So, what is Cyberpunk, anyway?, A followup to recent theme discussions.. Options

[Penta]

Recently, we've had some fun discussions (yay drift!) on the theme/setting of SR.

In hopes of adding to the debate/pouring gas on the fire, I offer this from the Steve Jackson Games' fora, a discussion on a possible GURPS CyberPunk for GURPS 4th Edition that quickly veered into "what is Cyberpunk".

Said discussion.

[Supercilious]

Cyberpunk is the mix of extreme futuristic possbility (Cyberware, the matrix, other futuristic techno-junk) and the "punk" subculture of the 80's and 90's (The "Fuck the man" and rebellious attitude. Not to mention the bad music, but that is just my taste). The other ingredient in a cyberpunk setting is a governmental structure that allows punk in an extreme form (Ie. Nowadays, when a police officer offends a "punk" he shouts something nasty, in a cyberpunk setting he would shoot the police officer) aswell as the extreme form of futuristic technology (Ie. Instead of the internet of today, we have the Matrix).

Shadowrun has these elements, but not so much the punk feel anymore. IMHO Shadowrun 3.0 is mostly just Cyber, unless a gang-level game is being played.

[Ancient History]

Cyberpunk the literary movement was held together by a few key elements and themes. They were typically marked by what was perceived as the current world some decades in the future...technological progress and a development of various social and economic trends.

The particular 'punk' element comes from the general alienation that many characters in the genre experience, awareness of greater social issues and self determination of opinions on said issues by the main characters, and a fare bit of 'tude when the situation calls for it. At times, the genre is marked by a certain sense of apathy or betrayal at the spread of globalization or the results of human endeavor. Certain aspects of contemporary morality are explored, either by focusing in on them when present or when absent (esp. drug use). Sex isn't a taboo topic, because the characters are actually living. They need to eat. To sleep. To take a piss and check for STDs in the morning.

Generally speaking, the focus of cyberpunk was less on the technology, but on how people lived and reacted in a world still recognizable as our own. Technology is taken for granted. The division between the rich and the poor is huge. You feel disconnected from the rest of the larger McWorld. The unusual psychological pressures of society have made people weirder. One person can make a difference, a sabot will still jam the magician.

The classic choice for a cyberpunk novel would be William Gibson's Neuromancer, but I believe the genre really hits its stride with the short story. Check out The Ultimate Cyberpunk at your local bookstore, or the classic anthology Mirrorshades if you can find it. I would likewise highly recommend Gibson's inspiration, John Shirley's City Comes A Walkin'.

Just to understand how differnt Cyberpunk was from its predecessors, consider re-reading Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, and Stanley Kubrick's movie A Clockwork Orange (yes, the book is better, but Ian MacDonald's performance is not to be missed).

Cyberpunk reached mass media in a few stunning visual mediums. I highly reccomend the director's cut of Bladerunner, the original X-rated version of Robocop, and the early graphic novel Shatter

Punk is difficult to define, but if you're interested in one take on it I suggest finding a copy of the graphic novel Honour Among Punks.

[Nikoli]

I think Blade Runner said it best
"C'mon, you know the score. If you aren't Cop, you're little people."
Then think of the events in the movie, the cops wanted to talk to Decker, so they arrested him with no charges filed. He shot what to anyone else would be a normal person on several occaisions, yet people barely moved out of the way. He used strong arm intimidation tactics to pump leads for info. He allowed himself to partake of illicit substances because as a cop, he was untouchable. He hit on someone who by all rights he should have "aired out".

In Cyberpunk, power is not just abused, it is abused to the Nth degree. If you can do something to someone and get away with it, people will become suspicious when you don't. The Government is laregely useless, yet still remains more of a burden on people than ever before while only providing services to the people that can afford not to need them in the first place. Corporations too powerful for the Government to reign in control whateveris worth controling, including the government in many cases. What they don't control, belongs to the Crime lords (Yakuza, Mafia, etc.) What they deem too pidly, or they wish to farm out to hired muscle is controled by gangs akin to the characters in "The Warriors" (another good dystopic flick). And finally, whatever is left belongs to the dregs and rejects of society too low to even be noticed byt he gangers. Everyone, including Mother Theresa has a price and is for sale. Somewhere within all of that is the Shadowrunners, of each tier yet belonging to none of them.

