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.
Prefixes for posts
- [AI Art]
- [Art]
- [Book]
- [Game]
- [Meme]
- [Movie]
- [Video]
This is a community focused on cyberpunk as a genre of fiction. Please post any news articles about our real world slipping into a dystopian nightmare at: !aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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I think of solarpunk as post-cyberpunk because it exists as a response to cyberpunk. But cyberpunk continues, so post- as a "hey it's done, everything afterwards is something else" declaration doesn't work for me. You can write and direct a film noir movie outside of the film noir time period. The problem with labels is that different eras are marked by different patterns, but also different years. If something is written using the elements of the 1980s cyberpunk but it's actually written in 2026, is it classic cyberpunk because of the themes or is it post-cyberpunk only because it was written decades later. The labels become less useful if you bind yourself to odd conclusions based on odd taxonomies.
Cyberpunk means different things to different people, so some might consider it over because the things that defined it for them are done. But honestly it's even more relevant now because so much of the implied criticism in cyberpunk media in the 1980s has continued and arguably gotten worse with corporate hegemony, authoritarianism, surveillance states, etc.
You best start believing in cyberpunk dystopias, because you're in one. It just is also sometimes a boring dystopia, but that's just how reality goes. Fiction is expected to be more believable.