Why Cyberpunk matters

Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the dystopia 

Science fiction is a genre that remains in perpetual flux. Fantasy tends to remain adherent to some of the basic Tolkien-esqe principles of elves, dwarves, wizards and dragons, Detective Fiction will almost always centre around either murders or gangsters (often murders committed by gangsters if the author wants to get a little crazy), and Romantic Drama's will always be sickly sweet. This is not to say that these genres are stagnant or in some way lesser, far from it in fact. Its is just that they are rooted in concrete things that don't really change. People fantasize about historical myths, commit crimes and fall in love in more or less that same way they did since before the invention of cinema. But real technology keeps closing the gap between itself and it's fictional counterpart so often, and the politics changes so rapidly with each passing day, that a genre that aims to look forward into the future from a single point in the present needs to try and keep pace.

To this end I would like to put forward the Science Fiction sub-genre of Cyberpunk as perhaps the most relevant genre to our world right now. For the uninitiated, Cyberpunk is a remarkably simple premise to understand. Bruce Sterling (one of the genres founding fathers) described is the “combination of high-tech and lowlife.” Or to put it another way, imagine a world were we have access to technology that could create a world of endless resources, comfort and peace, but everything has gone to pot. Cyberpunk was born out of the combination of utopian science fiction with the nihilistic sentiment felt by a handful of Sci-Fi writers in the 1980's. Chief amongst these lovable bunch of misanthropes was William Gibson, who's 1984 novel Neuromancer set the tone and built the basic rules of the genre. Take the tone of a Humphrey Bogart noir, fling it forward to some far off date, and make the whole place look like the Akihabara ward of Tokyo, whilst making your main characters computer hackers and punks. Its Sci-fi with dirt under its fingernails and grease on its clothes, a place where there is only the mega rich and those struggling to survive until the end of the day.

Its grim, its dark, but strangely beautiful in its own way. Its feels more relevant now than it did back then. The idea that groups of hackers could start waging wars against corporations or that there would be systems of mass surveillance and citizen databases were idle fantasy, something that couldn't possibly be real. And yet within the last 5 years we have had examples of both of those. In 2014 Sony Pictures was the victim of a massive hack that destroyed their cyber-security and exposed thousands of emails and memos, and China has begun to test their Social Credit System which will track and monitor every Chinese citizen's behavior and social standing. And that is to say nothing of the potential election tampering and social engineering conducted by so called “troll farms” over that last few years.

More than that, it is a genre that has become fairly proficient in speculation and philosophizing. It often asks about humanity and human connections in a world where technology becomes increasingly invasive and mankind's ability to create synthetic imitations of humanity grows ever more finely tuned. Blade Runner was asking these questions before robots could even walk upright unassisted, let alone question their own sentience and commit crime, and Ghost in the Shell was waxing philosophical about if cyborgs are still human and if the human mind can be duplicated by a computer whilst quoting Corinthians and Descartes. To be honest, Ghost in the Shell should be packaged with a bibliography and reading list.

And in terms in general aesthetic, it has one that is both approachable and beautifully distinct. As previously mentioned, Cyberpunk is dirty, with most great Cyberpunk stories taking place in huge urban centers where the architecture runs the gamut anywhere from Rococo or Art Deco to the rotting remains of today's buildings and everything is lit with neon lights and holograms. The definitive look was first established in Blade Runner with its towering skyscrapers, perpetual rain and giant advertisements, with the bright neon holograms coming from the seminal Japanese take on the genre Akira. But it has evolved as we get ever further from the 1980s and closer to these once prophesied dates. The Netflix series Altered Carbon trends towards more Brutalism inspired architecture, whilst the game series Deus Ex has a style more firmly rooted in modern art with its digital art displays and augmented modern housing. With just a simple glance at the items and buildings in any of these worlds, you can instantly understand the mood they wish to convey. But at the end of the day, it will always default to the timeless image of a rainy night in the city. An image that may have only entered into our collective consciousness with the past 100 years has already become a timeless image of loneliness, despair, danger and mystery. Whether its Ford or Bogart, a man standing in the rain with a gun in his hand is a classic look.

Cyberpunk speaks to modern audiences the same way noir and detective fiction spoke to audiences in the 1940s. It's dark, brooding and above all about some kind of justice being delivered. But rather than fight against organized crime or serial killers, cyberpunk protagonist fight against conspiracy and corruption, either of the self or of governments. As we get more and more cynical and paranoid about the world we live in and the technology we use, it helps us explore those fears like all good fiction. And, if nothing else, it provides us with hope. A hope that even if we all become a mess of post-humanistic wage slaves for some hideously mutated mega-corporation in a despotic mega city, there will still be people fighting for the little guy against the tides of conspiracy and enslavement. And we'll finally get flying cars, if we're lucky.