18 December 2008
Cyberpunk
Posted by Mick (SplaTT) Stanic under: Books; Geek Culture .
I have a largish book collection, and my two largest genre’s are made up of crime fiction from the 1930′s to the 1990′s and cyberpunk (of which i also have a large DVD collection)…and cyberpunk is by far my favourite :)
From the Wikipedia Cyberpunk page:
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life”. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.
Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations. They tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators (“the street finds its own uses for things”). Much of the genre’s atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.
I’ve listed some of my favourite Cyberpunk related sites below:
The official Cyberpunk homepage
The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
Wikipedia sites:
“Neuromancer” by William Gibson (official Gibson site)
“Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson
I’ll finish up with two quotes from the brilliant William Gibson cyberpunk novel, “Neuromancer”.
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”
Johnny Mnemonic trailer from YouTube
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