this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Cyberpunk
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What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.
Cyberpunk characteristics include:
- Dystopian city setting where mega-corporations rule
- Full integration of technology into society, featuring cybernetic implants
- Outsider protagonists (punks) who often are very familiar with the technology around them
- Hard boiled detective and film noir vibes and influence
- Themes dabbling in trans-humanism, existentialism, and what it means to be human.
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I think Gibson stories are my main reread, partly because I think they work a little better when you already half remember what's going on.
I also reread the Murderbot books quite often, they're kind of comfort food stories for me.
I rewatch Cowboy Bebop sometimes for the same reason.
I reread the webcomic Black & Blue fairly often but that's mostly because the person making it has been absolutely hammering out pages for years now and I almost always need to reread before I can catch up.
I'd call murderbot more sci-fi but I can also see all the cyberpunk characteristics of it. Also I love that series.
It's definitely getting harder and harder to draw genre boundaries - cyberpunk quietly infiltrated mainstream scifi to the point where you can find cyberpunk elements in almost any modern scifi. Not bad for a subgenre the corporations and marketers misused and overused until it crashed. I remember people talking about it like a joke in the 2000s so I'm very pleased it won in the end (though I wish people treated it more like a warning than a roadmap).
I can definitely see the inclination not to include Murderbot (I thought twice about including it on the list) mostly because it doesn't feel cyberpunk. It's very clean, there's no sense of decline or collapse the corps are ruling over, and the locations by and large don't fit the usual. Heck one area is lowkey solarpunk. I think it has a ton of cyberpunk elements, story beats, etc, but it's almost fridge cyberpunk, you have to walk away and think about it before enough of them line up. And feel is a big part of the genre, I think.
I do find it Freudian that only evil corporations use fiction about evil corporations as a road map.
Given there are corp controlled areas and egalitarian government controlled areas, it is closer to the star trek universe with as many situtations as worlds.