Cyberpunk

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Historical Backgrounds

Precursors

In AD 150 a book called Vera History, or True History, was written by Lucian de Samosata. It is the earliest known fiction which focused on interplanetary war and travel. The late 1600's was the next advent of pre-science fiction literature with works such as Voyage to the Moon and Gulliver's Travels. The best known precursor is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which tied in both the Romantic and Gothic themes found later. In the mid to late 1880's and 1890's, H. G. Wells and Jules Verne both began to comment on the cultural breakdown and and the deterioration of Victorian ideals.

Golden Age

With the beginning of the twentieth century, science fiction began to popularize as a genre with the publication of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories in 1926.

John Campbell's Astounding Stories in the late 1920's and 1930's led to a new aesthetic. These stories led to science fiction as being viewed as a credible representation of the influence of technology on culture. This time period came to be known as the Golden Age of science fiction, which continued on until the early 1940's.

New Wave

From 1946 to 1970, Michael Moorcock publishhed a magazine entitled New Worlds, which became synonymous with New Wave science fiction. New Wave S.F. was characterized by a high rate of experimentation, and often poked fun at standard pulp science fiction. From this time on, science fiction continued to explore the effects of technology on everyday life. Some good examples of authors in this period are Brian Aldiss and J. G. Ballard.

Thematic Periods

Isaac Asimov breaks science fiction into four different thematic time periods:

1928 to 1938: Adventure was the primary theme.

1938 to 1950: Science

1950 to 1965: Sociology

1966 to the present: Style

Cyberpunk

The subgenre of cyberpunk began forming at the beginning of the 1980's with short stories by literary authors such as Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Their works, such as Schismatrix and Neuromancer, embody the themes of previous science fiction as well as add new levels of technological interdependence and dystopia.

Literary Style

futuristic city

Setting

The setting in cyberpunk literature is urban, dark, and usually takes place in the future. It tends to portray the electronic elements of an underground society, blurring the boundary between human and machine. Much of cyberpunk writing takes place online, with characters connected to vast computer networks. In many other genres of fiction, the government holds control over the masses. Cyberpunk defies this, instead depicting the Corporation as the absolute power.

Characters

The protaganist in Cyberpunk literature usually plays the role of a detective, or some other individual in a "quest" role. These are played out mainly by computer hackers, or "console cowboys". Many of these roles are "anti-hero," where the main character is a criminal, outcast, or social deviant. Typically, they are constantly in motion, as evidenced by the character of Abelard Lindsay, in Bruce Sterling's cyberpunk classic Schismatrix.Their "quest" is many times non-rewarding; the protagonist frequentlly ends up in the same place that they started, the victim of some cruel manipulation.

Neuromancer Being

Language

The language in cyberpunk is slick, edgy, and grungy. It builds itself around the use of technology, and frequently invents new terminology and language that is only relevant to that particular novel. However, this is not always the case. An indication of the role of cyberpunk in pop culture can be seen in the term "cyberspace," which was a term coined by William Gibson. Other variations include "the matrix" and "the metaverse". A comprehensive list can be found at Cyberpunk slang.

Themes

Introduction

Themes inherent in cyberpunk have not changed much since its inset. Cyberpunk follows a person or group of people riding a type of change in technology, and how they interact with its effects normally both in a second reality (i.e. the net) and the primary reality.

Urban Living

Technology in many cyberpunk novels has evolved regular cities into urban areas without definition and countries without borders. Living in a city provides for a rich pool of alien characters and unique character types, minor factions and art forms that can brighten the background for the main character/characters. These characters then form part of the author's vision of the future, both good and bad. The lack of definition in borders allows the character to be able to slip into and out of the net without too much of a disturbance to the main character and the readership. While living in these territories, the reader is aware of the intrusion of corporations into daily life. People employed or controlled by these companies, and barriers put in place by these companies add another flavour to urban living, one of the individual being completely overshadowed by inhuman entities. Also conveyed is a loss of control in daily life for many of the residents of the cyberpunk world.

Technology

The futuristic technology of cyberpunk fiction is advanced to levels that often times verges on the perverse. The intermingling of humans and computers has progressed to the point that cyborgs are more common than natural humans, and the concept of post-humanism is common to the genre.

Drugs

Altering the given reality allows characters to experience more levels of being in addition to their primary and secondary realities. Generally a number of drugs are experienced or referenced, enhancing the characters capabilities or crippling them with addiction. Drugs in Cyberpunk

Decay

In addition to the many layers of interaction going on in a cyberpunk novel, much of the world is often falling apart. The reader gets an idea that the world has been built up over itself so many times that the surface is stable but the infrastructire is failing. These levels of decay may sometimes almost necessitate action on the part of the characters, either to better the system or to exploit a flaw. With this physical decay comes new diseases, often presented as evolved variants of present diseases. Decay often embodies the gothic element of past grandeur, of giant ornate things with haunted pasts. While focusing in on single elements within the story, gothic features often provide an appropriate backdrop: hopelessly antiquarian and crumbling because of it. Characters may often play out in the style of the old gothic novel as well, being infinitely insane or infinitely rich or both. See the Tessier Ashpool clan in Gibson's sprawl series: [[1]]

Punk

Many of the characters in a cyberpunk novel take the devil-may-care attitude that comes with the punk part of the title. The characters, in riding the change of technology, often seek to undermine the powers that be in order to see that change come to fruitition. This either manifests as open destruction or a covert scrapping of present technologies to create the new. These revolutions often end in the evolution that the main characters are seeking.

Augmentation

Much like the punk lifestyle, characters in a cyberpunk universe may rely on body/brain augmentation in order to make a statement or even function in their clique. Most common in cyberpunk literature are the abilities to plug in to some kind of net (or secondary reality), and the addition of software to heighten the senses. This type of augmentation also adds to the feeling of becoming posthuman, beings that have evolved so that they don’t rely on the same elements of reality that were vital to the predecessors. The epitome of all the augmentation in these novels would be characters of pure data, that only exist in some sort of secondary reality.

Conclusion

So many layers separate a good cyberpunk novel from a 1920’s science fiction “space opera.” With all the possible visions of the future, focusing on versions that incorporate the inevitable technological advances, along with the advancement of technology and the possible alienation of the human condition because of it, seems to be the most rife with original ideas. Surprisingly, most of these novels abandon the seemingly necessary nihilism that might come with a pure technological age and seem to bring hope for the future.

Cyberpunk Philosophy and Critical Theorists

William Burroughs, Post Humanism

Philosophy

Posthumanism

Post-humanist philosophy has grown in popularity within our mainstream cultures, as well as within Cyberpunk Literature. Throughout these various texts we are continuously asked: what makes us human? Post-humanism can be broken down into numerous sub-genres and philosophical movements, and is intertwined with similar theories, such as cybor-feminism. The post-human is the epitome of evolution. It is unconstrained by physical limits and able to compute infinite information.

Mapping human technological progress

Singularity

Many Cyberpunk authors use the philosophy of Singularity when looking at technological advances in our history and our future. This philosophy centers around the belief that technological advances in our world, such as music recording, the automobile, or cyber technology, (etc.), completely change our sphere of existence. These ground breaking events in technology can not be predicted, but they will most certainly change the way we relate and behave to each other and our surroundings.