Cyberpunk course

Further forensic evidence … Cyberpunk’s not dead : Selective (2K-Present …) briancrime

Adam, Lynn Anne. Kathy Acker and the Hysterical Sublime: The Movements of Technological Martyrdom, Grotesque Perversity, and Post-Freudian Aesthetics., 2001.

Calvert, Bronwen, and Sue Walsh. “Speaking the Body: The Embodiment of ‘Feminist’ Cyberpunk.” Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations. Eds. Andy Sawyer and David Seed. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP, 2000. 96-108.

Cole, David R. “Education and the Politics of Cyberpunk.” Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies 27.2 (2005): 159-70.

Collins, Karen. “Dead Channel Surfing: The Commonalities between Cyberpunk Literature and Industrial Music.” Popular Music 24.2 (2005): 165-78.

Conn, Matthew. “The Cyberspatial Landscapes of William Gibson and Tad Williams.” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 96 (2001): 207-19.

Dyens, Ollivier. “Cyberpunk, Technoculture, and the Post-Biological Self.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 2.1 (2000): [no pagination].

Enteen, Jillana. “‘on the Receiving End of the Colonization’: Nalo Hopkinson’s ‘Nansi Web.” Science Fiction Studies 34, no. 2 [102] (2007): 262-82.

Foster, Thomas. The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2005. xxix, 2005.

Frelik, Pavel. “Return from the Implants: Cyberpunk’s Schizophrenic Futures.” Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media. Eds. Elisabeth (ed and introd ). Kraus and Carolin (ed and introd ). Auer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. 87-94.

Gillis, Stacy. “Feminist Criticism and Technologies of the Body.” A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Eds. Gill (ed and introd ). Plain, Susan (ed and introd ). Sellers, and Susan (postscript) Gubar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, xi, 2007. 322-335.

Grace, Dominick M. “From Videodrome to Virtual Light: David Cronenberg and William Gibson.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 44.3 (2003): 344-55.

Hardin, Michael. “Beyond Science Fiction: William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless.” Notes on Contemporary Literature 30.4 (2000): 4-6.

Heuser, Sabine. “(En)Gendering Artificial Intelligence in Cyberspace.” Yearbook of English Studies 37.2 (2007): 129-45.

Hughey, Lynn. “Cyberpunk Pilgrimages: Kathy Acker Inside.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36.4 (2003): 121-37.

Kelly, James Patrick, and John Kessel. “Hacking Cyberpunk.” New York Review of Science Fiction 19, no. 12 [228] (2007): 1, 4-6.

Knight, Deborah, and George McKnight. “What is it to be Human? Blade Runner and Dark City.” The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film. Ed. Steven M. (ed and introd ). Sanders. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, viii, 2008. 21-37.

Kraus, Elisabeth. “Just Affix My Reality’: Pat Cadigan’s Constructions of Subjectivity.” Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media. Eds. Elisabeth (ed and introd ). Kraus and Carolin (ed and introd ). Auer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. 107-121.

Krevel, Mojca. “Cyberpunk Literature and Slovenes: Too Mainstream, Too Marginal, Or Simply Too Soon?” Acta Neophilologica 33, no. 1-2 (2000): 69-77.

Leary, Timothy. “The Cyberpunk: The Individual as Reality Pilot.” The Cybercultures Reader. Eds. David (ed and introd ). Bell and Barbara M. (ed and introd ). Kennedy. London, England: Routledge, xxv, 2000. 529-539.

Lohmann, Ingrid. “Cognitive Mapping Im Cyberpunk: Wie Jugendliche Wissen Über Die Welt Erwerben.” Belphégor: Littérature Populaire et Culture Médiatique 2.1 (2002): [no pagination].

McCallum, E. L. “Mapping the Real in Cyberfiction.” Poetics Today 21.2 (2000): 349-77.

Meier, Franz. “Neuromances/New Romancer: Cyberpunk and the Tradition of Romance.” Of Remembraunce the Keye: Medieval Literature and its Impact through the Ages. Ed. Uwe Böker. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 2004. 267-290.

