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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Cyberpunk

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08:34 / 16.03.02

Post:

What's your take on the distinctive SF genre colloquially known as cyberpunk? What are the greatest books in the field? What defines the movement? What real-world causes set it in motion? Finally, is the genre being phased out by novels about nanotechnology?

Bibliography for post:

Gibson, William. Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties.

Gibson, William and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine.

McDonald, Ian. Terminal Café.

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash, The Diamond Age.

Sterling, Bruce. The Artificial Kid, Heavy Weather, Islands in the Net.

20:04 / 16.03.02

First of all "The Difference Engine" is steampunk, not cyberpunk.

I think cyberpunk is a nifty little sub-genre of science fiction, but its pretty stagnant. Everybody who writes cyberpunk seems to emulate Gibson, Sterling, or Stephenson, and do a poor job of it. Its always about characters "jacking in" and all that. Fine, cyberpunk is about the melding of man and computer right? So do something innovative, don't copy.

The greatest books in the field? I don't know about greatest, but when someone says "cyberpunk" I immediately think of Gibson, Sterling, and Stephenson.

What defines the movement? Do you mean what usually pops up in the books? Usually, you read about people "jacking in" and all this other oh so hip computer jargon. Blah. They need to get more expressive with their language. Just because you write a book about computer/human interaction, that doesn't mean it has to be as dry as a technical manual. If I want to read a tech manual, I'll pick up and read this turbo c bible sitting next to me.

As for real world causes, that's pretty easy. The advent of cheap, easily accessed computers is probably what caused the creation of this sub-genre.

I'm not sure its being phased out exactly by novels dealing with nanotech, but it doesn't get as much press as it used to because as I said before its pretty stagnant.

02:05 / 17.03.02

Yeah, that was pretty much my take, too. I don't see any reason to read any cyberpunk that isn't Gibson, Stephenson or Sterling; McDonald doesn't really count, since he's nano.

However, I think the rise of cyberpunk was due more to a backlash agaisnt the culture of the eighties than about computers. I think authors were looking at Reagan and Thatcher and mumbling, "You know, this world might be a corporate hell in another five decades."

Gotta admit, though: Gibson's perpetual trashing of the corporate culture borders on the cliché, as well. If you want a truly brilliant take on business, pick up Islands in the Net; in that novel, the business-people are the good guys! Of course, that's only because their parent company is an economic democracy, in which all employees are eligible to vote for the CEO. What a wonderfully elegant yet simple idea...

17:47 / 18.03.02

It wasn't just a "backlash" against the Reagan Years - it was a related syndrome, where the hope & prosperity of the 70s got drowned in inflation & depression.

I think the movie "Blade Runner" can't be underestimated as a key text for shaping the sub-genre - all of a sudden the future had a lot of grime in it, with unhappy people in an incomprehensible world. Compare "2001" to "Blade Runner," and you get the idea.

The "Alien" movies were key in the prehistory of cyberpunk, only in that case, the machine-volk were the "other," not the heroes. Witness not only the aliens, but the androids and the nefarious "Company" everyone works for.

The only movement within sci-fi prior to cyberpunk that I can name is the New Wave, which included JG Ballard & Brian Aldiss, and was usually about things like human bodies & biology & psychology rather than fancy machines. I suppose in some ways, cyberpunk would be a synthesis of "hard" science fiction (like Asimov & Clarke) and the "wet" sci-fi done by the New Wave (including, more loosely, people like Robert Silverberg and even Frank "Dune Buggy: Lost Cars of Dune" Herbert - really interested in mutation and drug experiences).

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

18:50 / 18.03.02

I give a lot of credit for cyberpunk to PKD in things like Do Androids and such, but thats just me perhaps.
Snow crash is very cool, as well as the short story Johnny Mnemonic.

02:32 / 19.03.02

Hmm. Kind of odd that cyberpunk owes so much to movies, don't you think? (Keanu Reeves's performance in Johnny Mnemonic notwithstanding.) Usually, movies are shaped by literary movements, not vice versa. It suggests that cyberpunk aspires to become an interactive, mixed media work.

"The meme craves new territory and new servants. You will obey the meme."

