Is it done? Has it had it's day? Is it, like skinny piano ties and shoulder pads an artifact best left in the 80's? Should we treasure the genre as it was but decide that we don't need to make anymore?

Question:
Is CP over?

Choices:
Yes, leave it in the 80's
No, I want my brain haxxorred right now!
Colin Peters For-Evah! CP, baby! CP!

 

I'm sure the father would suggest it was essentially over (for him) the moment the journalist's label stuck to the kids' trench coats.

As WG pointed out, these days reality became stranger than fiction...

Cyberpunk died the day Snowcrash came out.

quote:

Colin Peters For-Evah! CP, baby! CP!

Hah.

For the record, I would say yes and no. Yes, in that the trappings of cyberpunk, which are the things most people identify with it (the slick neon soaked streets, the mirrorshades, the decks and the matrix, the street-samurai) have become attached to the 80s. They're the 80s version of the future, just like Gernsbeck was the 50s version.

On the other hand, the underlying themes of embracing modification of the self (body and mind); technology as unpredictable, street-level and dirty; corporatism and the ineffectiveness of government; etc. can still play a part in modern fiction. At least, I believe they can.

Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

This was the sign that Cyberpunk was subsumed by the money machine, a fate worse than death.

quote:

Originally posted by Psychophant:
Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

At the time I enjoyed it as "cyberpunk", but on reflection, and having read more Stephenson, I thought it was a pastiche of cyberpunk. Stephenson's genre, if he has one, is "pastiche", in as much as most of his books read like pastiches of other genres.

Cyberpunk was a collection of futurist perspectives expressed by sci-fi writers like, for great and brave example, "James Triptree, Jr", who wished to and succeeded at writing genuinely fine prose literature that sold as sci-fi.

Neuromancer rocked the sci-fi world because it was so GOOD, not because it was 'cyberpunk'.

Cyberpunk died, like all genres, the day it became a genre. By the time noir became recognized as noir, noir was over. By the time American hard-boiled private-eye fiction became recognized as such, it was over.

By "over", I mean as a recognizable artistic style that achieved a certain effect, at a certain standard level, upon its audience.

This might be part of why Star Wars Continued sucked so badly. It wasn't just Lucas' indulgence; it was that Star Wars had single-handedly launched a genre in the same way Neuromancer launched a genre (despite Ridley's Bladerunner beating el Gib to ze paunch).

By the time Lucas returned to Star Wars, the genre had surpassed itself. (Which is why I believe Gib will never try and do 'another Neuromancer'.)

All that said, there have been and will be yet be, albeit rarely, things like The Matrix, "the ultimate cyberpunk artifact", that perfectly encapsulate 'cyberpunkana' much as Miller's Crossing celebrated noir (Chandler, friends, and clones) and, more importantly, the *roots* of noir (Hammett, at least), brilliantly, convincingly, fully satisfyingly, in non-noir living color. They collated a few things and made something newly old. Miller's Crossing was as good as The Maltese Falcon, in a manner resembling a phoenix rising out of The Fatman's B&W gut like Alien, taking no prisoners and eating its babies alive.

Indeed, Gibson took Chandleresque proto-anti-hero-ism, 60s New Wave sci-fi literary ambitiousness, and the first heavy cultural fog of Post-Modern ennui, and reformed it into something that was recognizably all of these AND way better than just the sum of all its parts.

That's Kenmeerian Cyberpunk critical review.

(Indy Jones redux? The genre was never 'established'. No one could ever replicate or expand upon it. They tried but failed. After a few years, Indy wannabes disappeared. They didn't have 'It'. Thus my confident high hopes in Indy # 4.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kenmeer livermaile,

quote:

Originally posted by Psychophant:
Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

This was the sign that Cyberpunk was subsumed by the money machine, a fate worse than death.

Wow...

wow.

quote:

Originally posted by Kradlum:

quote:

Originally posted by Psychophant:
Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

At the time I enjoyed it as "cyberpunk", but on reflection, and having read more Stephenson, I thought it was a pastiche of cyberpunk. Stephenson's genre, if he has one, is "pastiche", in as much as most of his books read like pastiches of other genres.

I'd say that's true. Maybe that's part of what I feel holds him back a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by Psychophant:
Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

This was the sign that Cyberpunk was subsumed by the money machine, a fate worse than death.

Wow...

wow.

Well, remember that Al Gore was inventing the internet at this time. Another aspect of what doomed cyberpunk was its chief architects' ridiculously high quality of prophecy.

Space travel died; computers roared. NASA, for most of us, is something that provides amazingly cool images that we view... over the internet.

Wanna see *real* cyber-space? Go check out Hubble sites. (As you ponder those images, recall how Neuro and Count Zero both faded out into interstellar conceptual space, eh?)

quote:

Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by Psychophant:
Snowcrash still kept a lot of "cool factor" cred.

This was the sign that Cyberpunk was subsumed by the money machine, a fate worse than death.

Wow...

wow.

Well, remember that Al Gore was inventing the internet at this time. Another aspect of what doomed cyberpunk was its chief architects' ridiculously high quality of prophecy.

Space travel died; computers roared. NASA, for most of us, is something that provides amazingly cool images that we view... over the internet.

Wanna see *real* cyber-space? Go check out Hubble sites. (As you ponder those images, recall how Neuro and Count Zero both faded out into interstellar conceptual space, eh?)

