cyberpunk, with its dystopian settings and themes of post-humanism, post-industrialism and post-nationalism,⁴ managed to extend the science fiction genre and create new frontiers.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is archetypal science fiction, in that it envisages a post-nuclear war future-world where most of humankind is forced to colonize Mars. Where it crosses into cyberpunk is mainly in the ‘film noir’ elements: the flawed ‘cop’ who is not driven necessarily by justice, but by money. The outcast who aids and then deceives the renegade androids. And finally, the androids themselves, who come across as more human than the de-humanised humans that hunt them.

Protagonist Rick Deckard of Electric Sheep is a bureaucrat, who sees himself as no different than his neighbours, despite his dangerous job. He is motivated most of all by the idea of owning a rare animal. While initially whimsical, it becomes clear that the populace has transferred the focus of its consumerism to the animals that have survived the nuclear holocaust, partly (I presume) because jewelery and fancy vehicles are no longer available. Rachael realises this, and takes revenge on him by killing Rick’s brand new goat. So Dick’s androids can be emotional, spiteful even… they just don’t have empathy, which sets them apart from humans.

Another factor seems to be the concept of emotional stress and depression. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World has soma, a drug that enables one to cope with the stresses of everyday life, or even take a chemical ‘holiday’. Electric Sheep has the Penfield mood organ, an electronic antidepressant. While Rick seems perfectly happy to use it to control his moods, his wife seems to regard it with animosity, as if the moods are somehow not genuine.  Dick amusingly takes a ‘swipe’ at the prevailing chauvinist trend in mainstream SF, with Rick setting his wife’s mood organ to “594; pleased acknowledgment of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters”.  Perhaps then, we can start to consider cyberpunk as a more intelligent form of science fiction?

This novel was also a critique (on a certain level) of a society controlled by an apparently benevolent dictatorship: the world seems to be controlled by corporations… android producers and Mars colonizers. The corporations mirror those of today: as long as there is a profit, they are in business. Human rights fall expediently by the wayside, and they milk their client-base, whatever the cost. (Shades of Haliburton?) So one may extrapolate that this story has elements of community anarchism underpinning it, which could reflect a yearning on the author’s part for an escape from the realities of the Vietnam and the Cold War.

Conclusion:

Inasmuch as cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, I suggest that Electric Sheep is a science fiction story, with pioneering cyberpunk elements.

Science 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.

Most people who are not very familiar with the vastness of the Science Fiction genre think that there isn’t a large difference between “Star Wars” and “Dune” or “Space Odyssey 2001″ and “Stargate”. They think that every movie or book containing space ships, robots and aliens belong to the same order. Fortunately, they are wrong. Although the various sub-genres of Science Fiction seem to blend with each other,  Cyberpunk is the one which couldn’t be more different from classical Science Fiction. Therefore I will contrast three important aspects between both genres in order to display the main substance of Cyberpunk. At first I will discuss the differences in the setting and the atmosphere of Science Fiction and Cyberpunk, secondly the nature of the protagonists and finally the impact of technology on mankind.

The setting in Science Fiction novels often display a future far from the present, in alternative time lines or on other planets. Science and technology makes space travel possible and provides a wide choice of opportunities for the main characters of a story. The vastness of space brings forth a feeling of departure an urge to travel to unknown worlds and have exciting adventures. The atmosphere often resembles western stories, treasure hunts and expeditions set in a futuristic world where the characters can be astonished of the unknown. An archetype Cyberpunk setting nearly always permeated with a sense of impending doom. The first line of William Gibson’s “Neuromancer” published in 1984 describes the atmosphere with an adequate metaphor:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

The contrast to the “openness” of the sky in usual Science Fiction is evident. A Cyberpunk future is literally dark and not qualified for those of high hopes of the future. The most unsettling issue is the fact that the setting usually describes our own world in a postindustrial dystopian future. The timeline is set not very far from ours and underlines the uneasiness of witnessing a reality which makes its way of becoming ours. Over-sized and powerful multi-corporations replace governments, dominate the world, exploit people, resources and nature and leave nearly nothing for the little man. Rapidly developing science and technology have a negative impact on humanity and change society in every aspect of life. These apocalyptic circumstances echo the atmosphere of thriller and detective stories or the familiar film genre of the “film noir”. Characters placed in dark and gritty side streets of an exaggerated urbanized city filled with misfits, criminals and outlaws appear quite often in Cyberpunk.

