Hm...i tend to define dystopias as a subversion of the utopia concept.
Of course, this will almost always have political implications, even though they may in some cases be watered down to an extreme degree or be so allegorical that they can be interpretatively malleated into whatever political conclusions one desires to derive from them.

However, it would easily be imaginable that an author with a reactionary political point of view creates a dystopia that is not about a worst of all possible systems that terrorizes people for the sake of stability, but one where the desire for change and greater equality becomes the cause for the dystopian nature of the described system.

Even though i can't think of any examples for this, if i would come across such a work, i would almost certainly classify it as dystopian.


But to come back to the cyberpunk discussion, i don't think that cyberpunk is dead, it has just changed its focus to aspects that have always been part of the genre, but where not as much the focus of people's attention back in the 80s simply because they where much less virulent at that time compared to other aspects.

Transhumanist concepts have always been at the very core of cyberpunk -just consider Molly's cyberware, the cryogenics and cloning habits of the Tessier-Ashpool clan, the rewriting of Armitage's memory or Wintermute in Neuromancer.
From the viewpoint of poststructuralist body studies, that book is pure gold, Lacanian readings being much more rewarding than those reigning from Marxist literary criticism.
It is no surprise that they have gained such a salience in contemporary iterations of the genre and that tropes now appearing outdated, such as the evil zaibatsu, have decreased in importance.

Such attempts also don't necessarily have to be apolitical, the current setting of SR, for example, offers so many possibilities to discuss topics such as freedom of information, the capitalist flipside to transhumanism, the possibility of liberated enclaves in an otherwise oppressive political structure, the relationship between state and economy, civil rights issues and so on.

Of course, these are merely hinted at in current publications, but if you want SR4 to be a game where the depraved and dispossesed stick it to the man, it is easily possible.
There is no, and there has never been any, need to play SR mirrorshades black ops style (although this can easily be achieved by playing down certain aspects of the setting, which is much easier than introducing aspects of your own).

If anything, pink mohawks are coming back with a vengeance.

We have so many options available to players in this edition that only or mostly make sense in a pink mohawk campaign, so many settings that practically scream for such a kind of game, be it Hamburg, LA or most likely all the locations to be detailed in Feral Cities.

how about this: transhumanism gone sour...

First, it is great to see this many people still interested and playing Shadowrun. For years I searched my local game stores in hope to find a Shadowrun game in vain. Even living in close proximity to the largest commercial market in the United States did not help. But as if this moment my eyes widen in surprise after stumbling upon Dumpshock, his eyes widen in amazement. "Holy crap Shadowrun fans! Not only that they use a geeky vernacular and are HARDCORE!!"

If we're talking about the Cyberpunk definition which influenced Shadowrun, then it is safe to assume we're talking about works written by William Gibson, Blade Runner the movie, etc. If that is the case then it does appear as if the Cyberpunk genre is dying, but not dead. Speaking from an introspective point of view, I became a fan of Shadowrun during the mid 90s, which is around the pinnacle of popularity of the game. Back then, SR II was in full swing and one of the best alternatives to D&D. Two semi-successful video games had hit the SNES and Genesis markets, and FASA was publishing a equally successful paperback book market which attracted its fair share of loyal fans. Since then the popularity of Shadowrun has indeed waned. In addition to everyone's statements in this thread about how the evolution of modern world societies and the rapid technological boom we've experienced these past few years, then yes the Cyberpunk from the 1980s and the Cyberpunk that SR is influenced by is dying...as it should be because of change and evolution.

That being said. Is Shadowrun as popular as it was during the 1990s? I would say no. Is it possible to introduce Shadowrun to a new wave of fans from a younger generation? It is possible, but I don't see the problem lying with the product. The largest deterrent of the popularity of Shadowrun is the fact that the market has become very diluted with other Cyberpunk and Science Fiction products that it is hard to produce a new fan base without losing it's original. Nowadays you have Gears of War, Halo, GTA, and other Next-Gen gaming creations taking the attraction away from Shadowrun. Don't forget SR also has War Hammer 40 K and STAR WARS to compete with as well. Shadowrun in the late 1980s and 1990s was a novelty. A pandora's box which had just sprung open. Fast forward to 2008 and it's just another series on the book shelves. The veteran running back being pushed aside on the football team as the number one draft pick is taking his place. Cyberpunk is not dead..at least not yet.

Like a world where everybody who is not Awakened or augmented to the gills just gets waltzed over by the next step of human evolution, so that people have to spend tens of thousands of to even have the chance to compete with colleagues who only sleep 4 hours a day, have tailored pheromones and biosculpting that make everybody appear like rock stars or Hollywood icons and are augmented to have an average IQ of >130?
Where qualified workers get replaced by badly skillwired wageslaves who are more alienated from their labour than any other worker in human history, as they literally don't even know what they are doing for a living?
Where corporations dream up eugenics programs to raise optimized children who have never known any mother but the corp?
Where people discuss wether a sentient being should be rightfully owned by the corporation who developed the program it evolved from?