Neuro and Mona, dude. Neuro and Mona...

Neuro and Mona, dude. Neuro and Mona...

(reinterpreting classic Woody Allen line):

Now you're messing with my hobby. Screwing up the details is what I *do*.

quote:

AN END TO CYBERPUNK?

Someone asks if I might please put an end to it.

Would that I could, but it just doesn't work that way. "Cyberpunk", which you'll note I put in quotes or not, as the irony level in my bloodstream fluctuates, has a life of its own. Has in fact been possessed of a stubborn vitality since it first hove into view circa 1981. At this late stage of the game, though, my belief is that, outside of a certain narrow discourse in literary history, its best use today is as an indicator of a particular generic flavor in pop culture. In the way that "cowboy" functions in "cowboy boots", which generally has nothing to do with anyone, particularly the wearer of the boots in question, being any kind of cowboy. "That's kind of a cyberpunk video." We all know what the speaker means.

As usual he expresses much better what I think.

Get me my cyberpunk dancing boots?

YOur usual pretentious labeled shit.

Kradlum is correct that Snowcrash did kill it, despite the fact that I love that book it modernized cyberpunk for the 1990s, hence why ultimately Post-Cyberpunk exists (And MMORPGs such as Second Life for that matter lol ).

The Gibsonian version of CP is considered redundant (due to it being pessimistic) and hence why Post-Cyberpunk still exists and why traditional CP is becoming less frequent.

I'm not going to say its dead but rather in accelerated decline - it'll only be dead when people well and truly stop writing that way - it hasn't happened yet.

As I keep saying, all it takes is for one person to visualize it differently, refresh the ideas and style.. this will start the entire movement again. Ultimately we're suffering from a lack of inspiration since all we've got is SPRAWL, Blade Runner and of course Escape from New York. (referring to the most accurate depictions of Cyberpunk.. though that is debatable)

Is Surrealism dead?
Dada?
The Beats?
The SF New Wave?

Surreal is now an adjective. Dada, likewise.

The Beat attitude became so huge by the time the hippies sprung, fully-formed, from its forehead, that it's just plain old-fashioned cool-anti-cool. Today's Beat is unrecognizable as such. Going against the grain (and going against the grain of going against the grain yada x3) is so established a form of avant garde that it has finally achieved its true aim: be yourself. Hard to say whether there are any more or any less people being themselves now than there were in 1956 when Ginsberg was railing against massive conformism. The current, just- past-peaking geek-is-cool trend is the major marketing movement of It's Hip To Be Square. (I recall Gib summing this up pretty neatly in that ancient CBC documentary he did.)

SF New Wave had to crest and collapse, like all new waves, especially those that rely heavily on retro tendencies; for one generation's meaningful retro is the next generation's curious hobby (for example the late 90s rehash of 30s/40s swing stylers like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy). The first time I heard the expression 'old school rap', this born in '56er Generation Joe-er saw nostalgia as so many waves cresting and crashing on the shore and then slowly being pushed aside by the next incoming round. Some of those new waves are remakes of former new waves. Waves and echoes.

There's ALWAYS a New Wave somewhere. Cyberpunk is not yet old enough to be retro except in the most outrageous camp forms. The new remake of Tron I hear buzz about might be the first big swell of cyberpunk-as-retro moving beyond its current camp ghetto shared by hip 30-somethings.

I remember how, in the early 90s, we Boomers and Joe-ers, who'd grown up on 50s Atomicism and 60s Space Ageism, only to have it replaced by Back-to-the-Earth and Beware Technology&Progress, woke up and realized that just because we didn't have a moon base, and 2001 was going to prove a complete flop as accurate futurism, technology hadn't stopped moving ahead. (But then, computers were more important to NASA than rockets anyway. Rockets were so Werner von Braun. Old hat.)

Cyberia was at hand, Gore was building the Internet, and Gibson's book sales steadily grew. At that time, the *new* future was that we'd all soon be brain-jacked instead of space-helmeted.

That future is no longer the looming imminence it once was. Sim-stim is not much closer than Tally Isham is to becoming a nanotechnically manifested idoru, nor is muscle-grafting replacing bling and gyms.

Sterling no longer sounds prescient but, rather, over-informed. Talk of a Singularity increasingly sounds like talk of Utopia a la Wells. ET's looking less grey and more pale. America is playing Eloi to OPEC Morlocks. Millennial Fever is starting to finally back off a bit, although the Abrahmaic religions are still roiling in brain-fever. The Fintailed 50s & Swinging 60s, which replaced the Roaring Twenties and Populist 30s as Back Then in pop culture terms, are commencing to fade in the rear view mirror past Poignancy Point, while the Sexy 70s and Awesome 80s have slowed down their rapid rate of retrospective retraction and are beginning to hover in hindsight as the next Node of Nostalgia, but even as this happens, the rabidly rapid communion afforded by the Internet is creating significant 90s nostalgia. (Cue your favorite punk version of the Happy Days theme song, put on your Ron Howard's Bald Now wigs, and do the slamdance moshwaltz with your toddler offspring).

Only one thing thats wrong with that KL.. Al Gore did not invent the internet Ok he passed legislation that said normal assholes looking for porn can get wired.. but essentially all he did was democratize it. I was using the net before gore came on the scene (1989 to be exact).

But was a good read

He did so invent it! Limbaugh told me!