03:35 / 19.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Traz:
Hmm. Kind of odd that cyberpunk owes so much to movies, don't you think?

well on the one hand, it doesn't so much; neuromancer was complete when gibson first saw blade runner; he reported coming close to a nervous breakdown when he saw his own vision splashed up on the screen. cyberpunk is a term that can be used very tightly, to describe the literarry movement specifically created by gibson and sterling. and in that sense, it was not entirely spawned by films that came after it.

on the other hand, cyberpunk has become a term that describes something larger than a literarry movement, something which included Sonic Youth and william burroughs and hr geiger, and in that sense it describes movies as much as books. much like "film noir" which once had a very specific cinematic definition but can now be used to describe comics, books, even music. or think of a term like "grunge" which once meant the music played by mudhoney, green river, and the melvins, then meant a broad sense of modern rock, fashion, lifestyle attitude, etc., and now doesn't mean very much at all.

this is the peril of genre and its diachronic nature.

03:39 / 19.03.02

also, as far as cyberpunk vs nanotechnology, i think that is a false distinction. don't forget about the "punk" part, which describes an attitude, a grammatical style, a lifestyle, an anti-authoritarian impulse. john shirley is generally recognized as a key figure in cyberpunk, his work is cool as fuck, but he doesn't bother too much with computer speculation in his work. remember cyberpunk was also named "mirrorshades" but that's too clunky a title to have stuck. it does show the ultimate fascination was not with speculative science fiction but with something more ephemeral, sometihng featuring the qualities that are named by some critics "literariness".

whearas nanotechnology is simply a science, and can reasonably be applied to any type of fiction.

07:46 / 19.03.02

Listen to Mystery Gypt and Grant, they spaketh the truth.

The cyberpunk movement was primarily about the style of writing (more literary) and upon the social and personal interaction with technology, rather than the technology itself. It's main originators were William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Pat Cadigan and Tom Maddox and they were all in contact with each other, had often attended writer's workshops with each other and had talked at length about the elements they felt were missing in contemporary sf at the time - they were like an extended info chain with shared objectives. For more info go to the eff cyberpunk directory and especially to this article by Tom Maddox. eff also have an extensive directory of Bruce Sterling's work and a lot lot else.

16:02 / 19.03.02

Traz, why the bibliography? And why don't you see any reason to read anyone else? Though Stevenson gets props for being from 'round here, he arrived on the scene a little late and lacks something.

The greatest book in the field provided is still Neuromancer; though it seems less so with every read. The greatest book you left out is Synners, by Pat Cadigan - has proles v. (and with) corporation, shinier tech than gibson, dirtier tech than sterling, rock'n'roll almost as good as shirley, a dick hebdidge nightmare of styles and lifestyles, and that's all blown away by the characterization.

The more Sterling you read, the more you'll notice that corporations are always the, ahem, good guys. He does a damn good job of it cause he's passionate about American Capitalism. I think someone once called his stuff Cyberpop (or was it prep?) It gets old, too. Gibson's last three novels have pretty much veered from his 80's gloom, though. Don't you think?

Elaborations on Mystery Gypt's statements can be found in Storming the Reality Studio (Larry McCaffery ed.) - the first, and pretty much definitive, work on Cyberpunk's cultural, theoretical, and literary roots. I think you're right, though, MG; saying "it's cyberpunk" is a bit like saying "it's space-opera" these days. It's not so much being phased out as absorbed.

Wasn't "The Mirrorshades Group" coined cause Sterling and Rucker (maybe Shiner) always showed up to readings wearing them?

Anyone up for tackling Harraway-type analysis of the genre might check out Terminal Identity: the Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction.

What Traz and others should read that's not in the initial list:

"The Girl Who was Plugged In" (novella): James Tiptree Junior (1974 Hugo winner) - Imagine a more paranoid anti-corporate vision than Gibson, think about grant's comments about cp's origins... I don't think it's in print anywhere, though.

Schizmatrix: Bruce Sterling - cyberpunk space opera like a hard science political grant morrison minus a small texan hick factor.

17:23 / 19.03.02

it's nice to know that my nick change in honor of the last time cyberpunk/Gibson was brought up will still be useful today...

traz, you might want to try voice of the whirlwind or hardwired by walter jon williams. whirlwind was my favorite of the two as it had a similar theme as count zero.

22:02 / 19.03.02

Also very good from Williams is: Hardwired.

06:51 / 20.03.02

Ack. How could we?

We forgot John Brunner's seminal work: The Shockwave Rider (1975), a novel starring Nickie Haflinger, phone phreak extraordinaire, on the run from the government and constantly shifting identities while manipulating the global data network - like Tiptree this is years ahead of the hype.

08:46 / 20.03.02

Shockwave Rider is a great read but I'm not sure that is stylisticly fits as cyberpunk.

