The other night I watched the 1989 movie [Patlabor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patlabor:_The_Movie) directed by Mamoru Oshii who went on to direct Ghost in the Shell in 1995. The plot is simple and there isn't too much grand philosophy, but the movies was prescient on issues of proprietary software, Internet of Things, urban waste, and Corporate/Government complicity/inaction.
The movie doesn't read as a gritty cyberpunk or even as super cyber/futuristic. It's visually light and the public is optimistic and satisfied with the present. It resembles our present to a certain extent which makes it all the more interesting. Its main divergences from our reality is with the mechs which can be seen as bit of fun or be read as metaphor for technology that is starting to seem divine/magic to all expect for the few technically savvy enough to understand whats going on. I haven't watched the other movies or anime yet, but look forward to checking them out.
[Spoilers] The general plot is.. A genius hacker creates a proprietary operating software(HOS) for a floundering robot/mech company. The company is able to not match competitors in creating robots, but is able to corner the robot OS market. The movie opens with genius hacker committing suicide. Shortly thereafter some robots/mechs sporadically go haywire. You follow from the perspective of a police unit who try to uncover why the robots are acting up and the mystery/motivation of the hacker. A small/funny scene..the police officers are concerned about their mechs own OS fearing that they also run HOS and have been compromised, but their chief engineer reveals that he lied to the higher-ups about installing HOS and chose not to install it because he couldn't see the code inside of it.
I can't read the article, but the title is something I've been considering since last year. Our current politics is very similar to the fanciful corporate dystopias of the 80s Cyberpunk movement. There's a real chance to make something that's going to feel fresh and relevant even revisiting and old genre.
It's hard for me to take this author seriously when the author makes it painfully clear that a) they don't read books and b) they don't know anything about the genre or its roots.
Missing Stephenson's The Diamond Age was a bit of an oversight as well, considering that Snow Crash is one of the canonical Cyberpunk novels, while The Diamond Age is (IMO) a defining Post-Cyberpunk novel. The Diamond Age opens with a Cyberpunk fake protagonist written with every Cyberpunk trope in mind, and then the fake protagonist is killed off before the end of the Prologue and the real protagonist, the slain punk's baby daughter, is revealed. Stephenson's intent is clear: "This is not a cyberpunk novel."
I'd also argue that Cyberpunk does not mean "everything is terrible", nor does Post-Cyberpunk have a softer and lighter view where "not everything is terrible." Rather, the difference is whether social control is rooted in 1984 or Brave New World.
From this point of view, Ghost in the Shell and Minority Report are still Cyberpunk (edit: settings); the viewer is just seeing things from a point of view other than the completely marginalized. Shadowrun is a Cyberpunk setting whether you work for a corporate power or in the streets.
Everything that's jarring about the article seems to be taken directly from tvtropes. Now, I love tvtropes, but I'd worry about basing an article on "knowledge" from that site.
Agreed. The author also presents a highly confusing timeline for 1st wave cyberpunk, 2nd wave cyberpunk & postcyberpunk. Confusing enough that I don't understand why the author thinks his/her examples are 1st or 2nd wave. And I am well-versed in the genre!
Citing Minority Report the story as a cyberpunk tale would be anacronistich since it was written well before cyberpunk tropes and themes had been established.
Also it would be wrong because, besides being dystopic scifi, it has very little to do with cyberpunk.
Many years ago I commenter on Slashdot gave his (or her, don't remember) take on the movie ending and since then I had to completely re-evaluate the whole thing.
The film is now old, but...
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When Tom Cruise's is captured they put the "halo" containment device on him.
If you remember, when they did the same to the guy who attempted to murder his wife at the start of the movie, he asked, understendably worried, what would happen to him, and the policeman answered something like "you will just dream what you want to dream".
Ok, now consider that everything that happens from the moment that Cruise was arrested until the end is... a device-induced dream.
He was framed for murder, and... he just spends his life (or an untold number of years) in confinment - but he dreams the whole ending. Over and over...
This blew me away. Especially because it could hardly be more Dickian than this, while at my first watching the ending was too damn sugary/optimist/Hollywood for my tastes.
