I recently went to see the new movie TRON: Legacy, the biggest cyberpunk-related movies this year. It’s the sequel some of us have waited decades for. I’m sure all the hard-core fans here have already seen it, but in case you haven’t I’ll be including a few spoilers. Go see the movie if that’s a big deal for you. Otherwise, read on and then leave a comment with your thoughts.
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A reader sent a link to the game Sp.A.I, a cyberpunk themed “third-person puzzle platformer”. I had already downloaded the game, but it’s taken me a bit to actually sit down and play it. The game was developed by // No comment, a team of 5 students from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Fairly interesting for a student project.

You can download the game at http://www.indiedb.com/games/spai/

So, what’s it like? Read on for a small review.
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Fellow cyberpunk enthusiast End_User send in this though-provoking article. Enjoy!

‘Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk.’ – William Gibson

‘The Orient […] seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.’ – Edward Wadie Said, in Orientalism

Cyberpunk is a genre obsessed with the other, the outsider, the strange and the foreign. Whether it be foreign objects that penetrate and augment the human body, foreign beings represented by AI constructs or simply the seemingly eternal concept of the foreigner as ‘that man from elsewhere,’ cyberpunk is saturated with them. Leaving aside for the moment works that actually originate from South East Asian countries, Western cyberpunk is obsessed, just as the citizens of the European empires were during the age of exploration, with the concept of the East as a faraway place where magic resides. In cyberpunk, of course, that magic is technology, but it remains the same.

The East becomes a mysterious place, Gibson’s ‘black clinics of Chiba’ attaining a foreign and horrible resonance in the mind of the Western audience. The Triads and the Yakuza are conglomerated and deliberately blurred together, ‘the Sons of the Neon Chrysthanthemum,’ and become a dominant force in world affairs through their corporate interests. Is this demonstrative of a fear, peculiarly Western, of the growing economic and political power of South-East Asian nations? Or is it merely fetishism, the attraction of this foreign and magical land that was felt by French artists in the 19th Century?

Outside of Gibson’s works, we see indicators that it is fear that dominates this new Orientalism: in Blade Runner we see not the empty and decaying L.A. that Dick had assumed, but an overpopulated, multi-racial, multi-lingual city. And the races portrayed delineate American paranoias that have only been expanded upon since the end of the Cold War; non-integrating Hispanics and Asians flood the screen and the streets in Blade Runner, speaking pidgin languages and bringing their own cultures. Yet, they never ascend beyond the streets, because as Said highlights, Orientalism is ‘a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient [rather than] a veridic discourse about the Orient.’ By implanting this fearful racial dystopia, there is a forced realisation of the dominance and therefore superiority of Western cultures.

But what of cyberpunk works that arrive in the East? Japan undoubtedly has produced some of the genres greatest works, and they cannot be accused of fetishising their own culture. Observe, though, the concept of ‘other’ applied through a Japanese scope: in Ghost in the Shell it is always America that is the foreign invading ‘other’ politically, while visual representation of the other comes through blond hair/blue eyes, or in the filmic versions, a stereotyped China (Ghost in the Shell, 1995, is set in New Port based on Hong Kong, characters on signs are Chinese). Indeed, in Stand Alone Complex we see America, China and Russia as the invading outsider multiple times, while films such as Akira and Appleseed doubtless have grounding in memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Visually, Eastern cyberpunk does not rob from other cultures, so why does Western? It rests on a widespread assumption, not entirely unfounded, that Japan is ‘the technology place,’ because of its past record of producing and adopting new technologies at a rate greater than the West. But as the West moves ahead in technological terms, might we not question the reasoning behind always thinking of Japan thusly? It mirrors all too uncomfortably the concept of the East being ‘the spice place,’ and Said’s criticism that there is ‘a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts.’

Jess contacted us with news about her new book, The Other Side of Life which combines Urban Fantasy and Cyberpunk. She offered to do an interview, so we took her up on the offer before she changed her mind. ;) This is her first book in a series, and she’s offering free copies to people willing to do advance reviews. Read to the end if you’re interested.

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I stumbled across an interesting article recently, A radical pessimist’s guide to the next 10 years by Douglas Coupland. Perhaps a bit much on the “pessimist” side, but what struck me is how this list mentioned some cyberpunk-like concepts.

Let’s take a look at a few of them.
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For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.

~ Extract from “Neuromancer” by William Gibson.

Walls, be they physical or metaphorical, are common in all walks of fiction. They enclose whole worlds, trapping hero and villain alike so that they must escape, or else breed conflict. It’s common for a hero to break through these walls and achieve a ‘happy ending’, freeing society and themselves in the process – but not often in cyberpunk. I can’t help but notice some of these boundaries as I take in cyberpunk old and new, and wonder as to their role in the ‘real world’ too.

"Move along."

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Journalists often have a prominent place in cyberpunk. A lot of times the story in a cyberpunk setting is told as being a news story. It can be a reminder of how much corporations control everything if the newscast is missing information that the reader/viewer knows, or it can be an affirmation of how an independent can break through the control to report the “real truth”.

So, let’s take a look at journalists in cyberpunk, and how our future is likely to head compared to the previous concept.
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Here’s a guest post by guest writer Scrivener talking about cyberpunk’s place in our current world. He echoes some of the points I’ve written about, how the old concept of cyberpunk has become our reality. He also makes an great call to action in the last paragraph, and I’d also love to hear your thoughts to his question.

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We picture cyberpunk in our minds. We picture it in visuals and concepts, aesthetically and emotionally. We’re drawn to a future that is filled with the dystopian rhythm born from a world exploring its unknown, advancing, adolescent self. We’re drawn to the slick style of the (usually) technologically savvy inhabitants, the seamless or invasive fusion of man with machine in all aspects of life, and the bleak concepts and intriguing ideas only a cyberpunked world can provide. We catch glimpses of these elements and concepts ever-creeping upon our modern time, always feeling like a cyberpunk future is just around the corner — “achievable” (as written by Sinnyo).
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Cyberpunk is a curious beast – it feels just as virtual as cyberspace itself, and yet it’s based in shocking reality. There’s an art to it all; with all the dingy alleyways, cyborg fashions and towering industrial complexes we see in comics, films and games, cyberpunk feels more fantastical than it wants us to believe. Of course, it is a theme within science fiction – just like space opera, steampunk and raygun gothic adventures – but it’s always felt so much more real, and dare I say, achievable than the others.

I’m not really qualified to talk about how cyberpunk works through exposing realistic human conditions, and I would be stating the obvious when citing its ‘near future’ setting, rather than the distance of a re-imagined past or alien world. That’s all a given. Instead I wonder, how is it that cyberpunk manages to look and feel like it’s only one turn away down a street corner?

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I went to Dragon*Con earlier this month as a speaker and as a fan of many aspects of geekdom. The great thing about the conference is that you can meet people of from every sort of fandom possible. It’s a huge convention in Atlanta, spanning across 5 hotels.

One panel I wanted to make sure to see was one on Ghost in the Shell. I arrived early only to find a line already waiting. Luckily I was able to get in and listen to the panel.

One of the moderators was Dennis, aka “DragonKhan”. He also started and moderates the LaughingMan Squad Yahoo! group. What was interesting is that Dennis didn’t fit the stereotype of a “cyberpunk fan”. For one thing, he’s older than Bruce Sterling. But, he was obviously a true fan and I enjoyed the discussion on the panel and wanted to talk to him more.

I asked Dennis to answer some questions about himself and the group. Do check out the Yahoo! group and perhaps contribute. After all, it’s always nice to talk to other enthusiastic fans!

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