Here's a webcomic on a site called e-sheep. It's called "The Guy I Almost Was".

It's quite excellent.

A User's Guide to the Postmoderns has a take on what happened to Cyberpunk. I recommend it.

~J

Work blocks this. NSFW or what?

screen grab a comic n post low res?

Cyberpunk is still around though the genre has changed and branched off.

To me there seems to be several varieties/reletives of/to cyberpunk.

80's Cyberpunk - This is the pink mohawk, 80's fashion, chromed out rocker against the Man! style that many know and love.

Transhuman Space - Best described in the Gurps Transhuman Space series this is a more updated offshoot of cyberpunk. The world in a TS setting isn't a dystopia generally, but rather a mix of dystopia and utopia. Transhuman space focuses often on what it is to be "human" and so Ai, bioroids, chimera, and other biological and cybernetic modifications are common. In many ways the metahumans of SR mirror the metahuman races of TS. Transhuman Space settings are also normally set around 100 years into the future.

Present Day Cyberpunk - Cyberpunk with the techlevel as it is today or near today.

PARANOIA - This little RPG deserves its own genre. The world is decidedly dystopian, but <user deleted>

I'll add more when/if I feel like it, I'm sure you people cna think up some of your own.

Where's the punk, though? I just don't see the sort of anti-authority rebelliousness these days.

~J

I didn't think much of it.

I think punk is still around. It isn't so much rebelliousness, it's simply a complete lack of concern. Punks don't want to fight the big corporations, because ultimately, they can't, nor do punks buy their nice things at Hot Topic, where all punk clothes are sold (or maybe they do), because frankly, they don't care either way.

A punk is simply someone who does what he pleases, regardless as to social mores. A punk is someone who neither tries to follows nor tries to contradict fads. A punk is simply someone with either the nonchalance or the internal strength to blaze his own path, where ever that might be. Perhaps punk was different before, but now, when everyone wears the same name brands, watches the same news stations, listens to the same RIAA-approved music, if a punk is anything at all, it is the one who is willing to be violently different, if only because different is far more interesting.

I would put forth the idea that that view of "punk" is so broad as to be meaningless.

~J

I understand your view and reject it ;P

I love how he quotes McLuhan and then calls his work "future crap."

Intriguing stuff.

Steampunk is another "WTF?" for me. Maybe I'm just seeing the wrong steampunk—is there any reason it isn't just "steam"? Can someone point me to the punk? I mean, ye gods, it's usually set in the Victorian era!

Edit: according to Wikipedia, I need to read older steampunk.

Anyway, I can't speak for Bladerunner, but if it's at all true to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, then I must denounce you as a blasphemer.

~J

Off topic regarding cyberpunk, boarding the WayBack Zephyr....

...To steampunk!

If you've only read fluff, for the love of all that's holy, read "The Difference Engine" (Sterling & Gibson - and if you've played Shadowrun, I should NOT have to explain who the authors are)


Sure, it's a rambling story that is wildly disconnected, but after your read it, it makes sense. And you read it again, just so you can pause and go, "Oh, that's so clever."

It's Victorian, sure, but there were massive, huuuuuuuuge advances back then too. Science, evolution, technology, socal upheavals - all these things and more were growing, stretching and expanding.
A case in point, the main protagionist had placed a bet at the raceway, then wanted to enlarge it. Sure, he'd just invested all the money he'd had on him in the chosen mark, but he wanted more, so he wired (Telegraphed) his bank from the bookkeeper's telegraph service so he could release more. That's direct debit by freaking telegraph, people!

A little over 100 years later, we have internet banking over the phone and a whole slew of quite clever technology designed to do the same thing...

Wasn't that the enticement of cyberpunk? Not just 3-foot mohawks and leather (Although, mmm, yeah, moving on) but the smell of something so inherently new, so futuristic to us 20th Century dwellers...
...and so common that is was treated like a microwave by the characters. Mentioned in passing. A hint, a sniff of the wild crazy that was just around our own corner.

Buck Rogers in the 24th century doesn't really cut it like that.
Nor do the sprawling space operas of Star Wars/Trek. Sure, it's new, with the shiney. But where's the connection with Joe Average walking down the street buying a can of soup?

You get that with Steampunk. You can breathe it in Cyberpunk.
And with a decent GM , plot and crew, you can try to survive it in Shadowrun.


-Rant off.
Tir

And for a quite amazingly-deep stempunk that I was looking forward to as fluff, check out Girl Genius. (Studio Foglio)
Although as fluffy as can be...there's a deep down abiding chunk of dark sorrow and loss. And explosions. And cute people in underwear. And more explosions.

( Linky, likely no pop as no html-fu...)
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/index.php

...omigod it's a Phil Foglio work. I love that man's stuff. Have all the XXXenophile issues signed by him.

I'd love to see his take on some of my characters.

I enjoy Girl Genius a great deal, but to call it "punk" would be in my opinion an immense absurdity.

I guess I need to make another try at reading The Difference Engine. It lost my interest pretty quickly the first time through.

~J

...it was a rather "thick" read, & not just referring to the size of the book.