Michaud, Thomas. “Science Fiction and Politics: Cyberpunk Science Fiction as Political Philosophy.” New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction. Eds. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, xii, 2008. 65-77.

Monnet, Livia. “Towards the Feminine Sublime, Or the Story of ‘A Twinkling Monad, Shape-Shifting Across Dimension’: Intermediality, Fantasy and Special Effects in Cyberpunk Film and Animation.” Japan Forum 14.2 (2002): 225-68.

Murphy, Graham J. “Penetrating the Body-Plus-Virtualisation in Melissa Scott’s Trouble and Her Friends.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 34.95 (2005): 40-51.

Park, Chi Hyun. Orientalism in U. S. Cyberpunk Cinema from ‘Blade Runner’ to ‘the Matrix’., 2005.

Park, Jane Chi Hyun. “Stylistic Crossings: Cyberpunk Impulses in Anime.” World Literature Today: A Literary Quarterly of the University of Oklahoma 79, no. 3-4 (2005): 60-3.

Pitts, Victoria. “Feminism, Technology, and Body Projects.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 34, no. 3-4 (2005): 229-47.

Proietti, Salvatore. “The Informatic Jeremiad: The Virtual Frontier and US Cyberculture.” Science Fiction, Critical Frontiers. Eds. Karen (ed and introd ). Sayer and John (ed and introd ). Moore. Basingstoke, England; New York, NY: Macmillan; St. Martin’s, xiii, 2000. 116-126.

Rapatzikou, Tatiani G. Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2004. xxiv, 2004.

Säbel, Markus. “Cyberspace-Cyborg-AI: Technologie in William Gibsons Neuromancer.” Inklings: Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik 18 (2000): 250-71.

Schwetman, John D. “Romanticism and the Cortical Stack: Cyberpunk Subjectivity in the Takeshi Kovacs Novels of Richard K. Morgan.” Pacific Coast Philology 41 (2006): 124-40.

Seidel, Kathryn Lee, and Alvin Y. Wang. “Asians and Aliens in Cyberculture Film and Fiction.” Hybridity: Journal of Cultures, Texts and Identities 1.1 (2000): 17-29.

Senf Carol, A. “Teaching the Gothic and the Scientific Context.” Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions. Eds. Hoeveler,Diane Long (ed.and introd.) and Tamar (ed and introd ). Heller. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America, xiv, 2003. 83-89.

Shu-Shun Chan, Herbert. “Interrogation from Hyperspace: Visions of Culture in Neuromancer and ‘War without End’.” Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media. Eds. Elisabeth (ed and introd ). Kraus and Carolin (ed and introd ). Auer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. 136-145.

This week’s course asks whether or not cyberpunk has outgrown itself, and surpassed the realities imagined by some of the founders of the genre. Is it still relevant in the tech-saturated world in which we live? Have the warnings that were sounded by Gibson, Stephenson and Sterling become a reality? Is the technological reality in cyberpunk even that important, given how concerned the films and novels are with questions of truth, memory and reality? Much of the work read and discussed asks the question: What does it mean to be Human? Does this mean cyberpunk has a continued relevance as a genre?

With these questions, your reading and the discussions we have had over the past 3 weeks as a guide,  write a short (+/-2 page, complete with links and references) paper on how you see cyberpunk’s relevance as a genre, the debate on whether or not cyberpunk can be said to be ‘dead” and the epistemological issues it raises.   There are a great deal of resources online on this topic, so feel free to use any of them, as long as you refer back.

If you could upload your piece as a blog post by the end of the day on Monday 6th of October. That gives everyone the whole of Tuesday 7th to read, and then we can have our discussion on Wednesday 8th. Please tag your work as Week 4, Is Punk Dead and any other tags you think are appropriate.

