The 1980s was a decade known for many changes; one of these took place in the field of science fiction literature. In the race of label-mongering, the result of this change came to be known as cyberpunk.
Despite the rapid growth in popularity, cyberpunk was never truly defined in any fashion where those who don't accept vagueness as an ethical state of consciousness could understand it. Now, because of this, the label of "cyberpunk" is tagged to any piece that contains characters with artificial body parts trying to live in some seedy future world. My experiences in reading the fiction and nonfiction on the subject lead me to this: Cyberpunk is fiction which integrates culture and technology and extrapolates the integration's impact on the individual.
Cyberpunk writers believe that around 1980, science and technology flew from the ivory towers they had been "chained-up" in and found their way to the hearts and wants of the public. Thus came about personal technology: The Walkman, the desktop computer, videocassette recorder, and so on. Hi-tech became desirable, fashionable. These writers saw this and asked, "What would happen if..."
The advancement of technology eminently brings forth a change in the culture into which the technology was introduced. Cyberpunk concentrates on this theory to the extent that whole plots and characters center around the changes in culture and fashions that come about. Individuals are affected by technology, and they react to it in wat that form conflicts. In Greg Bear's Blood Music, one man changes himself and soon the world mentally and physically with a type of microorganism he created.
The conflicts that arise are ones that rail against the norms since fashion takes precedence over tradition (unless tradition becomes the fashion). Cyberpunk is thus rebellious, and the rebels necessarily mine the underground for ammunition. What comes of this is a dark but enlightening view of the future.
A characteristic following the above two lead to the commonly-held cyberpunk ideal of the union of technology and self; the culture at large strives to understand the "wonder" of the human body so it could reshape it into something different, better, stronger, sharper, transcendent. This union also opens up the opportunity for the self to be shatterd by the use of technology. This catastrophe usually leaves characters fighting with mind and reality games to get their self back. In Walter Jon Williams' Voice of the Whirlwind, the clone of a dead man without updated memory dives into a hostile world to solve the mystery surrounding his "donor's" death.
All of this describes mainly the "cyber" of cyberpunk. What about the "punk"? Bruce Sterling, the proclaimed "Chairman of the Board" of cyberpunk, wrote:
It [cyberpunk fiction] favors 'crammed' prose: rapid, dizzying bursts of novel information, sensory overload that submerges the reader in the literary equivalent of the hard-rock wall of sound. 1
Punk, in reference to art, is a style of using the raw roots of the teeth of the art to drive ideas further. This leas in well with the tech/culture integration of cyberpunk. If technology gradually transformed culture, not many values would clash, not many conflicts would arise dueto the integration. But technology does not appear gradually; it advances irregularly and meets the norms like two rams to be the mate for the minds and desires of the public.
Cyberpunk translates the style of exposing the roots of science fiction to an illustration of a density of information brought forth into a wave called "futureshock." An example of futureshock would be the Leaning Tower of Pisa trailing with fiber optic wires. It is said of most cyberpunk novels that there are five new ideas for every page.
Because of its dark, rebellious nature, cyberpunk comes under as being inherently malevolent and anti-capitalist. These critics see in many stories the cliche large corporations manipulating consumers and advertising their products and services anywhere they can get away with, including on artificial body parts. They see the cieling of smog hovering over spewing industry running rampant across what was once a poor farmer's only possession. They see main characters striving to survive in the information/post-industrial age by stealing and killing both innocents and criminals. They see all this and they say, "That is cyberpunk."
Art is stylized. Reality as viewed by the artist and the recreated as something that could and ought to be and then communicated to others depending on the artist's value is art. Cyberpunk writers bring their political and metaphysical views to their palettes. If a particular writer in any field is anti-capitalist, he'll write an educational bedtime story about the greedy Venetian merchant using the heads of infants to climb to the top of the world. Cyberpunk in only a road that writer could take to spread what he believes to be the truth. Condemning cyberpunk because of what most writers express using the art is no different than my saying Renaissance art is evil because most of the painting and writings are religious.
Another problem most people, especially Objectivists, have with cyberpunk is that they believe that because of the dark, seedy, rebellious nature of the art, the main characters must be drug-addicted adolescents or adolescent-minded adults who live in hopeless slums while they dwell on the poisonous edge of insanity. I'm sorry to say that there are stories that illustrate this pathetic side of reality, but the assumption that cyberpunk must have this is faulty. An example which rails against this idea is Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix. In this novel, the main character is a man raised in an aristocratic environment in space, trained to be a professional diplomat, and dives into various enclaves and societies spanning the solar system building himself up to be a social figure leading the storm front of innovation.
Cyber is a form of science fiction which properly illustrates the effect technological advancement has on culture and individuals. Without the values the writer weaves into fiction, the artform expresses the belief in integration. Scores of novels and short stories have been written in the cyberpunk fashion; a few of the more extraordinary novels and writers appeared above. Some films which express cyberpunk ideas have been made, but their foundations were built on non-cyberpunk fiction. There better ones are Blade Runner, Total Recall, Hardware, and Robocop.
Science fiction writers try to foretell the future, but cyberpunk writers examine the possibilities brought into the sunshine today and expand on them to see what the potential will be tomorrow. Who will be affected? How will they be affected? What wil lthey do in response? Cyberpunk logically and imaginatively answers these queries where we would otherwise know by just waiting to see what the future drags through the molasses of time to us.
The new multiple humanities hurtled blindly toward their unknown destinations, and the vertigo of acceleration struck deep. Old preconceptions were in tatters, old loyalties were obsolete. Whole societies were paralyzed by the mind-blasting vistas of absolute possibility. 2
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