The characters of common Science Fiction on the one hand resemble mostly classical heroes of a number of literary categories. They show humane and rightous traits and are equiped with honorable virtues. Even flawed characters seem motivated to do the “right” thing and overcome the obstacles which lay in their path, because they have a healthy optimism towards their future. The anti-heroes in Cyberpunk usually have twisted personal traits and give Cyberpunk the “punk attitude” the name deserves. The protagonists are always the losers of the game society plays. They come from the underground and are computer hackers, criminals, misfits, outcasts or dissenters who don’t mind bending the rules of ethics to their use. Not rarely does it happen that the main characters are placed in situations where they become manipulated by others and must do what is demanded from them. For example Rick Deckard in ” Do Androids dream of electric sheep?” who takes the job of retiring the escaped “replicants” from mars in order to buy himself a real animal. Having little choice or no choice at all how to approach the future leaves them pessimistic to upcoming developments.

The development of science and technology has its good and bad sides. Whereas Science Fiction experiences the light side of the coin Cyberpunk discovers the shady side of it. Of course does Science Fiction mention the abuse of technology when considering weapons of war and machines used for the maltreatment of human beings. But the storyline centers more closely around the application of new scientific principles such as time travel, space travel, robots etc. Humans in Science Fiction explore the differences from now and tomorrow and try to find more appliance possibilities to different situations in their lives. The impact of advanced science and technology on the average Cyberpunk seem to reveal philosophical issues like what it means to be human. The n0w possible fusion of man and machine accumulates the question: Where is the border of being human and where is it of being a machine? Encounters with cyborgs and humans with biological implants which enhance the neurological functions in the brain show that the distinction between humans and machines are not very obvious. But another question appears when dealing with the omnipresent information flow of cyberspace and the hackers who “jack” themselves in. Do these people know what is real and what is virtual?  They might not make a difference between the two anymore, because technology erased the human trait of their perception and left them with an unsettling truth. The flesh is weak and the machine is superior.

To put it all in a nutshell it is necessary to say that Science Fiction deals with issues exploring the unknown world of tomorrow with consideration of the development of science and technology. Cyberpunk approaches a similar topic but differently in order to display what could turn out bad if mankind doesn’t take responsibility for their future actions regarding the further development progress.

Week One, Assignment One – P2PU – What I see – cyberpunk and science fiction writing. Brian Williams brian.williams@gmail.com

“I’m convinced H.G. Wells has had a disastrous influence on the subsequent course of science fiction…”[1] 

Cyberpunk is science fiction, of course.  Within the broad genre science fiction, cyberpunk is interred in the “hard core” wing, a subspecies, if you will.  It’s hard core because it relies utterly on “technology or biology” to tell a story.[2] Cyberpunk is sci fi dropped into a corrupt and blackened petri dish of pulp fiction and noir, technology and biology, reality and unreality. The result may be sublime, may be human, humanizing, inhuman, dehumanizing, trash.  “What’s real what’s not” ? … “Who’s human Who’s not” ? Central themes of the cyberpunk brand of science fiction writing… [3]

Inward looking, occlusion filled, the spaces between subjective worlds, invisible webs, networks, Dick and other so-called cyberpunks (humanists?) saw places (some call “science fiction”) where others saw madness.  The grey ethereal unknowing interiors of self and disorientation driving story, yet empathy, human empathy, bringing the story back from something distant and vague to something as immediate and challenging as “…boiling a live lobster, eating meat, or using fur…”[4]  …  

As if Cyberpunk could be summed up by a single, rotoscoped image of the 5 Freeway pointing south to San Diego … The modern world, our world, is Dick’s world, not some distant fantasy where selfless armies abide Society’s greater good so that mechanized Roads must roll.