A

10:56 / 20.03.02

I'm not an expert on the precise chronology of these things, and i haven't read any of the "real" cyberpunk authors except for Gibson and Rudy Rucker, but i'd kinda group Neal Stephenson in with more "post-cyberpunk" (forgive the wanky terminology) sort of authors like Jeff Noon and Michael Marshall Smith.

They came on the scene a bit later than him, but they share a sort of upbeat, funny, more optimistic kind of style, i think.

Then again, it's kind of late, i've had a couple of beers, and i may well be talking out of my arse.

11:19 / 20.03.02

Mystery Gypt, I think "nanotech" is an unofficial genre. All of the nanotech novels I've read so far contain an optimism that is in short supply in cyberpunk. There is overlap, of course, but I think the distinction between cyberpunk and nanotech is as real as the distiniction between cyberpunk and other forms of SF.

YNH3, only All Tomorrow's Parties struck me as possessing an ending that was blatantly, rather than timidly, optimistic.

The bibliography was just to forestall any questions along the lines of, "Well, have you read..."

Finally, the reason I said I didn't see why I should read any other authors was because, before this thread, I had never heard any other recommendations. I was under the impression that cyberpunk was composed of the Big Three names and copycat hacks. If y'all say the lesser-known cyberpunk writers are good, I'll give them a look.

My reading list is swelling pleasantly. I feel like an expectant mother. Thanks for knocking me up, folks.

20:18 / 20.03.02

quote:Originally posted by YNH3:
Elaborations on Mystery Gypt's statements can be found in Storming the Reality Studio (Larry McCaffery ed.) - the first, and pretty much definitive, work on Cyberpunk's cultural, theoretical, and literary roots.

A damn fine book that is. The first half are selected pieces from Cyberpunk novels and shorts stories, the second half is made up of non-fiction pieces that deal with the themes in Cyberpunk fiction.

<almost thread rot>
For John Shirley fans, he's been involved as a lyricist for Blue Oyster Cult for their last two albums. He's always been a big BOC fan and his lyrics are pretty good if not terribly Cyberpunk.

Funny, I just reread Shirley's Transmanaicon a couple of weeks ago. Anybody else read that hard to find early work of his?
</almost thread rot>

[ 20-03-2002: Message edited by: Lothar Tuppan ]

pointless and uncalled for

11:22 / 25.03.02

I'm not going to disagree with any of the above listed calls as frankly I lack the capacity to back up my arguments all that well.

However shame on all of you for not including Jeff Noon anywhere in these lists.

I admit that he isn't heavily into the cybertech or cybernetic enhancement characteristics of the genre. However the mentality portratyed in his work clearly has it's place and cyberpunk is as much mentality as it is tech. if it weren't it wouldn't be called cyberpunk.

12:18 / 25.03.02

Oh, yeah. I remember Noon's Vurt. Cyberpunk meets Saturday morning cartoons; a crumbling dystopia in cheerful, flourescent pinks, yellows and greens. The protagonist was named Scribble for a reason. However, despite its inanity and insanity, the book was a lot of fun.

It could be the source of a bunch of interesting T-shirt slogans, too. Such as, "I went to the universal unconscious and all I got was a six-armed autistic alien." Or, "I have grandparents from five species." Or a picture of a referee in a drag racing pit shouting, "Gentlemen, Vaz your Feathers!"

12:42 / 25.03.02

Just finished reading 'vurt'. Every time Noon talked about the thing-from-outer-space I pictured doop from 'x-force' for some reason...

11:24 / 26.03.02

Would I be out of order in expressing my opinion that 'Vurt' is one of the best fucking books written in the last decade?

18:50 / 27.03.02

One of the few things that I've read of the genre is Rudy Rucker's Software. I'm reading the second part of that trilology now (titled Wet Ware). Rucker's a good writer, his books are quick reads. He's a seminal figure in cyberpunk, though not as oft mentioned as Gibson, Sterling, and Stephenson. Software's worth a look, especially if you're not into the overtly "hip" cyberpunk gloss.

18:58 / 27.03.02

I just picked up this book called "Proxies" and it seems to have a number of cyberpunkish elements. The thing that makes it stand out is that the people in the book can "jack in" to robotic bodies instead of computer networks.

01:56 / 28.03.02

Am I the only person that didn't much care for Vurt?

I'd second the Rucker endorsement, too; and he can claim a hard science background on the AI and math stuff.

01:59 / 24.08.02

o[rphan] d[rift]

completely cyber, plagiarises Burroughs, Gibson, et al. degenerates into binary noise in places.

written in part by sadie plant i believe.

