Timesplitters 2's Neo Tokyo inspired me to write up a Dark/AU Cyberpunk fic. I have the entire plot formulated in my head, but there's one question that has bugged me when I opened up word:

Just how would I exactly open up a Cyberpunk setting? How do I open up a city into the dark, futuristic setting? What would be the best way to show that advanced technology is corrupting the populace of the city from underneath itself?

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In the words of one of the greats:

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

That is how the masters do it. In that one sentence, you know exactly what kind of tone you're looking at, and you have a pretty good idea what kind of world you're stepping into. Don't worry about specifics, worry about how it feels. The city's ugly plastic veins and it's copper blood. The discarded plastic acne that covers the street. Et cetera.

As for what to add... that depends. Don't add too much—you can easily go to far—but don't be afraid of whatever you think fits the setting. To use Neuromancer as an example; there are open-ground space stations, sentient/sapient AIs, and full-psyche computer-immersion. And yet, if it had been written with a more upbeat tone, it wouldn't have codified the genre like it did. To fit the cyberpunk mold, it's best to have advanced tech, but at its heart, Cyberpunk is future-noir. Things are gritty, dirty, and dark, and people are just making do as they can in a world that cares increasingly less how they feel.

"Cyberpunk" gets misused a lot, but that's the traditional, Neuromancer/Blade Runner style.

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That seems pretty good. I'll just focus more on the corruption of a cyberpunk society and how the criminal underworld undermines it.

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Put 0's and 1's everywhere.
Just scatter 'em through the entire story.
And have every character respond to every situation with, "I never asked for this."

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Traditional Cyberpunk of William Gibson's era was corporate heavy, and an emphasis on style and brand over talent and efficacy. Why do something if you weren't going to look good accomplishing or failing? It spawned terms like Eurotrash and nanowire weapons. These days, you don't necessarily have to look the part, but you have to have the gear, the wetworks. Also, taking an extrapolation of something quite mundane, or seeing some of the bleeding edge or cutting edge of technological research and applying it in a post-modern style would be really awesome.

You don't have to make a socio-political statement; just talk about what is. No soap-boxing is a requirement.

Mix old tech with new tech.

Emphasize wealth disparity and how the low-lifers are hacking lowtech gear to acheive new tech power.

The emotional landscape is pretty stark, typically.

Use a lot of brands. When it was Neuromancer, Karl-Ziess and Nikon lenses abounded.

My favourite cyberpunk other than the aforementioned Neuromancer and Burning Chrome are Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

and The Otherland Series by Tad Williams.

Some cool anime I've watched recently with cyberpunk flavour are the Mardoc Scramble OVA

and Kill la Kill.

Another huge thing is the involvement of the military industrial complex.

Last thing I can think of isn't the need for grit and realism, although that is important in highlighting wealth disparity, but rather, realistic human consumerism. People are on one hand lazy and pedestrian; any tech that will make their life more entertaining or easier will be successful. At the same time, scientific acheivement bolstered by bottomless corporate greed isn't the always the enemy; they just provide the infrastructure for the big bad to exploit.

3444061 I personally wouldn't call Snow Crash "cyberpunk" in the traditional sense. Someone I knew called it "post-cyberpunk," which they basically described as "cyberpunk that's not totally hopeless." I'd say that most modern cyberpunk falls under that mode far more than the traditional one.

And... Kill la Kill? I'm... not sure I follow.

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Nah that's Steampunk. You can tell by the Victorian-style of Twilight's clothing and gear.

3444174 I like steampunk better, just a personal preference

wub

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Fair enough. That Cyberpunk Vinyl Scratch image looks awesome though. And I do like the Steampunk Twi image.

3444189 I like them both as well, dystopian universes interest me #bioshock

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Can I ask a question?

What are all of the major differences between steampunk and cyberpunk?

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Cyberpunk is a genre based upon technological innovations that spring from our modern age of the Internet, whereas Steampunk is a genre based upon technological innovations from a alternate version of Victorian-era technology.

source

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1) It can be either 'Steampunk' or 'Steam Punk' since those are considered cosmetic differences.
2) Don't know.