The crowded Southern California landscape is the perfect tableau for false, doomed cyberpunk narrative.  Married and divorced five times — “married, 1949; wife’s name Jeannette (divorced); married, 1951; wife’s name Kleo (divorced); married, 1958; wife’s name Ann (divorced); married April 18, 1967; wife’s name Nancy (divorced); married Tessa Busby, April 18, 1973 (divorced) … ” – Dick’s fertile dystopian nightmare sprawls out from his Santa Ana home, the Orange County police state, Disney, cultural fascism … Themes emerging from a lifelong Southern California [other] world view.  There is no escape … It never fucking rains …

Personal experience is one hallmark of the cyberpunk brand. Again, the notion of empathy (humanity) in a post apocalyptic world where to retire is to murder and the most brilliant and beautiful androids enslaved, the cyberpunk author using cognitive dissonance in a way more traditional notions of science fiction, replete with space and final frontiers, can neither penetrate nor reproduce.

A “fabricated reality” constructed here, and often now, that nevertheless remains “unknown to human beings, that we are captive to … subjective perception and unable to discern objective reality…”, worlds where “ … everything is true because nothing is true.”[5]  And Dick’s world, the cyberpunk world, may be an illusion “created through an appearance of change, false memories, media, drugs, or digital industry products, covering the stable and unalterable, true dimension of existence…”[6]

The habit of humans of mislabeling things (or should I just say, labeling things) is an often unprofitable exercise, rife with expectation building and shortcut taking, and like most habits, it is hard to break.  Having said as much, how cool is the cyberpunk framework?  a framework that combines the most evocative, dingy and sublime elements of post-modern culture – the exploration of today and tomorrow and what might or might not be behind what might or might not be the mask, ours, societies…  Call it what you will.  As one writer said in an earlier post, these are prophetic warnings … Yes, I agree, and they may simultaneously function as paranoid delusions, unleashed, or something between.

 

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[1] James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn (eds) (2003) The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2] Cyberpunk as a Science Fiction Genre. 12 July 2004.  Information Database:  The Cyberpunk Project. 09 Sept. 2009.

[3] Kucukalic, Lejla. Philip K Dick : Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York: Routledge, 2009.

[4] Vint, Sherryl. “Speciesism and Species Being in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 40.1 (Mar. 2007): 111-126.

[5] Kucukalic, Lejla. Philip K Dick : Canonical Writer of the Digital Age. New York: Routledge, 2009, at 5.

 

[6] Ibid.

Among its myriad sub-genres, cyberpunk stands out as one of Science Fiction’s most unique. Indeed, to some people, many cyberpunk tales may not seem to be Science Fiction at all. In order to identify the ways that Cyberpunk differs from the rest of Science Fiction, we must examine three important aspects of any story: the setting, the characters, and the themes. By analyzing these three factors we will not only see the differences, but also a few similarities that I think will show that cyberpunk is still firmly within the boundaries of Science Fiction or at least somewhere close to them. I will illustrate my observations with examples from three science fiction stories and three cyberpunk stories. The stories I will use are: Contact by Carl Sagan, The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell, the TV series Star Trek The Next Generation, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick, The film The Matrix, and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (which some might argue isn’t all that cyberpunk but I think is firmly inside the genre).

Traditional Science Fiction has always had a wide diversity of settings. In fact, I think that is one of the things that differentiate it and other speculative fiction from other genres of fiction. However there are some trends. Science fiction is very often set in the distant future. It is also very often set off of the planet Earth. Sometimes it even takes place outside of our solar system or even our galaxy. These stories can take place on distant worlds or moons, gigantic city sized space stations, star ships large enough to support thousands of passengers, even alternate dimensions. Contact is set on Earth in the near future and in a futuristic alien designed transport system and on a enormous space station. The Golden Age Series takes place mostly on an interstellar cargo ship that uses solar sails and wormholes to travel to and from huge space stations in orbit around the planets that they transport goods to and from. Next Generation takes place on a Starship that houses one thousand people and on countless alien planets.

