/lit/ - Literature

>>17454047
Yes. And Neil Stephenson killed it by sublimation.

Is the future Cyberpunk? No. It's already here. What comes to mind was the james bond plot in which the villainy was fixed prices in order to have an evil plan, but in reality this had already happened at a much worse extreme IRL. The entire genre of cyberpunk is itself a simulacra. It is a simulation of a past's future. We have already experienced the villainous aspects brought around through the classics of that era. Neuromancer, Bladerunner, Snow Crash. All these brought with them a criticism from the time they were created. When you discuss fiction coming first, how fiction inspires the future and manifests itself into reality. The cyberpunk of the 80s did that. It happened. It already was and yet we continue to be in a state of becoming. The modern cyberpunk, this resonance you point out (as you said in stream you haven't engaged in the original content of this genre) is a simulation of the 80s original cyberpunk, which itself is a simulation of what that era thought was the future. Like when you watch the movie streets of fire now, it is the 80s interpretation of the 50s. It's surreal. It's farcical. It's ability to define a criticism of a time that no longer exists seems retractive and faulty, no longer able to discern what is relevant and what is purely aesthetic. The conclusion I come to is that your analysis here is short sighted and not based within enough of a historical context to be a useful critique. It simply points out the surface level intentions of a game developer that took inspiration from the simulacra. It's simply pointing out to people who think that politics in video games is including women of color of the direct themes the creators wanted to be seen, instead of seeing the game and its attached asthetics as a commodity itself. It is a skin to put over something to give it a new neon sheen, to embark on a nostalgia trip to a place no one remembers and to ride high on the false memory of something that never existed. It is a hauntological sedative implemented to avoid questioning the fundamental crisis of future's pasts within science fiction. Cyberpunk has already happened. We are living in it. It isn't the future. It's right now.

There is something I really dislike in cyberpunk aesthetics. It's the same reason modern architecture looks ugly, it has this commersialized feel to it. It feels like something produced by a marketing committe instead of an artist.

It’s certainly on the way out the door, seeing as we’re 20 years away from it no longer being a form of fiction at all.

>>17454047
I don’t think there has been a cyberpunk novel recently other than ready player one.

yes. 2077 was just spitting on its grave so everyone was on the same page

>>17454132
...isnt that the point?

>>17454058
This. We already live in the cyberpunk dystopia, its redundant at this point. At least the fictionalized versions seem like theres more exciting shit to do than sit in your house using the internet 24/7 for the same boring work and entertainment we've always had just a million times more soulless and invasive

For that matter, 1984, Spengler, and Moldbug aren't worth reading from this point on because everything they predicted was accurate and therefore they're outdated.

>>17454137
you're a piece of shit

no one read this picture

>>17454258
Well yeah but I am just saying

>>17454047
Basically yes. When everything else around us feels like shit, we want to read about utopian futures. Not ones that are trying to be just as bad as the present.

>>17454137
well

>>17454047
I read some post where an anon refrenced that
>cyberpunk had lost its steam
and is no longer an interesting and innovative field
he also linked an article but I didnt care to read it, since cyberpunk seems dull.

cyberpunk was cool in the 80s when none of the stuff it talked about was actually happening . Now we live in a more mundane version of cyberpunk.

The hot new genre is cli fi. or climate fiction. about how global warming is going to destroy the planet and people. so what come after cyberpunk. the dying earth genre of course

cyberpunk is mostly like a type of retrofuturism + neon lights. i think it was dead on birth.

>>17454137
>superstition aint got shit on me

>>17454047
Cyberpunk is more relevant in ever in our current times due to its themes

Im writting a cyberpunk book right now, but its less focused on the technology part and its more focused on class divides and capitalist misery

Too many people just focus on the cool technology part, technology is just a tool in the end

>>17454047
Only in the sense that punk is dead, near future dystopian scifi is doing gangbusters

>>17455244
That’s not cyberpunk

>>17454132
haha nigga thats the fucking point of cyberpunk, shouldn´t be ¨aesthetic¨

>>17454047
Yes. It’s not existentially horrific enough to believable.

