Talk:Cyberpunk

The Long Tomorrow?

I think it might be worth mentioning the 1975 comic The Long Tomorrow by Dan O'Bannon and Moebius. The comic has been listed as a source of inspiration for both William Gibson and Ridley Scott. Given that it covers most of the usual tropes and was notably early and influential, I think there's a chance this should be included.

American white Guild clutters the article

Many sections in the article reference some weird race and imagined-cultural appropriation shit, that can upset reader not trapped in US identity politics and Neo-Marxism. Please delete this as it makes the article unnecessarily stressful and US-view centric biased, keeping in mind that no one else on this planet cares about US-white guild. 2A01:598:B186:99CC:5B61:CB26:BA6E:7F3 (talk) 22:42, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Orientalism is a large part of the genre's history. It's not "america-centric": the section directly talks about a Japanese director taking inspiration from Hong Kong. 'Cultural appropriation' is never mentioned.

The seminal cyberpunk works took heavy inspiration from China and particularly Japan, they were a product of the period of seeming Japanese industrial technological dominance before the Lost Decade and the unique socioeconomic conditions prevelent in East Asia at the time. This doesn't make them inherently Orientalist, but it's undeniable that Blade Runner has at best one significant Asian character, but introduces its world with a massive billboard of a Japanese woman in traditional garb advertising Coke.

If I do have to levy one criticism to the section, it would be its understatement of the influence Japanese works themselves had on the cyberpunk setting/aesthetic. Ghost in the Shell is mentioned but not other major pieces like Akira, I understand the focus is on the Western protrayal of cyberpunk worlds but those worlds were not built solely from Western influences. If we wish to keep the section's focus on only Western cyberpunk then it is fine as is, maybe a reference to Ex Machina as an example of a more recent cyberpunk work that is aware of this critique of the genre and examines it as one of its core themes? 80.42.155.148 (talk) 03:46, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

"Please delete this as it makes the article unnecessarily stressful" – um, Wikipedia is not a safe space ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:44, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Cyberpunk Doesn't Have to be Bad

The theme of cyberpunk is always associated with being dystopian and societal collapse. But personally, I like the cyberpunk city ambience, and I don't think societal collapse/dystopia needs to be apart of it in order for the ambience to remain freaking cool. Tickbeat (talk) 23:07, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

A more narrow approach

When Neuromancer came out in 1984, cyberpunk was considered more narrowly. Remember that in 1984, home personal computers were still unusual, and the public was fascinated with the notion of integrating this technology in everyday life.

All science fiction deals with the impact of technology on society, but what distinguishes cyberpunk is its focus on artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and cybernetics and how that's been blended into everyday elements of culture with which we are well familiar.

Cyberpunk blends the borders between countries so that cultural distinctions are mixed and blended together in a way that's odd, in a way that still allows us to identify different cultures by today's standards while at the same time alien to us. Robert Asprin's The Cold Cash War we can figures the whole concept of nations by substituting corporations for countries so that one doesn't belong to a country but to a company. In other novels, things will be blended together that don't seem like they ought to go together, e.g. a monastery of Buddhist monk computer programmers.

Other science fiction works have borrowed this cultural blending from cyberpunk, e.g. the Firefly series. While that is not cyberpunk, because it does not emphasize computer technology, it has borrowed the cultural element blending from cyberpunk.

Under this conception, Frank Herbert's Dune would not be considered cyberpunk. The whole point of Dune is that there are no such things as computers or robots or AI. Dune is anti-cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk also tends to focus on the dystopia effects of technology on Earth. While movies like Blade Runner acknowledge offworld colonies, the focus is on how the urban landscape of Earth's cities has changed as a result of misuse and overuse of computer technology, creating a kind of "beautiful blight." If we start considering Asimov's Foundation and Herbert's Dune as cyberpunk novels, then almost all science fiction is cyberpunk, at which point the term loses any distinction.

Cyberpunk has an urban, "neon style" that can be felt even in the writing. One doesn't have to see a movie or a comic book to visualize the uncomfortable IT integration with elements of culture that are familiar to us in the concomitant cultural mixtures that has created. Cyberpunk creates a landscape that is both beautiful and uncomfortable at the same time. Cyberpunk is very visual, with or without illustration. It includes distinctive visual art elements as well as written. Geraldpriddle (talk) 17:51, 24 September 2024 (UTC)