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Did some Googling.

Bethke was actively trying to invent a new term that grokked the juxtaposition of punk attitudes and high technology

Bethke being the author of a book called ... Cyberpunk, from which the resulting genre got its name. And then "steampunk" came after Cyberpunk (according to Wikipedia) and was named such for being similar, but with steam instead of cyber.

I also discovered this gem from Sky Dance's source.

While Cyberpunk deals with "High Tech and Low Life" Steampunk usually deals with the opposite, Low Tech and High Morals.

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I wasn't aware that hopelessness was a requirement of cyberpunk; I thought that was just a requirement of post-modernism? So, we're into post-post modernism? LOL.

I thought cyberpunk was mostly about dystopian near futures that feature classic anti-heroes, eployed in a manner to highlight massive cultural and societal technoshock brought on by rampant and uncontrolled advances of invasive technology?

Kill la Kill uses "life thread" which struck me as very close to a technological modification that enhances the human condition, and the deterioration of the human soul is offset only when the technology itself also possesses a soul. Ryuuko is a classic anti-hero (she's pretty much a yankee) fighting against a culture (Satsuki-chan of Honnouji High) that has been brought about by an uncontrolled technological advancement that resulted in an invasive physical enhancement (in the Godrobes). That's what made me think of it as somewhat cyberpunkish.

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Cyberpunks ultimately end up being Shaggy Dog Stories with a chance of post-Cyberpunk happening.

3444288 I think you're mischaracterizing postmodernism, but I'm less acquainted with it, so I'll let it slide.

Classical cyberpunk is almost never upbeat. It might crack a joke, but it doesn't smile. It's about a decaying, rotting world, with technology being the bacteria that eat away at the corpse. It's supposed to be unpleasant and disturbing, and recognizable enough that you can see pieces of it around you when you walk through NYC or Tokyo.

I'd say KlK is much closer to post-cyberpunk, though I'd personally dispute even that. Compare it to Blade Runner, for instance. A big part of classic cyberpunk is the tone, and there are not nearly enough bloody Harrison Ford fist fights in the rain for me to consider KlK to be cyberpunk.

KlK also doesn't focus on the small-scale effects of technology all that much. Sure, there's the "world's ending" thing, but it's big and remote, and except for the climactic moment, it doesn't really have an effect on normal life. Though KlK certainly does play with class conflict, it's more related to an authoritarian system which just happens to outfit its enforcers with advanced "tech". A similar situation could arise if Satsuki had a stockpile of nukes or an army of tanks. What we see is more focused on a grand conflict, and while later on the morality of things blurs a bit, I wouldn't say that it matches the cyberpunk mode, post- or otherwise.

3444259 Because the world is typically quite unfriendly.

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So, we're into post-post modernism?

Yes, that's exactly what some academics are now arguing. Post-Modernism stems firstly from French literary theory following WWII, and made its rounds across the world several times. It's earliest ideas within literature was that only the meaning an audience gains from work is significant, so as a school it puts significantly less, and even no, emphasis on authorial intent. Taken more broadly and why the phenomenon became so popular was that after WWII, people suffered mass disillusion with secularist ideologies. Capitalism had brought all the nasty things of industrialization along with the good things, but the bad things came first and there was little inherent basis of charity or philanthropy within early capitalistic systems though. Then communism arose and got it's great debut in places like the Soviet Union. Stalin ended up killing more people than Hitler. Fascism and Nazism were effectively ideologies that were against both capitalism and communism. These ideologies effectively blew up in the faces of those that followed them. Or in Mussolini's case, hung naked from the rafters of a house by an angry mob.

So, with no ideology to turn to, seeing as how Europeans had already started giving up on judicious adherence to religion, just about everyone on the continent was subject and amenable to post-modernism which posited that there is no inherent meaning in the world and that things shall therefore degrade as no ideal holds the realist impact by which to brace the crumbling walls of society.

