Is This The Future We Deserve? [Exploring Cyberpunk 1]

I have a lot of thoughts about cyberpunk and the state of the world, so let's talk about them.

art by Josan Gonzales

I’m very upset these days. At pretty much everything. The world we live in right now is inching sprinting toward becoming a cyberpunk nightmare. A genre that was meant to be cautionary has instead become the playbook for how to shape the future.

Information literacy seems like it’s at an all-time low, technology is advancing with very little oversight and even less ethical consideration, and corporations are on the verge of becoming pseudo-governmental entities that seemed so overblown and even ludicrous just 40 years ago.

All that—and so much more—has been on my mind for a while. I’ve re-read (among others) Neuromancer and Snow Crash, played CY_BORG, and begun adapting the Powered By The Apocalypse game system into a cyberpunk TTRPG.

Needless to say, I have a lot of thoughts. This is the first in a series of posts exploring them. Time to jack in.

Cyberpunk is cautionary, not aspirational.

I don’t remember when I was introduced to cyberpunk initially.

What I do remember, however, is that seeing The Matrix in theaters back in 1999 was the catalyzing event that has kept these stories living rent-free in my head for the past 25 years.

Cyberpunk, as a genre, is about showing the audience the worst-case scenario if our society continues without regulation and empathy in everything from social culture and economic systems to technological innovations and integrations.

It just looks fucking cool while doing so, and too many people can’t see the corruption beneath the neon facade, both literally and metaphorically.

From its inception, science fiction (SF) has been cautionary. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was not about how cool it would be to piece together a person out of spare parts and bring them to life. It was about how horrible doing that would be for literally everyone involved.

Sure, there are plenty of hopeful SF stories being told (looking at you Star Trek). Still, so much of it is cautionary. It hurts me on a fundamental level to see so many people constantly misinterpret the subtextual warnings—and sometimes explicit warnings—as something they should be striving toward instead of actively working against.

This happens a lot with cyberpunk.

I’m guilty of it to an extent, too, because I think cyberpunk is really damn cool. Neon lights, hover cars, augmented and virtual reality—it all makes up a great aesthetic and playground for storytelling.

But it’s also incredibly dangerous if you don’t understand that the glamor is only there to hide the horror. Not just for the characters in the story, but for the audience as well.

(Cyber)Appendix N

Before going deeper, I want to make sure you’re familiar with cyberpunk as I talk about it. Appendix N is Gary Gygax’s famous reference list of titles that he drew on for inspiration when designing Dungeons & Dragons.

This is like a baby version of that, with only a handful of books, movies, and games you can check out in case you need a refresher and/or introduction.

Books

• Neuromancer by William Gibson (invented the term ‘cyberspace’)

• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (coined the term ‘metaverse’)

• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

• Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei

• The Future is Now by Josan Gonzales (free narrative artbook)

Movies & TV

• The Matrix (1999)

• Blade Runner (1982), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

• Altered Carbon (Netflix, 2018)

• Akira (1988)

• Ghost in the Shell (1995)

• Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)

• Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Games

• Netrunner (LCG)

• Cyberpunk 2077 (video game)

• Cyberpunk RED (TTRPG)

• Shadowrun (TTRPG, video game)

• Cloudpunk (video game)

• CY_BORG (TTRPG)

• The Sprawl (TTRPG)

There are so many more I could list, but these are the ones that I was able to list off the top of my head.

So dig in, buckle up, and get ready to jack in, friendos. The metaverse awaits! (And it’s not the stupid one that Zuck keeps trying to make a thing.)