Cyberpunk course

It is commonly known that heroes differ from ordinary people, because of their righteous sense of moral to stand up against evil, to use their special abilities to help those in need and their development from “zero” to “hero”. But what is with the protagonists in Cyberpunk stories? How does he or she become a hero or more precisely an anti-hero? Being often an anti-hero doesn’t categorize him or her as good or evil or black and white. The borders are grayish and leave room to speculate out of “what” the typical cyberpunk is made of. In order to establish a conclusion I will compare and contrast the personalities and character developments of  “Neuromancer”‘s Case and “The Matrix”‘ Neo. I will proceed with extracting their similarities in these aspects and show if there is an archetype cyberpunk who repeatedly appears in most movies and novels.

Henry Dorsett Case was once a renown hacker in the underground world of Chiba City who provided his employers with stolen information and data of corporations. After trying to steal from his last employer and getting caught was he punished for his theft by poisoning his nervous- system with a mycotoxin which prevents him to use his “brain- computer interface” and diving into the global computer network of cyberspace. Unsuccessful in finding a cure, Case has to give up his former profession and vegetates on the fringe of the living, highly addicted to drugs, unemployed and suicidal.  He is saved by the offer of an ex- military soldier named Armitage and his mercenary fighter Molly Millions who offers him a cure in exchange for his services as “console cowboy”. Case accepts this deal and undergoes the surgery to his rehabilitation. He soon learns that sacs of the same poison which crippled him in the first place have been positioned in his blood vessels to poison him slowly anew. Case doesn’t have a choice than to work with Armitage who promised to let the sacs be removed as soon as Case is done with his work. His nihilistic attitude at the beginning  accounts for the self-destructive nature of punks as we know them. His disrespect for authorities confirms his actions towards the corporations or his last employer. He does not undergo a great personality change as we see it with other classical heroes. Throughout the book Case is self- centered, because he only tries to help himself. Mostly all of his actions are driven by the one desire to free himself from dependency. At first he is dependent on Armitage and then he is dependent on Wintermute. The AI who used Armitage to get the aids to merge with his other AI half Neuromancer.

Thomas A. Anderson his a computer specialist who leads a double life as a computer programmer in a respectable firm and as a hacker under the name of Neo who steals kinds of important data and sells them. At one evening he wakes up at his computer and finds a mysterious message which tells him to follow the “white rabbit” to get answers to his questions. His path leads him to Trinity his first contact to Morpheus crew, to his first encounter with the “bad guy” Agent Smith and at last to Morpheus. Morpheus gives Neo, as he is now referred to, the choice to choose the red pill (finding out what the Matrix is) and the blue pill (forgetting the incident and continue his usual life). Neo chooses the red pill thus leaves the Matrix and undergoes a kind of “rebirth” of his true body. Shortly after, he gets saved by Morpheus’ crew and gets medicated to rehabilitate  his neglected body. Neo recovers and begins his training with his new mentor. Morpheus explains Neo that the reason why he felt that the world was “wrong” comes from the fact that the reality he lived in is not real. Machines won against humans in the last great war and subdued them to slavery in order to use them as energy source. Neo denies this truth at first, but then realizes that de does not have the choice to turn his back from it. His training resumes and Morpheus tells him about the prophecy of the “Chosen One” by the oracle. He believes that Neo is will become this destined man and free all humans out of their slavery. Although Neo has doubts his course of actions lead him to the path of becoming the “One” and rescuing Morpheus from the treachery of his crew member Cypher. Neo is driven by his unanswered questions and the discovery of truth. The beginning of the movie shows that Neo’s life itself was a lie. He was a lonesome man who lived two lives to a shallow extent and always looked for a reason why he felt the world was “off”. The discovery of the ultimate truth of the Matrix changes Neo in many ways. He opens up to people, finds strength and courage where there was not any and cares for the well being of others.

To cyberpunks information seems to be especially essential for their personal motivations and the development of their character in the storyline. Both Case and Neo deal with data and information in their “underground” businesses. As hackers they share the attitude not to follow the rules society gives them and feel confident that no one can trace them and harm them. But as soon as the first mistake happens do both have to deal with the consequences. Case gets caught stealing from his employer and Neo gets caught by the Agents. Sooner or later they come to the one point where they are not in the position to make an important choice which concern their lives. These new information force Case  to work for Armitage and disobey him and Neo to forget his ordinary life, because of taking the life-altering red pill. Of course do Case and Neo differ from each other greatly when looking at their personal traits and further motivation. On the one hand does Case not become an altruistic character like Neo at the end and only tries to solve his own problems. Neo on the one hand is interested in the Matrix for his own benefit, but changes as he sympathizes with Trinity and Morpheus, excepts his fate as the “One” and helps to rescue mankind from the reign of machines for the benefit of others.

I find it difficult to say if there is an archetype classical cyberpunk which applies to the characters like Neo and Case. There are specific character traits which makes a character fit into a Cyberpunk story, but not ultimately an hundred pro cent cyberpunk. It would be foolish to say that there is something like a pure cyberpunk character, because the example of Case and Neo shows that two characters of Cyberpunk don’t have to be very similar in order to be cyberpunks. The one is just a little more “punk” and the other is a little more “cyber”.

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?

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.

I must admit to feeling like a total novice in answering this question. I mean, if I knew the answer to this in Week 1 before our first discussion, I wouldn’t be signed up for the course! I read Do Androids Dream for the first time last week. I’ve seen The Matrix movies (Matrices?), read a little Neal Stephenson, and seen things like Serial Experiments: Lain (which is truly fabulous). What unites works like these? And what separates them from science fiction? I’ll probably unknowingly disagree with some cyberpunk experts out in the ether, but…

1. Many of these stories scream “prophetic warning” to me. They seem to be meant to jar you and I from our easy thinking about how dandy a life filled with increasingly advanced technologies will be. The problems technologies create can be philosophical or moral (Do Androids Dream, and I suppose I, Robot), or threats against life itself (Terminator comes to mind). Cyberpunk seems to be asking, ‘do you really want to go here? Let me show you what you’re asking for…’ On the other hand, much of sci-fi seems to reinforce the narrative that technology will make things better (e.g., in the future Star Trek world no one needs or uses money.)

2. The heroes begin the tale not knowing they are heroes. This isn’t a particularly cyberpunk quality, I suppose – the trait that unites Neo, Luke Skywalker, Paul Atreides, and Harry Potter is that they all come slowly, unbelievingly, and hesitantly to their gifts. It’s a tale that is delicious to many – that I might one day wake up as a normal Joe and go to bed that night having learned that I am The One, have the force, am the Kwisatz Haderach, or am a wizard. But as I said, this seems to be a trait shared by much of sci-fi as well. Does cyberpunk have a special angle on this?

3. Finally, although I can hear people throwing things even as I type the phrase, cyberpunk seems to have a very Christian sensibility about it. By this I mean that when you consider the audience of most of Christ’s messages, they were the outcast fringe of society. He spoke to them almost exclusively, ignoring those who were wealthy, popular, or had “made it” from society’s perspective, trying to instill in the wretches the belief that even the most boring, mundane person matters and can make a difference. Cyberpunk seems to also celebrate the fringe, the nerd, the cubicle-warrior, and focus on what they are able to do and how valuable to society they are. In contrast, many sci-fi heroes are perfectly respectable contributors to society (e.g., Hari Seldon is a math professor).

Well, this is a slightly embarrassing contribution, but not as embarrassing as not contributing at all! I’m looking forward to our discussion Wednesday…

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.