13:12 / 24.08.02

read a novel called shamanspace last year - steve aylett. it struck me as a step forward - basically a cyberpunk novel with all the technology taken out. tricks and info are carried out via arcane yogas, psychic martial art skills and other con tricks, the uplink hardware almost having been absorbed beneath the skin.

Tryphena Absent

13:50 / 24.08.02

I'm definitely in agreement with Polly Trotsky about 'Synners', a book too often left off cyberpunk lists, it embodies the genre so well. It's something about that insulin pump - makes me laugh everytime. That and Stephenson's 'Diamond Age' would have to be my personal favourites.

17:32 / 24.08.02

Politically, I've always liked William Gibson. Trying to read Neuromancer was, for me, like chopping through near impenetrable jungle. I just couldn't visualise what was going on and I didn't really care, until the end - the last line sad and I felt more in those five words than in the rest of the book put together. John Shirley did it for me a bit more, again the politics attracted me, the fact that some of the writers at least seemed to be fairly on the ball (or, rather, I could relate to some of the stuff they came out with).

As you would expect, I had trouble because the distinct lack of women I found in the genre. Saw Kathy Acker interview Gibson once, and she was treated like she didn't deserve to be talking to the great man (not by him I should add, by some of the audience). Shirley used to play in a punk band and got treated with respect for it. I got laughed at in a review for having done the same thing.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

02:00 / 25.08.02

anyone ever read RIM by Bester?
kinda cyber punk/hindu mystic/ VR tale of intrigue
i dug it a few years back, have not read it in a while so may be nostalgia...

11:43 / 25.08.02

you got reviewed sfd? wow

Tryphena Absent

13:22 / 25.08.02

I've been told that RIM is quite good, it's lying around somewhere but I haven't got a clue where it's hiding, I'm reading Digital Dervish by Cadigan at the moment. Haven't decided whether I like it or not... her recent stuff isn't as good in my opinion (nothing's ever going to beat her short story about the vampire slayer anyway, not that it's cyberpunk but you know...).

06:57 / 27.08.02

I din't like it to much, but it was a fast read. I think I just expect too much. The short stories in Dirty Work, while not all cyberpunk, are pretty amazing. Wendy's granddaughter storming neverland was wonderful.

09:19 / 27.08.02

This seems a convenient time to mention that I picked up a 2nd hand copy of Gibson's Idoru yesterday. The plot synopsis / press quotes make in sound like it's going to rock, but I seem to remember reviews at the time of it's release being a bit so-so .. what's the verdict?

10:48 / 27.08.02

"This seems a convenient time to mention that I picked up a 2nd hand copy of Gibson's Idoru yesterday. .. what's the verdict?"

I thought it was absolutely rocking, esp. when read with the other books in the trilogy. I have this theory that what Gibson is really obsessed with is Artifical Intelligence, and our interactions with it, only it's not highlighted because there's so much other flash and noise going on in his novels.
After the rather bleak end of Neuromancer, where the human species is kind of written out of the evolutionary equation, the rest of this trilogy seems like an attempt to write us back in. You've knd of got the strange properties of human conciousness going on with the guy whose making those big weird sculptures (the Judge etc - can't remember his name).
I think he's re-visiting this idea in Idoru with the weird gestalt skrying abiities of Laney and the Rez/Idoru thang. Plus you've got her as somehow representitve of our interactions with the mediadrome.
Sorry, Riz, I know you might not have wanted an analysis like this, but there ya go...Hope I don't spoil it too much for ya, I've just realised I'm probably blurring bits of it with All Tomorrows Parties as well..
Overall, I think it's a much more sophisticated work than Neuromancer on all sorts of levels, but probably not as accessible. Probably a bit more oblique but better for it!

17:45 / 27.08.02

I think his books tend to get either tha slobbering dog reviews or the sort of "he's lost his fire" type of thing.

I can't see how the obsession with artificial intelligence isn't highlighted, though, given that it's the theme of all six of his solo novels. I suppose it does get pushed back by the characters sometimes.

Anyway, I was gonna say it's a good book, but prolly not one of the best. I was gonna say it's like he's trying to write in an unfamiliar idiom or something. I was gonna say it carries through on the jacket's promises. Then I realized it's been around eight years since I read it and what the hell do I know. Read it. Then go read All Tomorrow's Parties. I remeber I didn't think it was gonna be that great. I remember finishing and thinking it was wonderfully executed. Would probably suck without the Idoru background though.

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