The question: Is cyberpunk dead?
Based on the latest atmosphere around here, the answer would be "yes." However, that is not a true indicator of anything; just because a bunch of geeks aren't posting rabidly in a forum does not indicate a passing of a zeitgeist. (And I'm happy to be here, I assure you!)
The reason for the question: After browsing through The Cyberpunk Project's website once again after being away for a long, long time (net-life: 2 years), I came upon the section of the site that asks this question. It got me to thinking about what I've been reading lately and the current status of my life.
The site, obviously, does not feel that cyberpunk is dead. The genre of science fiction might be dead and morphed into what can be considered "post-cyberpunk science fiction." Others (as linked on the site) seem to agree...but there is the view of the "fathers" of cyberpunk that say that it is dead.
Warning: The next 8 Paragraphs are personal, and in no way necessary for the full reading of my rant...unless you want to know where I come from. You can skip them if you want.
I've changed from what I once was. Back in the late 80's, I was a grungy kid who worked hard to understand the workings of everything in the off-chance that the Cold War would have a sudden cold snap and the s**t would hit the fan. I wouldn't say I was a survivalist (I was what? 10?), but I was scared shitless when I could understand what was going on, and, like everyone else, slowly grew comforted by the fact that if it did happen, we may never even know it happened. Mutually-assured destruction had a sort of comfort to it that was...well...neutral.
Then the wall fell. Communism was (essentially, from a capitalist viewpoint) gone! No longer a "threat."
The 90's saw me through a strange transformation; I was still the grungy kid (I was "grunge" before there was a "grunge") who began reading, after the coming of Terminator 2, cyberpunk lit. I devoured the literature. Then I found industrial and so on...I hated school because it didn't fit my needs. So on and so forth (it's called teen angst). As I saw computers change and advance, my anticipation grew...I would be living in the Sprawl. I would be a console cowboy. I would...go to college.
Again, it was a life-changing time...I started in psychology and skirted with the idea of minoring in computer science. I wanted to study artificial intelligence. I wanted to develop Wintermute, or something like it. Maybe even someday I'd be like Dixie Flatline. Again, things changed.
I found that I despised psychology because it could not explain to me the very barest of ideas that I wanted to explore. Sure, I could attempt to decode the human psyche like all the other scientists, but even that was...to but it bluntly, my adviser told me that I probably wouldn't get into graduate school for psychology without doing a stint of counseling. To hell with other peoples problems! I had too many of my own demons to deal with before I could even begin hearing the rants of other people (and, for those of you still reading this, I thank you!). So I turned to writing.
I found that I had a knack for writing. I found that I could describe my world...or the world I envisioned quite well. It wasn't a creepy coincidence that it looked like the Sprawl. It wasn't a creepy coincidence that my writing explored the psyche of the people living in that type of future. I "found" myself.
Again, things changed...authors change. Society changes. New ideas are born.
And I sit here, late at night/early morning, thinking about my aspirations for the future...about being a sci-fi writer...and facing the hard reality that I have a job interview tomorrow morning to teach high school English.
Resume here, if skipped.
William Gibson has stepped away from the genre with his last book, Pattern Recognition. It still has the Gibsonian air about it, but it's different; suddenly we're not thrust into the future, we're thrust into a world very much like our own...hell, it could be our own world. Chances are, it is.
Bruce Sterling has said that the age of cyberpunk has gone. In his book, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, he essentially tells us, from the viewpoint of a futurist, that the world envisioned by cyberpunk is gone...not because it will never happen, but because it has been consumed by society and it's now the "norm."
Personally, when I compare my life say 15 years ago to my life today, there are HUGE differences; I do spend a lot of time on the net, and not just playing around, but using it for research, job-finding, networking...everything that CP lit had hinted about. I still haven't cracked any black ice or smuggled guns in the former Soviet Union, but I'm still young (relatively speaking).
So what does that leave us with? Sterling writes in the aforementioned book,
Quote:
Genetic engineering is the twenty-first century's own new baby. In the century's dawn, biotech is its star turn. Biotech is by no means tomorrow's only major technologyl The twenty-first century has the whole technological family crammed under its roof, fork in hand at the trestle table, a vast clan of hungry transformations, many of them centuries old: printing, clocks railroads, electric power, radio, television, air flight, nuclear fission, satellites, and computation; it has the works. It's an orgy of sibling rivalry. But genetic engineering is tomorrow's native-born contribution to that family. It's the newest, the riskiest, and if it survives and flourishes, it will become the most powerful. Biotech is a baby Hercules that wants to kick the slats out of the crib.
He introduces us to a world that is much, MUCH different from a world suggested to us in the golden-age of cyberpunk. Are we living in a hollow society? Not really. Are we still grungy? In a way...but a good way. We have cells and mitochondria working for us...we have potentially bred viruses and good infections to help us fight diseases and bad infections. In a word, our world has become more natural...more green.
What gives? Is Sterling having flashbacks to the 60's? Has he become a tree-hugger? Not really...he also invites us to consider the idea that, with the help of computation, all of that data, all of that genetic information, is, for the most part, free to the public (ala the DNA project). Biological and chemical warfare can grow in that society.
Are we all going to look like supermodels? No, and he goes on at length about why we won't (I'll spare you the details). We will be tweaked, yes, but it will be tweaking so that we can cope. Essentially, there is no market for the "perfect human" in the future because, by the time that human reaches maturity, he's already a dinosaur, just as it happens in computer technology.
It's also interesting to note that last month Sterling wrote his last column for Wired magazine. In it he wrote about what the future holds. Guess what? It didn't have a whole lot to do with "cybertech." It had to do with DNA and biology.
The following month (this month), the feature of the same magazine was all about the "superhuman;" the human altered by genetics and biology. I'm willing to gamble that Mr. Sterling's prediction wasn't so short-sighted to be one month away. He meant more long-term.
Does that make the next wave biopunk?
Is that death just in literature? Keep in mind that literature tends to change a society...good science fiction writers have a way of "looking ahead" to what may be or what might be possible. The help us to dream. They help us to become. They put ideas in our heads.
Has cyberpunk been assimilated? It isn't exactly as it was explained to us, but the coincidences are stunning (1984 or Fahrenheit 451, anyone?). We live and thrive on the net...even the net, as it's first incarnation was born (free data) died like a fart in the wind and was replaced by the internet v.2.0 (mega-corporation-controlled). Isn't that cyberpunk?
Should we look to a new future? Biopunk?
Maybe I should have paid more attention in my biology classes and worked for an "A" rather than earned the "C."
Restatement of the question: Is cyberpunk dead?