Additional Resources:
These are just a starting point, but you may find them useful.
Cyberpunk RIP – an article by Paul Saffo in WIRED mag circa the early 1990s.
The Four Eras of Cyberpunk – article by Mr Roboto which defines the current era as “post-Matrix”

Pic by Enric Martinex on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

“There is no future”

God Save the Queen, Sex Pistols

“[C]yberpunk transforms the negative space of the external environment into a positive zone. Still ruined, it is now converted into a site where interesting things happen and where humans flourish, as the throbbing vitality of Gibson’s Sprawl and Chiba City demonstrate…”¹ Cyberpunk is“… “at home with alienation, staged in a landscape of decay.” (at 261)

The beauty everywhere … Cyberpunk’s dystopian worlds offer the reader uniquely damaged visions of a near future, especially compelling because these strange approximate futures are so well lived in, and if not exactly comfortable to all, then beautiful, discordant and honest, like the world feels honest, familiar then to both the punk characters who skate through and the punk readers/watchers who immerse themselves in the construct.

The power of the degraded world of the Sprawl and Chiba City in Neuromancer flows from the readers’ essential familiarity with the environment. The setting is postmodern, post something. Yet unlike many traditional science fiction narratives, the cyberpunk’s world view is one of adaptation and survival and acceptance. This is a place we see as a logical extension of our society’s current trajectory. It may be that the smell of oil refineries on the Long Beach night air is just another particularly vivid indicator of how close we are to a future where there is no true sense of nature remaining.

I had a cyberpunk epiphany watching Ken Burns’ “National Parks” documentary last night on AmeriKan t.v. The narrative of the parks, the quotations from the ecstatic geniuses John Muir, Thoreau and Walden … They all spoke of an imperative connection to earth and god and man’s place among all of the above by touching nature, nature revealed. It seems that visiting Yellowstone or Yosemite might create a new vision of my place – and I can remember thinking as a child that Mt. Hood outside my home in Portland Oregon was as good a deity as any in the pantheon. This like the protagonist in Do Androids Dream musing about the love or desire for a real sheep, an animal, I can feel the parallels, but can I change?

Last night, I recognized my divorce from these musings. How long has it been since I’ve gone for a drive not fearing traffic snarl? Police? Yes, I believe nature could be useful to me, my children, and yet it all seems so remote to life here in the city, or the suburbs, or the society. In traffic, in apartments, in laundromats, our contemporary American cyberpunk culture thrives like a slightly watered down blade runner. For city dwellers, there is something to the cyberpunk setting that touches our world view.

This singular element makes cyberpunk “real” in the modern world: we will survive adapt and live, even after World War Terminus, we may love, we will desire, the most human trait of all. We will go forward, the devolution taking us all along for the ride.

The Setting of a cyberpunk story is one of the most important aspects of the genre. It is a unique place that draws the reader in. It does this by being in some aspects almost identical to the world that we live in; while also being different enough to fascinate the reader or viewer. This combination of familiarity and strangeness is what makes Cyberpunk settings successful. Sometimes the setting is the most appealing aspect of the whole story with the reader more interested in hearing more about it than what happens to the characters. Often there are two settings: the real world and cyberspace. These settings are often rather bleak, sometimes even post-apocalyptic. There is almost always some powerful authority, whether it be corporation, government, or even religion, that has an enormous influence of the lives of everyday people. By observing the settings of various cyberpunk stories we can see what similarities they have.

Initially in the film The Matrix, the setting is very familiar. It is the towering office buildings and slow moving traffic jams and degenerating apartment buildings of any of dozens of cities around the world. At first the rules of this setting seem to be the same as these of our world. However, as the story progresses we learn that nothing is as it seems. This first manifests in strange occurrences ranging from the coincidences of the white rabbit incident to the nightmare where the agents literally seal Neo’s lips and implant a bug into him. Later it is revealed that everything that Neo has ever known is really just a computer generated virtual reality. The real world is something altogether foreign to what we are accustomed to. It is cold and dark and barren. The only place where humans survive is deep under the ground. The surface is the domain of viscous robots controlled by cold and cunning computer intelligences. The virtual reality setting of the Matrix can be viewed as a responsive character in the story as there are many intelligences that control it. Neo can control parts of it as well.