Then people started to realize what they were agreeing to, and how utterly useless it is both in academia and life, and are once again arguing the potential of some functional ideological stance.

Now, as for the subject of post-cyberpunk, I like to understand it in terms of my favorite science fiction stories, and my favorite fantasy stories.

I like fantasy stories that end with all those involved absolutely horrified with the terrors unleashed by the powers they themselves had, and by the end, possibly no longer possess. It's essentially the moment where the characters realize that the fantasy is over, and they now have to deal with the implications of their powers. (Be it 1000 year long lifespans of elves, communing with extra-dimensional beings of heaven and hell, the ability to shoot fireballs, or whatever else you fancy.)

In science fiction, I like the stories when the world that had grown so mechanical, utilitarian, cold, and hopeless even with the great technologies they possess effectively stumble on something they forgot. Call it compassion, empathy or even heart. I like science fiction stories where by the end the characters that understood their powers but couldn't use it for good are now able to do so.

Effectively, my favorite science fiction stories are basically inherently post-cyberpunk. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. I prefer "World is ending" to be for fantasy.

Basically, it's the cost I impose for "It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit."

Oh? So you're not going to explain to me the broader implications of a person being able to regrow limbs by speaking a few words, but spends all their time out cutting limbs off?

Effectively, I view a post-cyberpunk character as one who's been-there-done-that with the usual tools, and yet still feels like there's something more.

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LOL Shaggy wut?

I read my brothers' Gibson stuff and some Stirling, but both gave me the the feeling something similar to post-modern existentialism, which isn't quite as bleak as to be completely steeped in despair.

I wonder if cyberpunk in Japan is the same as cyberpunk elsewhere. I mean, I've been watching Tomodachi wa Mahou and it's even more hilarious for some odd reason. I also think they cleaned up MLP:FiM and addded some extra frames, even if it was just for a few seconds (I guess that would mean at least 72 frames?)

I wasn't even aware that there was postcyberpunk. If it's a derivative, does it mean that it's no longer cyberpunk? The wiki interpretation of Lawrence Person's essay on slashdot advocating postcyberpunk simply said it's the same but without the dystopian requirement... I guess this is where I'm mentally left in the dust EDIT:, because the society of Snow Crash, both the destroyed North America and the hacker haven of Treehouse, seemed to me to be almost like a post-utopia (or rather, a post-apocalyptic dystopia.) I mean, North America's been sliced up between corporations and disparate American institutions... how is that not like blade runner? I mean, Hiro drove a supercar as a pizza delivery guy, and Deckard drove a hover car as a goverment sanctioned Private Investigator...

I edited the above out after I realized I was mixing up Snow Crash and Otherland, lol, but left it spoilered so you could read my stupidity.

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A Shaggy Dog Story where no matter what the protagonist does, an anti-climax in the story willl render all of that character's efforts useless. If it opened up as a crapsack world, then it will remain as a crapsack world with nothing done to help it.

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You distracted me at "crapsack" lol.

So the world sucks and continues to suck even though the protagonist tried to change it? I thought the protagonist of cyberpunk stories didn't give a rat's behind for the world, but wanted to change their own circumstances for the better?

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I probably only listed one consequence of the goal of the protagonist, but the protagonist usually ends up doing nothing for him/herself and the world.

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So what you're saying is that for something to be cyberpunk, there has to be a measure of post-modern futility? Because Gibson's work never struck me as an exercise in realizing one's own futility, but maybe I should read them again (I read them when I was maybe twelve.)

I blame the hippies for post-modernism, lol.

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I'm still new with Cyberpunk...

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As a professional editor of science fiction, I applaud that comment.

It feels like that. Every damn day.

It depends on what kind of dark, bleak world you're going for. Is it a straight up dystopia, or a utopia which has taken away freedom and humanity? I'd focus on how technology has consumed human emotions, making us more comfortable with a screen than an actual person, meaning we're less empathetic towards others.

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Guy going by MrBtongue on youtube does a lot of cool videos. He did one on Cyberpunk, actually. Might be worth checking out.