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Strife of Cyberpunk

Once again, our science fiction is set within the future. Unlike the space opera, it’s a horrible future where no one is happy, except for the evil ruling class of corporations or corrupt governments. Unlike our Speculative fiction, though, it’s less about being within the collapse of sane civilization and being beyond it. The environment is completely decimated - there’s nothing green in these stories except for the occasional neon light. Almost always robots of some kind exist, running amuck or assisting the end of humankind, whether their intention or not. Everything humans aren’t aware of—everything that should be God's knowledge alone—is common knowledge in Cyberpunk genre. While originally supposed to be a throwing of the set ways and gurus of the 80’s science fiction trends, eventually it grew its own and is supposedly a “dead” genre.

Cyberpunk tech in is usually extremely advanced. It’s farther in our future than most scoff stories, which either takes place in the current day or in the near future of 100-200 years from now. While this technology is either grungy or broken, it’s still highly technical compared to the devices now (definitely compared to those in the ’80s). Robots are also commonplace. In the 1982 film Blade Runner, they’re just a hair away from having a human-like sentience as well as human-like features. This leads into another integral part of the cyberpunk genre: the simulation of experience. The short story Fragments of a Hologram Rose is an excellent example of this, as we get not only the experiences of happier and more joyful times but also the stark contrasts of reality as our protagonist is unable to sleep without these “holograms”. Cyberpunk has a tendency to be virtual-reality oriented with simulated experiences intended to affect the audience - whether the audience is a character for our entertainment or us.

Since the cyberpunk genre is set after mankind has been thrown to the lions, the reoccurring storyline is about social revolution; a rebellion against the tiny upper class so the rest of the humans don’t have to fight for scraps. “How do we fix what generations before us have done,” becomes the underlying question. Again, humans aren’t at the top of the food chain anymore. Other beings, aliens, robots, or even GMOs (such as in Borne) have taken this spot for us. Typical human standards are unnecessary. In fact, those will probably have been kicked to the curb by then, as predicted in A Manifesto for Cyborgs. Cyberpunk is a way to step away from what we see as normal and, like in speculative fiction, try and point us down the path of our far future, though it doesn’t put the correction of society within our hands. We have to leave that for the generations actually willing to do something about it.
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