Wait, that all sounds vaguely familiar...

I just wanted to say, this sounds like a great idea, and I can't believe no one has ever thought of it before.

This. The average wageslave isn't worse off compared to today's worker in the first world - and lives much better than 99% of the people in the third world.

I take it you ignore the "punk" in cyberPUNK ??

It's the same as it is in other forms - SteamPUNK, SandalPUNK, etc.

It's the rebellion aspect, the man-in-the-street being overwhelmed by a world moving faster than he can easily grasp, ideas and changes that fracture society.

In the 80s rendition of punk, counter culture gave us funny haircuts, non-professional music and activism...
...Not really relevant for Steampunk et al, at least partly because the Victorian/Edwardian eras were already very stratified and diverse.

For the people living in the late 70s and 80s they weren't "retarded", just what people did...
...Check any 80s TV show or movie to see how bad styles were, and how that was "normal".

Personally, 'm very impressed by some of the things being talked about here...
...I don't agree with some of the things, but I like that they're being talked about,

And it's all giving me inspiration for my own works - Thank you.

Is it the mohawk that's coming back or what the mohawk represents? Spiking ones hair up is a retro-fashion statement rather than anything cultural or political. Most people I've met who sport the 'hawk do get attention as they're hard to miss but they're usually easy-going, laid-back sorts who simply like to look goofy just for the fun of being goofy. In the end, be it cultural or countercultural, style eats itself. We live in a post-counterculture world, where dudes with kee-razy hairdos vote for Conservative Republican Christians and well-tanned prep boys with Armani suits fight for progressive change in health care and minority rights. Visual signifiers of culture and socio-political belief are dying.

I don't equate the "punk" in Cyber/Steam/Diesel/Elf/Splatter/Myth/Clock/Biopunk to the tropes of punk rock of the 1970s/1980s or even the idea of activism or the fringe. The "punk" is merely an approach to a theme, one that runs counter to the standard. You can have punk in anything. For example, early hip-hop probably could have been called Discopunk. The idea that punk equals activism is a product of the hype machine. I'm more of a social activist by writing a check to a good philanthropic organization than by wearing beat up clothes.

The 1970s and the 1980s are the Decades That Taste Forgot except for the stuff that's so awful that it's cool (ie: brown suits with belts and wood paneling). Nothing anyone says is going to convince me otherwise. The 1990s were somewhat redeeming except for the Jennifer Aniston bob. And that's more because it made all young women into frightening clones.

Yes. I do. The map is not the territory.
The word cyberpunk comes from a short story by Bruce Bethke. It was just a convenient name that people seized upon because they didn't have any other name to describe this thing that was emerging in science fiction literature. It is a label that was attached to the genre after the fact. If it fails to properly define the genre, that is the fault of the label, not the genre.

Funny thing about that is that one of my friends actually does have a pink mohawk, but tends to vote for the conservatives...
But in general, this decade does see a lot more political activism than the totally apathic 1990s, be it from well-tanned prep boys in Armani suits or the mohawk crowd.


However, my statement was directed at SR4, not RL.

I sort of blur the two as each SR edition tends to reflect the pop style of the day. First Edition was a definite reflection of the punk/heavy metal tropes of the late 80s. Fourth Edition, from what I can tell, is pulling a lot more heavily from hip-hop, blaxploitation and HBO fictional crime drama themes as well as the distinctly Shadowrun subject matter, like quantified and packaged New Age mysticism.

good riddance. ever since the industrial revolution made cloth making a machine performed task, anyone could dress to "impress".

with the right haircut, the right clothes and the right "lingo", anyone can talk anyone else into doing anything.

one of the more "famous" real life "hackers" did more with fast-talk then with a computer.

quick guess, he bought the "individual rights" message, hook line and sinker...

These visual signifiers aren't dying, they just become more commercialized.
No, wait, not even that, 1970's punk was already co-opted to be a fashion craze from the beginning and regularly turned up as one again between phases of being an established default choice for rebellious teenagers...so i guess we just become more aware of the ambiguous nature of countercultural iconography as we grow older.

Style is, and always was, a mostly aesthetic and social choice, not a political one (why do i have to think of the Dead Kennedys singing "a hairstyle's not a lifestyle- imagine Syd Vicious at 35"?).
Which is fine with me, i don't want my dresscode to be dictated by my moral, but my aesthetic standards.

Not really, it's just what can happen when you grow up with a socialization halfway between punkrock and skateboarding on one hand and a catholic, rural/backwater blue collar millieu on the other.