The setting of Neuromancer is less familiar at first than that of The Matrix. However, it too is similar enough to our current world that we can readily identify with the world that the characters are interacting with. The story starts in a smoky bar with an ugly and nosy barkeeper. A setting that occurs thousands of time in real life, I am sure. There are cheap hotels and busy streets and hectic markets. All of these settings have been influenced by the course of technology but they are recognizably similar to the settings that we are familiar with in our everyday life. It doesn’t matter that all the trains are maglev in this story, they still shake the apartments of those unfortunate enough to live too close to the tracks.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep my not be considered Cyberpunk by some people but the setting is very Cyberpunk. It takes place on Earth after a devastating World War. The large apartment buildings of the cities are still there, but they are largely abandoned. Perhaps the most similar aspect of this story’s setting is that of the media. In the story the TV and radio media has an absolutely enormous influence on people. Every single person knows who Buster Friendly and his guests are. Just as most people are familiar with the media celebrities of our world. These peoples’ opinions carry extra weight because they are so widely known and have access to such ubiquitous methods of mass communication. The setting even has what may be considered an early prototype of cyberspace, with access to it being obtained though the use of empathy boxes. If one uses one of these devices they are instead into another reality entirely, just like the Cyberspace of Neuromancer or the Matrix in The Matrix.

Cyberpunk settings are gritty, dirty and in a strange way they are realistic. They are not hard to envision as a possible future. They are, I think, essentially today’s society and culture as the author thinks it might be if we have access to tomorrow’s technology and science. It acknowledges that science and technology can be used for both good and ill purposes and that they can be used by both oppressors and freedom-fighters alike. Take the world as it is today, then add not-too-distant-future tech and science to it, perhaps sprinkle in a disaster or apocalypse. Now you have a Cyberpunk setting.

“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.

Rather than write a long narrative this time, I considered the nature of this weeks assignment which I have interpreted as: to explore and discuss the role that setting and environment play in the stories and how these elements contribute to the tone of the stories, and decided to do something slightly different. To me, Setting and Environment are very much about imagery, so what I’ve decided to do is to share my thoughts using images (apologies in advance if this completely fails ).

What I have done is to create a small gallery on flickr into which I have added images that evoke different elements, themes and aspects that seem to recur in cyberpunk stories. I’ve added some notes with each of the images. I had hoped to embed the gallery directly into this blog but sadly I don’t seem to be able to do that – at least I haven’t figured out how to do that.

You can access the gallery here.

Los Angeles November 2019, a decaying city, the negative of its once bright and sunny side, set in a post war apocalyptic future stands for the home for our notorious Cyberpunk anti-heroes who roam the dirty streets in the shadows of the powerful and rich. Cyberpunk would not only be half as exciting if the characters didn’t life in such a crazy morbid place. The setting is significant for the genre or else people would not say, ” Oh! Neuromancer and the Matrix are definitely Cyberpunk. The atmosphere is permeated with a sense of impending doom.” But which images and elements give the recipient this sense of foreboding? And what kind of influence to they have on the narrative? I will discuss these questions by examining the setting of Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” of 1982 in detail. Firstly I will name and describe the elements used for a typical Cyberpunk setting, and secondly I will display which influence they have on the narrative.

The first shot in “Blade Runner” shows Los Angeles at night  illuminated by its great many lights and occurring erupting fire pillars. The absence of moonlight or stars suggests a darker mood and underlines the infernal touch the fires of the factories give to the city. At first glance, it is obvious that the inhabitants don’t make a difference between night and day. The lights are on around the clock exhibiting people from numerous ethnic groups, colors and shapes. The streets are full at all times and flooded with gleaming stroboscopic lights, isolating the individual scamping with his perception. Huge omnipresent advertisement boards dominate the view and display the presence of companies existing in every aspect of life. Politicians and parties are extinct in a world where corporations wield the power to suppress everything and everyone. Those with power always have a “place in the sun” like the “Tyrell” corporation in their giant golden pyramids giving the impression of being the height of human civilization. The people who live literally at the bottom of the city have to live with Scott’s “endless” rain, unshielded in the dark alleys and slums of the city. The dark and sinister mood permeats the whole movie by using a film method named “low-key-style” to create and condense shadows at odd spaces. Even the characters appear latent and hidden in shadow as if being part of the setting.

