Dreams of cyberpunk futures roll through my head. Cybernetic arms flailing as I surf through the Cybernet, a physical embodiment of the ones and zeros of the digital realm. Dodging the OmniCorp police I hack my way into their shareholder files, searching for the piece of info my buyer wants. I find it, but not before the digicops blast their way past my self-coded defenses. I fucking hate the digicops. I disconnect from the Cybernet, my consciousness falling back into the real. I don’t think they got a tracer bug on me. I hope they didn’t. I have more things to worry about. I confirm that I downloaded the data and head out the door to meet my client. On the way I think I’ll stop for noodles.
I’m glad this vision has remained in the world of cyberpunk fiction, at least for now. As thrilling as it sounds to send my mind racing across some future version of the internet in search of some illicit info that could bring down a big corporation, cyberpunk works as a whole, do not conjure idyllic futures. The genre has a long history, looking back to science fiction legends like Roger Zelazny, and J.G. Ballard, but critics generally regard William Gibson’s Neuromancer as the first to fully define the genre. This subgenre has only become more popular since then, with authors like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling producing best-selling works in the field. The genre itself isn’t limited to the printed page either. Video games like the yet to be released Cyberpunk 2077, and the Deus Ex series have taken inspiration from the cyberpunk as have movies and anime like Blade Runner, and Ghost in the Shell. If you recognize any of those names you probably can pick up what I’m putting down. Hell, you can probably get it from the name, it’s fairly descriptive. However, I do not want to fail my writerly duty and leave my dear readers guessing at what I mean. Nothing would pain me more. So here’s a quote from Lawrence Person, a sci-fi magazine writer, on what cyberpunk is, “Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.” I took that quote from the Wikipedia article on “Cyberpunk,” so I’ll skip the footnote on this one.
I’ll spend the most time on the word “dystopic” from that quote. At least for this piece. Cyberpunk, as cool as its aesthetic and characters may be, is not an aspirational genre. In fact, especially when looking at the genre’s more classic novels, only a foolish reader would see them as anything other than warnings about the future capitalism will bring about. Take Stephenson’s Snow Crash for example. A parody of the genre in many respects, Snow Crash heightens many of the themes and tropes present in cyberpunk works. This heightening only serves to highlight the anti-capitalistic nature of the genre. Snow Crash takes place in a United States split into corporate city-states where the only way to survive comes from showing loyalty to heavily branded entities like pizza chains. The United States government still exists but as an undesirable mid-tier “clave” to use the book’s terminology. Stephenson’s vision of the future has the world run by all-powerful corporations. Corporations who can do anything they want with no repercussions. While I don’t think Stephenson himself holds very left political convictions, especially now, this book presents a great case for the evils of capitalism. Other works like Deus Ex, Neuromancer, Altered Carbon, and Blade Runner have done similar things, creating worlds where the evils and excesses of capitalism have combined with new advances in tech to create uncontrolled corporate regimes that crush the little people.
I don’t want to argue that people shouldn’t read dystopic fiction. Not in the least. A lot of it is very good. Necessary even. What cyberpunk often gets wrong, however, is the way to defeat the bad guys. Let’s take a look at that quote again. This time, I’ll pull out a different part, “Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners.” A lot of cyberpunk works have their protagonists destroy governments, take down corporations, and change worlds by themselves, maybe with one or two sidekicks to take care of the less desirable grunt work. They leverage their specialized skills, hack into just the right database, or broadcast a certain piece of information to win the day. This, however, does not reflect how the real world – meatspace to use the cliché cyberpunk term – works. Superheroes don’t exist, we don’t have a Hiro Protagonist, or a Neo, or a Henry Case, or an Alita to save the day for us. Single individuals will not defeat the capitalists with the power of their hacking skills, no matter how cool that would look. The people, the hoi polloi, the unwashed masses, we are the ones who will the day, the ones who will create a better world. Which brings me to the second point of this little essay. Our need to prevent such a dystopia from happening. As cool as it would be to see attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, we should not hope for this future. As much as the aesthetic of bright neon and dark cities captures the imagination, it is not an enviable one. While worrying about the possibility of a future based off some science fiction books seems laughable, the combination of high tech and late capitalism is a potent one. The specifics of such a dystopia may be different but the broad strokes certainly are not impossible. The key to understanding cyberpunk is that the worlds described in those works did not need to exist. They are the mutilated bodies of worlds that should have been, the staggering corpses of a better world. It’s our job to prevent that mutilation, to keep the bodies from becoming corpses. That work needs to be done now, the organizing, the fight against the proclivities of big business. That’s up to us to stop. No amount of flying cars, tetrameth, or Matrix-style glasses are worth the destruction of our world. Loners cannot change the world, only we can. Here’s the part where I tell you to do something and give you a specific step. Volunteer with a food pantry. Keep the cyberpunk genre alive and buy something from your local bookstore. Plant a dang tree. And remember, fuck OmniCorp.
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