The Cyberpunk dystopic theme evolved from the classec Noir films of the 50's and 60's.

[Kagetenshi]

[Mr Cjelli]

[Ancient History]

[Penta]

Y'know, would it be wrong to say that Cyberpunk and Nuclear Post-Apoc (as we know them) developed from different regional interpretations of the 80s?

Cyberpunk, for whatever reason, always seems to me to reflect the "rust belt", the repeated falls of GM, the Carter-ish "Malaise".

Post-Apoc, meanwhile, was very much a theme of the coasts. The fear was more of "Will the Soviets send ICBMs over the Pole?", not "Will the Japanese take our jobs?"

Similarly, cyberpunk has a very urban, "Detroit", ethos. Post-Apoc was intensely suburban.

Which mgiht explain the difference in perspective between me and Kage.

It was the same 80s, but two very different 80s, too.

For me, the fear wasn't jobs. (The fact that dad worked for government helped.)

The fear was (again, not helped when dad works for the DOD) "I might not survive to see tomorrow, cuz y'never know if someone's going to kill you with a nuke."

It seems overstated, but I was a little kid. I discovered that people were ready to launch nukes at me when I was 5. (Dad worked on something involved with nuclear CnC, so...I have no idea where, but it was implanted in my head by age 6.) Everything's bigger and scarier when you're little.

Anyway, I think that's why I and others might not be able to identify so much with classic cyberpunk.

The concerns that it grew from were hardly ours. Still aren't.

OTOH, stuff like Brave New World is still a concern. 1984 still seems creepily plausible. Less so, i think, if one has seen government up close...As was wonderfully put in a US Army guide to the Middle East (damned if I recall where I found it, I think the DLI website, way back when), "There is a view of US Government competence and expertise that would be wholly entertaining to Americans, especially government employees." Yeah, that describes what I've seen.

It could do all these things, but in order for that to occur, one must ignore the Peter Principle as applied to the civil service.

Which, I think, is why cyberpunk rings so hollow to me. No bureaucracy is that competent, corporate or government. Why don't we have SINs (though we do come close)?

Because no bureaucracy, corporate or government, could ever be competent enough to administer such a system. I say that with a lot of love to government: It's how I'm kept fed.:-) But, no...Um...the level of sheer stupidity in bureaucreacy just makes such things implausible.

Similar with "Corps as Gods". Or even Corps as Sovereigns.

I mean, my God...If one looks at the average corp...

Sovereignty would require, in sheer costs, expenses spread for infinity. Meanwhile, what profit would come from it?

How could you ever get that past Wall Street (or the Tokyo equivalent)?

Cyberpunk views corporations and governments both as vaguely competent creatures.

Those who have ever seen such from the inside know neither is remotely true. Somehow, government does things in spite of its own tendencies. Corporations of megacorp size operate purely in spite of themselves.

[Penta]

[Ancient History]

Penta, I believe you mistake competence with the decidedly different moral compass that is a large corporation. Corporations have in the past, and continue to this day, to perform heinous acts of abuse in the name of profit, including widescale manipulation of the media and governments throughout the world.

And frankly, when the corporation controls what you see and hear, it affects you. Cyberpunk tends to take government and corporate foibles and tendancies and exaggerate them to what we would consider unnatural limits.

Above all, a corporation in Cyberpunk tends to be either ambitious and young, or old and very, very efficient. Above all, corporations tend to be ruthless or run by people with unusual philosophies, becoming as much a tool to fulfill their increasingly eccentric whims as anything else.