These images give the Cyberpunk genre the essential detail for the world in which cyberpunks move, breathe and live. Some places in the setting are necessary for the course of conflict in a story. It is already known that many films novels have a detective flair or “film noir” atmosphere, because of the setting. Alleys, offices, slums and factory buildings give the characters substance in a story. But so is it the other way around. The setting cannot stand alone without its characters, because it is a medium which needs mass or the characters in this case in order to act and interact. The recipient is able to visualize these interactions, because he or she can imagine how it would feel to move in this kind city. It is necessary to say that the setting delivers us an impression how the protagonist perceives his surroundings. As a recipient, we have the chance to understand the insight of a cyberpunk more clearly when we understand in what kind of world the anti-hero developed in.

In cyberpunk novels and film, setting is often as much a character as the human and non-human characters. The dystopian futures are often nightmarish visions of imagined post-capitalist societies where large multinational corporations have more power than national governments. Grey skies and polluted air permeate Gibson’s novels; the famous opening line of Neuromancer describes a sky that is “a color of television, tuned to a dead channel”. Blade Runner and The Matrix both illustrate similar realities, and Snowcrash imagines a world where governance has been ceded to corporations and entrepreneurs.

This week’s discussion will focus on the idea of setting in cyberpunk novels and film. What is the effect of the crowded cityscapes, rain, eternal dusk or nighttime, neon signs, faceless masses and speeding rapid transit on the narrative? How do these elements contribute to the tone of the novels, and could they be said to be responsive characters in their own right? Write a 1-2 page paper on the settings of the cyberpunk novels and films in the curriculum and explore the questions raised above.

Please upload your piece as a blog post by Monday 28th of September, in preparation for the discussion on Wednesday 30th September. Please tag your post with the tags “Week 3″ and “scenery”, as well as any other tags you would like to add.

Image: Night City on Flickr,  by LordFerguson, CC BY-SA 2.0

Technically an anti-hero lacks the attributes of the hero, of the “knight in the shining armour” type. I believe that one particular aspect of not being a (classical) hero is the use deception, living double lives, etc.

In The Matrix, Neo lives a double life: he works a dull cubicle job by day, helps his landlady take out the garbage; by night he’s involved in illegal information trade. He is trapped into this double life and he looks for an exit: an answer and a saviour (Morpheus).

Neo is not the hero type, he chickens when Morpheus asks him to climb to the building’s roof to escape custody. Later he undergoes extensive training, to “free his mind,” to become functional.

In Neuromancer, Case was a hacker, but he was damaged, denied cyberspace and trapped into his body. That’s why his suicidal life in the Night City is like not his own, he works “meat” jobs; I could say that he’s trapped into a permanent dull day job. He is offered an exit and a fix for his neural damage to become functional.

“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.”

In both cases they are offered freedom, an escape from a prison. It is interesting to observe that while for Neo the prison is the Matrix, and for Case the prison is his own body; what is actually imprisoned is their minds.

MORPHEUS “The Matrix … is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
NEO “What truth?”
MORPHEUS “That you are … kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.”

Both are in this aspect freedom fighters, rebels by definition, portrayed as such by the systems they fight, that those systems underline their negative side, changing the audience’s perception on themselves.

I think that a characteristic of most anti-heros is their apparent shift from anti-hero to hero; I believe that this is actually the shift of the audience, which switches sides. Moreover, I believe that this switching makes big part of the enjoyment of reading or watching cyberpunk.