>>17456202
>thats not cyberpunk
just admit you have a small brain and move on

>>17455117
“Cli fi” sounds even more mundane and lame.

>>17454137
kill me

>>17455244
>Im writting a cyberpunk book right now, but its less focused on the technology part and its more focused on class divides and capitalist misery
You literally don't understand what the genre is about.

>>17457486
Degradation of society due to rampant technological growth and hypercapitalism?

What the fuck am i supposed to write about, some guy in a trenchcoat hunting robots?

>>17454137
repost

>>17454137
it doesn't work if you're phoneposting

>>17454137
My safety doggo laughs at these idle threats.

>>17454047
It was mainly a parody of 80s capitalim turned into hypercapitalism. It rather pointless now that we have already surpassed this point and head into accelerationism,

>>17454047
Man with a bullet in his skull says:
Gotcha.
as he attempts to dereference a fucking sound. It’s not even bleeding. Bore.

>>17458418
>It rather pointless now that we have already surpassed this point and head into accelerationism,

No, THAT is now the plot -- the plot that the nicklandians of /lit/ should collectively develop as a late and final blossom on the cyberpunk genre: or does it explode?

>>17454058
word salad

Is there cyberpunk with pic related + slush?

>>17455117
any recs?

Cyberpunk is really just humans being hunter gatherers next to corporate monoliths which is fucking based.
I wanna read about how advanced tech creates hard class distinctions but always the focus is on high tech low culture not low tech versus high tech then the cultural divide.

>>17454137

>>17454137
*sigh*

>>17455244
>>17457574
Cyberpunk is literally about technological part and how lower classes live among it. If you don't focus on the technological part it might as well be a regular dystopia.

>>17454047
As a genre, yes. It died sometime between the first Matrix movie and Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix.

Perhaps the best explanation for what's happened is one of Gibson's earliest stories: The Gernsback Continuum. See, when Gibson was writing, he was essentially making a course correction for science fiction, which up until Gibson (and contemporaries, of course) had captivated the public with dreams of a nuclear utopia.

This hope had inspired and infected almost every facet of public life and design, from suburban architecture to school buses to lunchboxes and even vacuum cleaners. The Kennedy Space program was able to support these naive optimism for some time, aided particularly by the simplistic cultural antagonism between the Soviets and the Democratic West.

But, as cyber technology bloomed, and one might have expected a similar wide-flung optimism and faith in Man's ability to invent new tools, the cracks were beginning to show in our previous unfulfilled dreams. The shanty towns of the early century had certainly been eradicated by a modern world, but only to be replaced by the far more frightening and dehumanizing ghettos of the growing cosmopolitan centers. The Comic Book villainy of Stalin had been eclipsed by the world-ending incompetence of Gorbachev and the Chernobyl disaster. Despite the high promises of digital technology and democratized information, the world was becoming far bleaker. Conflict was not ending. Poverty was still as present as ever. Surely, the world was going through another technological revolution, but it was clear it would be as similarly transformative in the fundamentals as all the revolutions' before it. The paint would chance, but the pain would stay the same.

In this sense, Gibson and the genre of cyber-punk brought science-fiction back to earth, back into the muck and grime of human lives. But, like the science fiction that had come before, it still offered a caricature of life, an exaggeration of its depiction.

Some 40 years on, we have found the reality even bleaker and more trivial than even these grim prophets foretold. Our scientific reality is no longer open to the stars, to inter-galactic conflicts, to miraculous technology. The prognostic illustration of possible futures which was once the primary pillar of science fiction has collapsed; all that remains to it is parable and morality tale. It is no different now than fantasy. Ah, but for cyberpunk, what kind of fantasy can it offer, when its already outdone by our present space and time?

Cyberpunk, from the beginning, was the end of our space-age dreams. To write a good cyberpunk story now would be to simply write literature. If you doubt me, just read Infinite Jest.

