technology related sensory memories from my childhood
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
…God, it is so weird these things aren’t around any more. Cause it’s true, the sensations are so distinct. It’s bizarre to think about missing these tiny relics.
technology related sensory memories from my childhood
The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint
Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked
The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass
The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover
The sound effects in kidpix
Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands
the smell of static on a tv screen
I think the big problem with trying to hair-split “cyberpunk” versus “post-cyberpunk” is that the distinction is only really useful in terms of constructing a timeline of media.
Like, you’ve got all these stories that make up cyberpunk as a literary movement; and then you’ve got all these stories written in response to cyberpunk as a literary movement, by kids who grew up reading and watching and listening to cyberpunk stories. It’s that second group that comprises “post-cyberpunk” - which in practice means anything published in the genre after 1991 or so.
The thing is, it’s a purely temporal distinction; a question of when, not what. There’s no clearly defined set of themes or aesthetics you can point to and say, this is cyberpunk, and that is post-cyberpunk. I’ve seen all sorts of attempts to construct such a taxonomy, but I’ve never seen one that produces even halfway sensible results when applied to actual, published media.
In terms of genre and aesthetics, it’s all just cyberpunk - and if it seems to be egregiously missing the point, that doesn’t make it “post-”cyberpunk, it just makes it bad cyberpunk,
As a tabletop RPG author, it’s fascinating the number of cyberpunk RPGs (which are post-cyberpunk by definition) which include tropes and such totally not present in the original fiction, like cyber-psychosis and elves.
Tabletop RPGs actually throw up an interesting edge case: Cyberpunk 2013.
The game’s creator, Mike Pondsmith, is part of the same generation of writers as the foundational cyberpunk authors, and the game’s 1988 publication date is contemporary with the tail end of cyberpunk as a literary movement. It was allegedly even written in consultation with William Gibson, though reports vary regarding the extent of Gibson and Pondsmith’s correspondence.
Depending on how you slice it, Cyberpunk 2013 is either one of the earliest post-cyberpunk works, or an example of late-period cyberpunk itself. Either way, it’s really interesting to see what it does differently, both from other cyberpunk RPGs and from its own later editions.
I think the big problem with trying to hair-split “cyberpunk” versus “post-cyberpunk” is that the distinction is only really useful in terms of constructing a timeline of media.
Like, you’ve got all these stories that make up cyberpunk as a literary movement; and then you’ve got all these stories written in response to cyberpunk as a literary movement, by kids who grew up reading and watching and listening to cyberpunk stories. It’s that second group that comprises “post-cyberpunk” - which in practice means anything published in the genre after 1991 or so.
The thing is, it’s a purely temporal distinction; a question of when, not what. There’s no clearly defined set of themes or aesthetics you can point to and say, this is cyberpunk, and that is post-cyberpunk. I’ve seen all sorts of attempts to construct such a taxonomy, but I’ve never seen one that produces even halfway sensible results when applied to actual, published media.
In terms of genre and aesthetics, it’s all just cyberpunk - and if it seems to be egregiously missing the point, that doesn’t make it “post-”cyberpunk, it just makes it bad cyberpunk,
"If they think you’re crude, go technical. If they think you’re technical, go crude"
Since Cyberpunk made the jump from subgenre to subculture some time around the end of the Cold War, people have been suggesting, arguing, and misinterpreting just what the accompanying...
Anonymous asked:
lizard-is-writing answered:
“Cyberpunk” is a subgenre of steampunk, and yeah, there’s way more on it’s aesthetic than it’s genre, but it’s a fairly developed sub-subgenre. The book that usually is mentioned most when I hear about it is Neuromancer by William Gibson. Though Gibson wrote really before the Internet was much of anything, cyberpunk is essentially like steampunk but to the point where Internet has come into the picture and it’s just that much more advanced. I hope this helps clear things up!
“Cyberpunk” is a subgenre of steampunk.” It’s like something walked over my grave.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Cyberpunk: hi tech, low life. Smash the state, hack the planet. Poor vs rich. Man vs Corporation.
Steampunk: People wearing fancy goggles with cogs on them. Except for “Men Who Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing”. These guys actually know what “Punk” in steampunk should stand for.
The entire Tumblr cyberpunk community will probably have piled onto the original poster by the time this post finishes doing its rounds, but I’ll throw in my own (only semi-pissy) note here:
“Steampunk” as a term specifically originated as a riff on the word “cyberpunk” back in the ’80s, gradually gaining traction from there. Some of its endurance can probably be traced to the fact that one of the more pivotal books in the genre, The Difference Engine (1990), was authored by two leading lights from the cyberpunk scene: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
Problem is, once people realized that you could add “punk” to the end of random words as a genre signifier, we started seeing an explosion of increasingly loosely defined would-be-subgenres: dieselpunk, atompunk, biopunk, dungeonpunk, solarpunk… (Admittedly, I’m guilty of it as well, having coined the semi-sarcastic term “sideburnpunk” to describe the distinctive look and feel of ‘70s science fiction and futurism.)
By and large, the people who coined those names wanted a convenient way to group together sci-fi works with a similar (usually retro-futuristic) aesthetic. In doing so, though, they diluted the “punk” part of the equation - specifically, the bottle-throwing masses-against-the-classes ethos that defined a lot of that early, “classic” cyberpunk - to the point of complete insignificance. A lot of modern steampunk is about as punk rock as a Yes double-album (helpful tip: fewer gentlemen adventurers with gear-hats, more labor agitators and colonial uprisings), but it’s hardly the only offender - post-millennial cyberpunk seems to have shifted away from the anti-authoritarian edge-dwellers of Gibson and co in favor of focusing on the authorities themselves, with more and more stories now written from the perspective of soldiers, policemen, corporate enforcers, and other various other incarnations of The Man.
Summing up cyberpunk as a genre has also become more difficult as many of the elements that originally signposted it (cybernetic prosthetics, megacorporations, a networked society where information has increasingly become the currency of choice) are no longer yesterday’s speculation, but today’s headlines. Even its aesthetic can be a fairly amorphous thing: where steampunk and other retrofuturistic styles are fossilized - tied as they are to specific time periods - cyberpunk “style” now covers more than three decades and can run the gamut from ‘80s techno-goth throwbacks to the sleek Renaissance-inspired visuals of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. “Essentially like steampunk but to the point where Internet has come into the picture” really doesn’t even begin to cover it.
"CPUs. Cayce Pollard Units. That’s what Damien calls the clothing she wears. CPUs are either black, white, or gray, and ideally seem to have come into this world without human intervention."
Chances are you probably wanted at least one of the items in my previous...
