To a grandparent’s ear, the word cyberpunk sounds like the newest trend in teenage style. Indeed to even a younger audience, it could be the name of the next great band. In fact, cyberpunk is actually a genre of science fiction that you’ve probably seen in movies like The Matrix, Bladerunner and I, Robot. With an ever-growing selection of science fiction movies, the genre and its sub-cultures like cyberpunk are being watched and enjoyed more by the mainstream.
Cyberpunk 101
Gisele Baxter, a lecturer at the University of British Columbia, describes cyberpunk as “technology taken to its logical extremes but approached with the street-smart, anti-authoritarian attitude of first generation, 1970s punk.”
Most of these tales involve some element of social breakdown, with a post-apocalyptic spin as the result of the consequences of technology. The “cyber” element is named for the genre’s themes of cybernetics, the Internet, and computers, as well as the struggle with technology gone wrong.
Dwight Williams, a member of the Ottawa Science Fiction Society, agrees that these social perspectives are a key element of the cyberpunk genre.
“The idea of what constitutes humanity . . . the pace of humanity moving too fast, . . . the pace of commodification moving too fast, [are key themes],” he said.
As a result of this social breakdown, a protagonist who audiences can identify with often emerges, who embodies a ‘punk’ mentality.
Baxter thinks that this genre is compelling because as an audience, “we’d like to think our response to such devastating situations would not be resignation or compliance, but [an] anarchic, rebellious attitude.”
“It helps that they’re style-setters too, they have really iconic gear. Plus they’re often personally damaged: that makes them easier to relate to and identify with than many superheroes.”
Darren Wershler, the research chair in Media and Contemporary Literature at Concordia University, also said the ‘punk’ attitude can also be seen not only in the characters, but in the literary styles of cyberpunk writers.
“What these [writers] had in common was a visionary intensity, a certain flair for literary style, and a set of concerns about how technology was changing.”
Cyberpunk’s origins
In today’s world of technology, it’s almost hard to remember a time without all-knowing smartphones or even the more basic concept of television. In the past, the new ideas involving complex technology were often dismissed.
Despite seeming impossible, technologies like electricity, the telephone, vehicles, and locomotives began to develop at the beginning of the 20th century. This development of modern science spurred the earliest science-fiction novels, and inspired a sense of wonder in both its authors and readers. Some of the most well-known early science-fiction novels include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.
Though they didn’t know it at the time, both authors helped to establish the modern concept of science fiction, a genre of literature that explores the future and sees a world with huge advancements in science and technology.
But science fiction also usually delves into a more thoughtful examination of the consequences of innovation as well as ensuring that each scenario is somewhat scientifically plausible. Wershler called science fiction before the 1970s as “largely a literature of ideas.”
“Early science fiction goes out of its way to say ‘we’re not interested in the style of writing, we’re just interested in the ideas and the technology,’” he said.
As science fiction became more established as a literary genre, subcultures began to break off. Wershler said one of these sub-genres called New Wave began in the 1970s.
“[New Wave started] introducing not only questions about social issues and wider concerns than hard science, it also [started] thinking about how we use language and why,” he said.
As writers began to consider a more social perspective, this gave way to a new approach to science fiction and along with it, the cyberpunk genre.
From that world to this one
Often touted as the earliest examples of the cyberpunk genre, the 1982 movie Bladerunner and William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer both display the quintessential marks of cyberpunk. Though both came out around 30 years ago, Baxter said that “both remain [fresh] even though both predate the Internet and the millennial breakthroughs in personal communications.”
As cyberpunk becomes more popular, it’s crossing over from the digital world into the real one, according to Baxter. She said that people are taking design cues from the subgenre and using them in their own work.
“The mainstream impact has been more an impact on aesthetics, especially in film design, and to a certain extent in fashion and architecture,” she said.
This is notable in many Japanese cities, such as Shibuya, which the New York Times described as a “futuristic Times Square.”
As technology continues to advance, science fiction still attempts to envision the future. However, Baxter said we have a long way to go before many of these conceptions are accurate.
“The future has turned out to be not flying cars or space colonies, but wireless Internet access and smartphones,” she said.