Cyberpunk was forged in the height of cutthroat competition between massive businesses. It was steeped in a sort of bleak romanticism, a fantasy where although life sucked for the little guy, he could still make a living telling himself he's working against the system by playing footsoldier in the underground wars and corporate espionage between competing megacorps. The world was seen as doomed to progress to corporations becoming eldritch entities which do not even notice the common man, having progressed beyond the need for humanity, dwarfing governments and taking on their role. The common man could live his life mostly unmolested and not monitored, though he may have to throw away some part of his humanity to augment himself to succeed in that grim version of capitalism portrayed in cyberpunk.

However, reality did not end up conforming quite to this. Corporations have indeed grown beyond the need for humanity, but they no longer compete so thoroughly. Instead, they have found that cooperation on occasion maximizes their profits even more and allows them to exert control, which they use for social engineering. The woke corporation now snuggles up to government rather than trying to get around it, and they are willing to adopt elements of socialism when it pleases them. And, most of all, they are very, very interested in what the common man is doing with his life and willing to intervene. The corporate future we got is one far more perverse and cloying than what Gibson and his ilk ever envisioned. We are ruled by cruel kindness and a labyrinth of gaslighting. Even transhumanism, a thematic element chosen to represent throwing away your humanity to succeed in capitalism, now feels like a desirable fantasy.

Cyberpunk is dead. Not because it became true as so many are willing to claim, no. It's dead because it's meant as dystopian but now seems better than the world we actually got. We long for having a shootout with our arm cannons and dashing across the city on robot legs to deliver the data stored in our brain chips in the same way that we long for riding a horse into battle and having a sword duel at sundown. It's no longer sci-fi. Cyberpunk is fantasy, weirdly clinging to the vestiges of dystopia that it was built on.

>>17459636
>>17459355
Good posts. Thanks anon.

>>17459045
It would be kino in that setting

>>17459913
It's always set in that type of setting when it ain't produce by Hollywood or authors who are hacks.

>>17454047
So what's the picture referencing?

Feel like it has been in modern literature, and 2077 possibly killed it as anything else desu. Maybe it being niche something cool might come out of it. (Probably not though)

I think bleak dystopian scifi will soon change to AI body/mind horror and transhumanism as the central topic. With themes of loss of humanity and spirit, shedding of the human shell and collective consciousness replacing traditional forms of religion.

>>17454137
sigh

>>17459126
im not the same poster but I just read Dale Pendell's The Great Bay and really enjoyed it.

>>17454047
We are living it, what else you need?

>>17454047
It was stillborn.

>>17454132
>modern architecture looks ugly
Lots of modern architecture looks great and you probably like it. The issue is that modernism as an aesthetic has been in production for over a hundred years. Your actual bugbear is probably contemporary architecture, which tends to either be a heterotopic hodgepodge of past styles or nearly faceless.

>>17454047
You best believe in a Cyberpunk future son; you're living in one now!

Social media dehumanizes and disintegrate humanity and empathy. Corps brainwash, pollute, censor and rubber stamp coup d'etats.

Wake up chummer!

>>17461865
By modern architecture I mean city apartments and public buildings mainly, it just isn't aesthetically pleasing compared to say, the Victorian style.

>>17459355
>>17459636
Well said

>>17454137

>>17454058
Lost futures are such a kino concept, any other good writing about this other than Mark Fisher?

>>17462765
>By modern architecture I mean city apartments and public buildings mainly
by modern architecture i just mean cheap things that i dont like.

>>17463076
Quit being anal about it, it is perfectly legitimate to refer as modern architecture the style of the majority of buildings in the modern western world. It is the dominant look of our cities.
Sounds like you want to defend modern architecture while pretending that it's something completely different.

>>17463074
None that I can recall.

>>17459355
>>17459636
Excellent posts, though very depressing. I find it morbidly funny that the 'dystopia' cyberpunk portrays is suddenly more attractive than what we have now. Oh well.

>>17463476
It really isn't. Modern architecture is by now a dated style that fell out of favor around the 80s.