Cyberpunk
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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[Edit to replace a broken part of the initial post]
I'd define post-cyberpunk as "building on cyberpunk but not quite within the genre". So maybe you have a world where technology is ubiquitous and people put cyberware in their bodies but it's not really a dystopia. Or you do have a dystopia but the story is focused elsewhere.
For instance, The Diamond Age depicts an ultra-globalized world ruled (more or less) by a cabal of corporate entities. But it's also technically a post-scarcity society and the novel is a coming-of-age story rather than a direct struggle of underdogs against an oppressive system. It's not really cyberpunk but you can tell that it shares some of its DNA. You could probably tell cyberpunk stories in that world but this isn't quite one of them.
I'd say that cyberpunk at its core is built around an unjust, corporate-dominated society with pervasive (and often intrusive) technology in which an underdog (or a group thereof) fights to resist the system in some way. If you deviate from that you either have post-cyberpunk (if the work is still relatively close to the themes) or something else with a cyberpunk aesthetic (if the core themes are barely referenced while the aesthetic is maintained).
Like always all distinctions are made up and all lines are blurry. When is something post-cyberpunk and when is it something else with a cyberpunk coat of paint? I can't give any clear answers here.
For example, would System Shock qualify as cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, or neither?
The intro and basic premise are very cyberpunk: You are a lone hacker trying to steal the blueprints for a military-grade implant from a corporation. Then they catch you and a corrupt exec gives you a deal at gunpoint to disable his space station's AI's pesky ethical subroutines. That all tracks.
Then you wake up, everyone is dead and the rest of the game is a sci-fi horror survival shooter. While corporate mistreatment of people is referenced every once in a while, it's not really all that important. So I'd say it's probably not a cyberpunk story. But is it post-cyberpunk as its story springs from a cyberpunk premise? Or is it sci-fi action with a cyberpunk coat of paint? I can't really decide.