That alternative interpretation of the ending is well-known. I'd definitely prefer for it to be true. However, it's non-canon and there's no indication the scriptwriters actually intended for this interpretation to be true (it'd be awesome if it was).
Even with this interpretation, the ending would be completely at odds with PKD's story. In the story, Anderton (Cruise's character in the movie) wants the system to work; the conspiracy wants to undermine Precrime. Because Anderton wants Precrime to go on, he actually commits the crime he was accused of(he indeed shoots his victim), thus showing the world Precrime works. Notice how the message of the movie is "Precrime is wrong" while the message of the story is "Precrime must go on" :)
I think the hotly-anticipated next game entry from CD Projekt Red (fresh off their Witcher 3 smashing success) is going to push this genre even further out there... "Cyberpunk 2077": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99qJGrPNLs
... and no other news since that trailer. It sincerely hope they don't delay it much more. Nothing good ever came from delaying and causing a game to be over-hyped.
Overhype is never good, but it's worth noting that their last game (Witcher3) was delayed [1] and turned out to be one of my personal favorite games of all time.
Cyberpunk feels increasingly comedic and dated to me. My catchphrase for the past couple of years has been “This (is/is not) the cyberpunk dystopia I was promised”.
Tomorrow isn't what Yesterday told me it would be...
If a cynic is just a disappointed idealist, then we might look at the cyberpunk of the '70s/'80s/'90s/today as the cynical reaction to the idealism of the jet-age future of '50s & '60s speculative fiction.
I can't read the article, did they find something idealistic in the speculative fiction of the last few years to feel cynical about? Or is this a new coat of rust slathered over the old Gibsonian grit?
Well Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum" is pretty much a middle finger to the SF of, like, 1910-1930. I wonder if there’s anyone writing something similar directed st 80s SF trends?
And mostly the article is someone who just discovered ~~CYBERPUNK~~ saying a few big Hollywood sequels/remakes are A Cyberpunk Renaissance. It’s pretty clear they’ve never read a single book, just movies and manga.
I've been saying the same thing too... At least synth music is more popular again... I'd much rather have an oppressive era of synth based music than another oppressive era of wubstep.
I only skimmed it but my impression was this article seems to be confused about distinguishing cyberpunk-dystopia works from cyberpunk works that aren't also dystopian. But they're separate things. Same with post-apocalyptic.
> This would be a world of decentralised eco-cities, 3D printing, vertical farms, solar glass windows, wild or inventive forms of dress and design, and a vibrant cosmopolitan aesthetic; where technology is no longer used to exploit the natural world, but to automate away needless human labour and to help restore the damage the Oil Age has already done. Solarpunk desires societies of polycultural ethnic diversity and gender liberation, where each person is able to actualise themselves in societal environment of free experimentation and communal caring; and driven by an overriding ethos of compassionate rationalism, where science and reason are not seen as antithetical to imagination and spirituality, but as concepts which bring out the best in each other.
Nah. Neon Dystopia has been around long enough and Cyberpunk 2077 has started being hyped long ago enough that I don't think the article has anything to do with that.
The movie doesn't read as a gritty cyberpunk or even as super cyber/futuristic. It's visually light and the public is optimistic and satisfied with the present. It resembles our present to a certain extent which makes it all the more interesting. Its main divergences from our reality is with the mechs which can be seen as bit of fun or be read as metaphor for technology that is starting to seem divine/magic to all expect for the few technically savvy enough to understand whats going on. I haven't watched the other movies or anime yet, but look forward to checking them out.
[Spoilers] The general plot is.. A genius hacker creates a proprietary operating software(HOS) for a floundering robot/mech company. The company is able to not match competitors in creating robots, but is able to corner the robot OS market. The movie opens with genius hacker committing suicide. Shortly thereafter some robots/mechs sporadically go haywire. You follow from the perspective of a police unit who try to uncover why the robots are acting up and the mystery/motivation of the hacker. A small/funny scene..the police officers are concerned about their mechs own OS fearing that they also run HOS and have been compromised, but their chief engineer reveals that he lied to the higher-ups about installing HOS and chose not to install it because he couldn't see the code inside of it.
Edit: HOS not BOS