Nuclear Post-Apocalyptic fiction is very different from Cyberpunk, being more of an outgrowth of the Atomic Age and the Cold War. A very different mindset. Incidentally, the focus on suburban settings in Nuke fiction was probably due to the fact cities would be targeted first. Good examples would probably be The Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns trade paperbacks, where the threat of oblivian hangs over everyone's head, and America survives solely by having a whimsical 'big gun'-in this case, Dr. Metropolis or Superman (or Reagan's 'Star Wars').

You can see survivalist and 'Green' approaches in Cyberpunk-Neal Stephenson's Zodiac may be the best example-but often they become co-opted, surviving and proliferating with new technologies that ease their lifestyles.

[Supercilious]

I agree with Ancient History in that Cyberpunk and Post-Apoc are quite different. A good illustration of this is the Shadowrun game for the SNES compared to Fallout 1-2 (PS. Dr. Metropolis is AWESOME).

I think a lot of the alternate viewpoints on when Punk was "strong" depend widely on where oneself lives. I realized that after posting my perception of not only when was punk strong, but what punk is is quite different from other people not from my region. Kage said that a police officer would arrest someone who shouted at them, but that must be regional because in Olympia WA you can shout a lot of trash at a police officer and they just keep walking.

Fortunately, "Cyberpunk" always exaggerates the "punk" feel and pushes it so far to the extreme that anyone can recognize it.

[Mr Cjelli]

[Ancient History]

I'm not the best punk-fanatic to explain this properly. Music is beloved by many writers because of the breadth and diversity of the industry, from classical to speed thrash, from starving rappers in a ghetto to computers writing the algorythms for tomorrow's next pop hits. It covers wacky politics, religions and philosophies; starlets, drugs and the latest tech. With cyberpunk, different writers incorporate actual references, allusions and bastardization of punk rock and punk culture in their works. I pointed out what I feel are the most obvious examples.

Not the kind of thing a fan of Sid and Nancy might immediately recognize, but then cyberpunk isn't Trainspotting either. It can be much more idealized.

[Penta]

AH: Morality doesn't enter into it. :) I'm talking simply "There's no way they could implement that." :)

My view of cyberpunk is very, very influenced by RPGs and movies; Being an ADD kid meant books were always a very hit-and-miss sort of thing. I read voraciously, but actually sitting down and absorbing a book was hard.:-)

(Meanwhile: By Nuclear Post-Apoc I meant less Fallout (which is really pulling from the 50s-60s version of the genre) and more Twilight 2000, The Day After, etc. Where it was fairly clear there's no way in hell most people are surviving, and those who do are fucked in other ways. Fallout grins and laughs at nuclear war, a la Tommy the Turtle. Twilight 2000 just says "We're fucked." It's the difference between the Duck and Cover films and a 1980s FEMA publication. One is "Civilization'll be destroyed, but it'll be fun if you remember to hide under your desks!" The other is "Civilization will be destroyed. You're screwed. This is precisely how it will be destroyed, and how much you will be screwed.")

Meanwhile: Well, that's the thing...The Cold War and the age from which cyberpunk took its cues (which I've never heard a good name for) were the exact same time, only expressed differently where you were.

Also, I've no doubt that some of the difference is political, in terms of the interpretation of the zeitgeist. Cyberpunk grew, so far as I can tell, from the militancy of the 60s and 70s and a bit into the 80s; 1968, the Black Panthers, the British miners' strike, etc.

Post-Apoc grew from the other thread of the age, the fear we'd all get nuked somehow. "Star Wars" (Reagan's SW, not Lucas's), Iran-Contra, the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

It's just as exaggerated, but in different ways.

For me, the fears that bred Post-Apoc were and are more immediate. The fears that bred Cyberpunk...I don't see it. Never did.

Anyhow, in an attempt to keep this vaguely on-topic...

If one were to reimagine SR, without necessarily keeping to cyberpunk conventions and tropes (think like the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica), how would it look?

IMHO:

1. Corporations wouldn't be the issue. Well, not so much. Corporations would less dominate government than be working hand-in-glove with it. "What's good for America is what's good for business; What's good for business is what's good for America."