Cyberpunk settings, while still being quite diverse, tend to have more similarities to each other than general science fiction. Cyberpunk is more likely to be set in the near future. They are also more likely to be set on Earth. A common Cyberpunk setting is that of virtual reality or cyberspace. Almost all cyberpunk settings have a dystopian feel to them. Often the settings are post-apocalyptic. There is usually some authority, be it corporation or government or something else, that wields enormous control over most peoples lives. Do Androids Dream is set on Earth after a major world war that involved nuclear weapons and wiped out a significant amount of life; much of the remaining humans have chosen to emigrate to other planets where they are assisted by androids. Some of these androids then return illegally to Earth. The Matrix is set in both in hellish post-war future in which the environment has been destroyed and machines rule the Earth, and in a machine controlled virtual reality called the Matrix in which most of the human race is enslaved without their knowledge. Little brother is set in near future San Francisco after a major terrorist attack after which the Department of Homeland Security sets up a surveillance system using advanced technology such as RFID tags and Internet wiretapping.

The characters in Science Fiction have as large a range as just about any fiction. They can be explorers, scientists, warriors, princes, genius children, etc. In Contact the main character is a devoted and brilliant scientist who is dedicated to making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. In the Golden Age the protagonist is a young man who works his way from making the coffee on an interstellar cargo ship to an officer in charge. In The Next Generation the characters are officers on the Star Ship Enterprise who explore worlds and deal with many an alien race.

Characters in cyberpunk have much more in common with each other than the character of general science fiction. They tend to be alienated and are very often technologically adept. Rick Deckard is an android killing bounty hunter who works for the system but begins to question his actions. He is more than capable of using high-tech gadgets to hunt down and dispatch his query. Neo, from The Matrix is a computer hacker who has the ability to control many aspects of the virtual reality that humanity is trapped in. The protagonist of Little Brother, Marcus Yallow, is a tech savvy teenager who uses his computer skills to fight back against the DHS.

Science Fiction has many themes. It deals with Space Exploration, interplanetary travel and colonization, alien contact and encounters, futuristic technologies, and the like. The main themes of Contact are Alien Contact and the effect that has on society. Star Trek deals with a range of themes from exploration to the potential of Humanity. The Golden Age Series primarily deals with Colonization and Terraforming and what that will mean for the Human Race.

Cyberpunk is largely about the ways information and other technologies effect human interactions. Especially those of fringe peoples. Technology is extensively used to manipulate people in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It is even used to create people (if you consider androids people). In The Matrix, computer systems have been used to deceive and enslave most of the human race. These systems were implemented and put into place by the very technology that we designed to help us. In Little Brother both the DHS and Marcus use Information Technology to achieve their goals. The DHS uses it to surveil the entire populace of a city and Marcus uses it to gain privacy and wreak havoc against the DHS’s designs.

Cyberpunk is a very distinctive genre of Science Fiction. It has a definite flavor to it that is easy to identify. But Science Fiction and Cyberpunk have a lot in common as well. They both usually take place in the future. Most importantly, they both deal with the effects Science and Technology have on Humanity. Keep in mind that long before mankind ever set into space or walked on the moon, before we explored the depths of the ocean, before we harnessed the power of the atom and used it against ourselves, that all these things were written about in Science Fiction. The details of the Science and the operation of the technologies were not usually accurate but the ideas appeared in Science Fiction before they were made into a reality by the hard work of engineers and scientists. I have no doubt that someday we will have intelligent machines, virtual reality, ubiquitous computer networks, and the like. Most of these technologies are being actively developed. An important role of Cyberpunk and Science Fiction is to get people thinking about the implications of such Technologies and Sciences. We, as a race, can look forward to the possibility of a bright and fascinating future, if we can manage to not screw it up.