As you can see in the headline I didn’t manage to get the whole comic done up till today. The second part will be posted at the weekend.

I hope that you will like my work even if it’s not done yet. Enjoy!

But before you read a short synopsis:

The story is set around thirty years from now in the States. The pharmaceutical corporation named “INSOMINA” is in charge of everything a powerful corporation can take control of. INSOMNIA being head of the state, legalized scientific experiments on humans. They began including children in their experiments as well and discovered something very unique about their brains.

The nerve tracts and parts in the brain resonsible for the storage of information are in a growing stage and can manipulated by their scientific methods. The first biological “experience” storage was created, by infusing a child’s brain with the information one wants to store. After storing the nerve tracts and cells of the child’s brain, containg the information gets removed or “harvested” and implanted into the brain of one of INSOMNIA’s scientists who fits the donator the most.

Everyone who tries to save these children from their terrible fate will be persecuted.

But there is one man who hates INSOMNIA so much that he will take that risk.

I’m sorry if the synopsis is kinda vague. I will update this post and correct all mistakes I made.

The first pages of the comic can be found on my deviant art page.

http://luckyprophet.deviantart.com/gallery/

Please let me know if it doesn’t work!!

P.S: It begins with BLAZE Part1: The Boy. After that P2,…etc.

Week 5 – New Punks

In a genre where the imagined future is just a few years from realised reality, contemporary cyberpunk writing sits in an interesting space. This week, we’ll be examining Cory Doctorow’s I, Robot and Neal Stephenson’s  Snow Crash.  I, Robot is significantly shorter that Snow Crash, but it would be interesting to look at similarities and differences in the imagery, themes and narrative arc of the two stories. Do they have any factors in common that the earlier works do not? Are the worlds that they imagine any different to the worlds that writers like Gibson and Sterling imagine? Do they share moral imperatives? Are there any distinguishing characteristics to more recent cyberpunk that may not feature as strongly in the older, more classic cyberpunk?

If you could upload your pieces as a blog post by the end of Monday the 12th October, then we’ll have a day to read and comment before Wednesday the 14th’s discussion. Please tag your work with the tags Week 5, Doctorow, Stephenson and any other tags you might feel are appropriate.

Image: A Cup of Robots by striatic on Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The title for this essay comes from an inspiration the documentary “Punk’s Not Dead” by Susanne Dynner gave me. It proves that punks are indeed “not dead” and are demonstrated with various music genres in American culture. So if critics  declare Cyberpunk for dead, they will be surprised that there are many forces who try to prove them wrong. Creative Cyberpunk writers are out there, many surely still undiscovered, contemplating about mankind’s future relationship with science, technology, computers, robots and the lot. I will describe with the help of the following short advertisement about “Cybermobbing” or “Cyberbullying” that not only writers make precautions or warnings for the future.

“Werbung gegen Cybermobbing“

This advertisement produced by order of the European Union the  shows how a victim becomes insulted and bullied by hostile class mates in the cyberspace of the Internet. The degree of harm might be kept within a limit in this example. The threshold to “Cyberterrorism” is stunningly low, when people consider doing worse than bullying and aim to damage others on a much severer level. The extent of harm caused would be the only difference. It shows that even the government by taking measures to inform society, is aware of  the threat ruthless skilled computer users could do to political, social and economic entities. If punks roam the street and are up to no good people can call the police and get help in most situations. But cyberpunks don’t have to worry about “Internet” police trying to catch them. If skilled enough they could cause “cyber-mayhem” being invisible and leaving no trace.

In my opinion many crucial themes in Cyberpunk deal with mankind crossing borders in science and technology and not knowing the negative outcome it could have. Nearly every Cyberpunk story deals with the aftermath of terrible mistakes done by people who hold power, scientists ignoring ethnic condemnable questions or using advanced technology for a “bad” cause. It makes the issues Cyberpunk is about relevant to us, because as users  we can always make wrong decisions regarding the application of technology. Cyberpunk which does not always try to entertain can be seen as comments about the progress of science and technology when misused. As science fiction fans we could imagine serious Cyberpunk novelists as “Vulcans” trying to display and educate inexperienced humans about what might happen if you make the wrong decision at the wrong time.

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

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

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”.

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/