2. More optimistic. Not by much, but some. Namely: Less terror, more farce.

3. Less metal. Cleaner, if you will.

4. More understated. By a factor of 20, say. Less of the gaudy, cheesy, pastel-and-neon feel. As was put somewhere "ENOUGH OF THE MOHAWKS!" Not so much of the Clash feeling.

Why do I bring this up?

I doubt many new gamers were alive during the 80s, or at least remember it.
Beloit College's "Mindset lists" would be helpful, here.:-) My age's mindset list.:-)

Whilst our milieu was Fraggle Rock, Saved By the Bell, the BBS, DOS...and so forth,

The milieu of the current 18-year-old is more likely to have been Power Rangers, X-Files, never knowing computers before Windows (probably Win95) or the Web, Columbine...and so forth.

SR still feels a lot like the early 90s at the latest. Shadowland, for example, really does feel like an old BBS, though less than it did. (I open up my books and hear the old, comforting sound of a modem handshaking.:-) How many of today's teenagers even remember what a modem is?)

That means that SR could easily become far less relevant to the consumer (the 12-24 y/o) before the next 4 years are out, as the tropes and conventions that form the frame of reference aren't there. If we don't have relevance, we're dead.

[Ancient History]

Translation: You don't understand cyberpunk because you never read any of it, and thus don't quite know what we're talking about when we refer to it and you're calling it bullshit anyway because what you've seen in the movies doesn't fit into your world view.

Aha. How do I put this? You haven't read the books. You're approaching the genre (a literary genre, mind) from RPGs and movies, and still trying to connect it to a radically different body of post-apocalyptic fictional materials (incidentally, I must continue to think your theory that the two differ only on location is bullshit).

Well, I can respect your right to have an opinion, but frankly I can't respect an opinion based on ignorance. You're correct in pointing our cyberpunk is not post-apocalyptic. It never was. Neither was Shadowrun. Neither is the real world.

Penta, you started off the thread talking about cyberpunk, but anyone who knows what they're talking about will tell you right now that Shadowrun had very much grown up. Show me the day-glo mohawks in Third Edition, and tell me how many you see coming in Fourth.

Now, if you wanted to debate relevance, you should have made a thread to debate relevance. You know Shadowrun, and you can debate where it stands today and where it looks like it will be tomorrow against what new 18-year-olds might expect. But don't start a literary thread and bring in that crappy post-apocalyptic arguement if you can't stand up and defend it.

[Demonseed Elite]

Yeah, I don't really think you can understand cyberpunk if you didn't read the books. Because, above all, it was a literary genre. Neither RPGs nor movies ever did a stellar job of translating cyberpunk to their mediums, Shadowrun included.

[Ol' Scratch]

[Ancient History]

<scrolls through thread>
Hmm. You've got a point, Doc. I admit I might have dragged the thread off-track.

[mfb]

AH's points still stand, though. what Penta's describing really isn't cyberpunk at all. it shares some aspects with diamond age cyberpunk, but not many.

[Penta]

<drags his beaten corpse up from the ditch>

OK, I know I suck. I'll note, however, that (these days) figuring out "the essentials" is hard. There are *how many* potential books on that list? Twas a pretty popular fiction genre for a time, and it's a little...off to expect someone to have read even most of that 10 years later. I, personally, encountered Neuromancer, grabbed it to read on a car ride, couldn't get into it, and put it away. 5-10 years ago.

However...

I wasn't intending to get into a literary discussion, Funk is right. AH: Kindly return my face, after ripping it off. You attacked on something I wasn't even talking about.

The literary aspect of the genre, frankly, is uninteresting to me. I couldn't, for whatever reason, get into Neuromancer when I read it while traveling, and after that my interest in literary cyberpunk declined. (When I say read, I mean "read and finished", not "read and put away". I've read Les Miserables. I read (for history class, I have no idea why) Watership Down. I attempted to read The Hobbit. Neuromancer is probably here, or may have been sold at a garage sale, I don't recall.)

