The Prophets of Cyberspace: A rough guide to cyberpunk
In the late seventies a new flavour of science fiction began to take shape. Its earliest ancestors had first appeared in both “new age” science fiction and the authors of the beat generation. In the intervening time it had slowly formed a new definition for itself through the works of J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick, until reaching a point in the early eighties when the cultural obsession with excess and mass media provided the perfect literary genesis pool for the emerging counter culture prophets of cyberpunk.
Abandoning galaxy spanning empires and laser toting aliens in favour of the more familiar settings of abandoned territories and near future cities, like neon wombs breeding cybernetic street gangs, corporate warriors and digital pop stars. Cyberpunk takes us into worlds not that far beyond the horizon from our own. Deeply entrenched in the familiar with elements just alien enough that they might be happening in another city somewhere, just on the other side of tomorrow. In the three decades since its first predictions we can clearly see that they prophesised the popularity of reality television and the total pervasion of the internet happened somewhere between Bruce Sterling’s The Artificial Kid and William Gibson’s Cyber Space Trilogy.
With much of the traditional fictitious elements of cyberpunk having become parts of our everyday lives it comes of no surprise that many other brands of modern science fiction carry these same elements that are associated with cyberpunk without fully submersing themselves into the stream. Such as The Matrix, which only barely walks the outskirts, having themes and motifs more in common with post-apocalyptic or machine war SF. Like all mimics of any punk movement, they wear the colours but run in different circles. Cyberpunk was never just a collection of hacker stories set in glass walled cities and the slums that surround them. It’s a voice and an ethos defined by the very culture that birthed it, where the corporate world has adopted the methods and tactics of street culture in a setting that is thrown at us, where chapters read like scenes in a film, some barely clocking in at a page, and the books themselves pace as though measured in frames per second. The prose itself charges along in mbps between street speak and stream of consciousness. If you are interested in running deep in this pure flavour, books like Snow Crash and Blood Music deliver in spades. If you are a sci-fi cinema junkie, Cypher, New Rose Hotel and Natural City are undiluted, cut straight from the source.
For me nothing sits closer to the heart of cyberpunk than the literary channel surfing of Mirrorshades and Burning Chrome. Short story compilations birthed straight from the neon womb in portions engineered for the short attention span generation that shared its childhood.
Abandoning galaxy spanning empires and laser toting aliens in favour of the more familiar settings of abandoned territories and near future cities, like neon wombs breeding cybernetic street gangs, corporate warriors and digital pop stars. Cyberpunk takes us into worlds not that far beyond the horizon from our own. Deeply entrenched in the familiar with elements just alien enough that they might be happening in another city somewhere, just on the other side of tomorrow. In the three decades since its first predictions we can clearly see that they prophesised the popularity of reality television and the total pervasion of the internet happened somewhere between Bruce Sterling’s The Artificial Kid and William Gibson’s Cyber Space Trilogy.
With much of the traditional fictitious elements of cyberpunk having become parts of our everyday lives it comes of no surprise that many other brands of modern science fiction carry these same elements that are associated with cyberpunk without fully submersing themselves into the stream. Such as The Matrix, which only barely walks the outskirts, having themes and motifs more in common with post-apocalyptic or machine war SF. Like all mimics of any punk movement, they wear the colours but run in different circles. Cyberpunk was never just a collection of hacker stories set in glass walled cities and the slums that surround them. It’s a voice and an ethos defined by the very culture that birthed it, where the corporate world has adopted the methods and tactics of street culture in a setting that is thrown at us, where chapters read like scenes in a film, some barely clocking in at a page, and the books themselves pace as though measured in frames per second. The prose itself charges along in mbps between street speak and stream of consciousness. If you are interested in running deep in this pure flavour, books like Snow Crash and Blood Music deliver in spades. If you are a sci-fi cinema junkie, Cypher, New Rose Hotel and Natural City are undiluted, cut straight from the source.
For me nothing sits closer to the heart of cyberpunk than the literary channel surfing of Mirrorshades and Burning Chrome. Short story compilations birthed straight from the neon womb in portions engineered for the short attention span generation that shared its childhood.