More what I was focusing on is cyberpunk as it applies to gaming, film, TV, etc.. I got into SR through BattleTech. Am I somehow unworthy, AH?

That is what I think most people will be more familiar with, and what most people newly encountering SR will think more immediately of.

In the context of cyberpunk as expressed in gaming, film, TV, and similar forms besides literature, I was asking "How does SR need to change to stay relevant?"

Why? Because I have no deep familiarity with cyberpunk as literature. I grant that, I don't recall speaking differently.

However, I doubt many others younger than 20-something do, either. Certainly, it doesn't have the place in popular culture it might once have.

[mfb]

unworthy? no. but you're simply not able to discuss cyberpunk at anything more than a very topical level. you're like a paramedic trying to discuss cancer; there are aspects of it you simply don't understand, because you've never delved deep enough into the genre to experience them. if that's the extent of your interest, fine--nobody said you've got to like it. but don't expect those of us who do like it enough to have delved into it to accept a topical treatment like what you're suggesting.

[Ancient History]

Peace for a piece. I went off on the wrong tangent interpreting the whole thread was about the literary cyberpunk. Mea culpa. If this had been an actual literary debate, you would have gotten a big wet bite of your ass. As it is, I've put my foot in my mouth then shot it off.

I admit it dissapoints me to see people ignorant of the origins of things, and of some of the things going on in the world around us we can't see. It dissapoints me when people who haven't read cyberpunk talk about it precisely because it has been so influential on modern pop culture.

I don't understand people who can't read Tolkein and Gibson. But that's just because I really love them. I can't understand not loving them. Trust me Penta, you are not alone. If I've run into one person that couldn't read the Hobbit or Neuromancer, I've met a hundred. I don't look down on you for it-but it does mean we've got a fundamental difference of opinion on these things. So be it.

And there's nothing wrong with coming to Shadowrun from Battletech. Oh, the stories I could tell about that.

As for the essentials...<drums fingers> I would list perhaps three essential cyberpunk books. There are many more, of varying degrees of quality and worth, but there are three I think every good cyberpunk afficiando ought to have read. Just looking at my shelf, including graphic novels, I have thirty that are all definative classic cyberpunk, and that's not a complete collection. Admittedly, it starts to go into slipstream at some point.

But hey. We don't have to go into literature anymore. Sorry for the thread de-railling.

[Penta]

Hey, it happens.:-)

Now, AH...You unintentionally pointed out something.

[Penta]

Er, to keep my idea trains separated...I see you said there were three essentials, AH.

It woulda been nice if you'd listed em (a sticky somewhere with such things would probably be good for a lot of people), but I ain't picky.

I'm assuming one is Neuromancer. The other two...?

[Ancient History]

I said there are thirty books that are definative, classical cyberpunk. That doesn't mean you have to read all of them to be conversent in the genre...I'm just a bit of a collector.

The Hobbit was published only in stand-along volumes to the best of my knowledge, Penta; it sounds like you're describing the collected Lord of the Rings...both of which grace my shelf. Hey, if you're not willing to suffer a hernia for your reading habits, avoid Robert Jordan like the plague.

Neuromancer is indeed one of the three, and I've always found it well worth the effort. I admit that Gibson isn't always easy to read, but that's part of his style...he leaves things unsaid, forcing you to keep thinking through them. It is Gibson's finest novel, although I think other pieces of his writing are better.

For a true tast of all cyberpunk has to offer, it is essential to hunt down one of the two main anthologies. Each one has something the other lacks, but Ultimate Cyberpunk is more easily located than the classic Mirrorshades. One is as good as the other just to give you a taste of the spectrum.

The third classic book is emminently available, and something of a controversial choice. Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown is not an actual work of fiction, and even though written by one of the best cyberpunk authors it can get a little dry at times. However, the content is well worth it. Bruce Sterling retained the electronic rights to this work and has made it available free on the internet if your Strength 2 arms can't get around to hauling the physical book <display_evil_grin>.

As for audiobooks...I believe Neuromancer is, the other two are almost definately not.