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The Cyberpunk is sub-genus of the Science-fiction describing a anti-utopian world and whose origin goes back to the beginning of the Années 1980. It since essaimé its sets of themes in many media, in particular in the Cartoon, the Cinéma, the Musique and the Roleplays.

The Cyberpunk current comes from a universe where the nutcase of data processing and the rocker meet, of a culture medium where twistings of the genetic chains are imbricated| Bruce Sterling

Origin of the term “Cyberpunk”

The term “Cyberpunk” results from an association from “cyber” (prefix of Cybernétique) and “Punk”. The word “Cyberpunk” itself was popularized by Gardner Dozois, editor famous of the Asimov' S Science Fiction Magazine . It is on December 30th, 1984, in the Washington Post , that an article of Dozois entitled “SF in the Eighties” qualifies “Cyberpunk” the style of the work of the writer William Gibson, and more particularly of its novel Neuromancien (1984). It described also a whole group of young “odd” authors writing in the Fanzine Cheap Truth : Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Lewis Shiner, Stalemate Cadigan and Greg Bear. The “movement” Cyberpunk had been born. The term had however been employed earlier, in November 1983, by the American writer Bruce Bethke, like titrates of one of its news published in November 1983 in the magazine Amazing Science Fiction Stories .

The “Cyberpunk” is a confluence and conflict of the sets of themes of the Hacker, Artificial intelligence and Multinationale S proceeding most of the time in a near future on Earth; in opposition with the accounts of science fiction being held from the broader point of view: voyages in space, discovered new spaces, conflicts bringing into play the known and unknown universe… The place where the history proceeds has characters Dystopique S, “Punk”, in the sense that the characters making their possible to manage in a disorganized universe, where the future already passed, being found in the zone of uncertainty separating a “almost-apocalypse” and the Post-apocalyptic universe , see their actions encountering irremovable, impalpable interests. The assimilation of the “punk” term is also induced by the slogan of this movement “No Future! ” and by its at the same time familiar and particularly aggressive esthetics (in particular that of the branch known as “néo-punk” in particular including the Mohawk, the cut “iroquois”). The political implication Anarchiste is worth especially by its opposition to the ethical organization of the capacities completely deprived of , very strongly denounced and fought most of the time.

The Cyberpunk takes the changing of the sub-genus thus “post-nuke” (post-apocalyptic) at the time when the Cold war ends and where fall the Berlin Wall. The fear of a nuclear apocalypse is replaced by that of GMO, the human Clonage, the data-processing whole, the bringings together between the real and the Virtuel and of the deviances in which the insane Capitalisme involves the advances in knowledge. Plastically, of works like Mad max or RanXerox place these new sets of themes in a natural or urban universe completely devastated and thus ensure the transition carefully.

A movement of counter-culture

  • Hacktivisme

Some readings:

  • the Cyberpunk, counter-culture of the Nineties?
  • Why the Cyberpunk?
  • " Cyberpunk" : Political aspects and artistic of a movement badly perceived

Elements of style and scenario characteristics

One can say without being reducing that the Cyberpunk is the Black film of the science fiction. Indeed, works Cyberpunk do not have elegance or the cleanliness which one can find in other universes of science fiction, like the Space operated , for example. The worlds Cyberpunk are impressed of violence and pessimism; they are often lugubrious, sometimes ironically squeaking ( Mozart out of glasses mirrors , Bruce Sterling, 1986); the characters are disillusioned, cynical and covetous Anti-héros. It is in the sense that one qualifies the universes Cyberpunk like Dystopie S.

The Cyberpunk is characterized by a series from below detailed recurring elements.

Near future

The goal of works Cyberpunk being often to highlight the defects of our civilization, the world described is often in the near future of the real-world. It frequently constitutes a rather pessimistic vision of our future. Problems such as pollution are described thus there, the rise of criminality, overpopulation, the increasingly large shift between rich person minority and majority of the poor.

This temporal proximity with the beginning of the 21e century returns works Cyberpunk distressing because plausible; the future tormented, ultra-violent one and dehumanized that they describe seem accessible to the reader then. This conviction is reinforced by the fact that technological innovations described by works Cyberpunk with beginning of the year 1980 became quasi-realizable today: the matrix, a planetary network connecting all the individuals which Internet resembles more and more, is the example more striking.

However, certain authors of science fiction, like Joe Haldeman, insist on the fact that the science fiction in general and the Cyberpunk in particular do not have the role to predict the future but to describe the present. The novel All in Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1968) described for example of the over-populated companies whose members developed an individualism exacerbated while delegating their responsibility and their capacity to think of supercomputers, which is anything else only the forward setting of observable elements in the years 1960-1970.

Technology

What science in the decades should bring to us to come finds in the literature Cyberpunk. All the technological fields are approached, even if technologies relating to the Informatique and the electronic are generally proposed.

In fact works Cyberpunk popularize the idea of the fusion of human and of spiritual with the machine thus giving rise to beings Hybride S, made up of flesh and metal. The concept of artificial limbs, i.e. of Prosthesis S intelligent, more resistant and more sensitive than of the natural members, was introduced with the Cyberpunk. In a general way, many characters of novels Cyberpunk have a body whose faculties were increased artificially, that it are by Nanomachine S or Drogue S. One can suppose that such a fascination for the machines comes from discovered by the general public, at the end of the years 1970, of the computing power of the emergent computers and the possibilities that the Informatique promises then. Human being with the possibility of delegating its authority and its decision-making power to a higher authority, a kind of hyper-rational god following a logic relentless, just like the logic described by Isaac Asimov in its Three laws of robotics (although Asimov is not regarded as a writer Cyberpunk).

The influence of this man/machine fusion is visible in particular in work of the Swiss artist Hans Ruedi Giger, originator amongst other things of the figure of the Alien in films of the same name.

Corporations

Multinationals become more powerful than of the States, they have their own laws, have territories, and control the life of their employees of the birth to death. Their leaders are generally stripped of any moral direction. The competition to rise in the hierarchy is a mortal play.

The characters of the novels Cyberpunk are unimportant compared to the quasi-divine capacity which the méga-corporations have: they are vis-a-vis them the grains of sand in the gears. This fight of David against Goliath is that of the Hacker against the Multinationale and constitutes a recurrent theme of the novels Cyberpunk (like Gravé on chromium , William Gibson, 1986).

Theory of the plot

The heroes of the Cyberpunk kind are often discovered pawns handled in a imbroglio of secret societies, governmental services, trade unions of the crime, all that more or less directed by the senior officers of the corporations quoted previously. Because of this approach denouncer of the movement Cyberpunk against industry and governments, the literature Cyberpunk is frequently associated with the revolutionary political currents of left (Anarchisme, Marxisme, Ultra-gauche, Libertarianisme…) although a big part of this literature leans towards a apolitical Nihilisme.

End of the Cyberpunk?

As of the medium of the Years 1980, the authors like Gibson and Sterling announced that the “movement Cyberpunk” was already dying man, recovered by Hollywood, digested and recraché in a form deprived of its “punk” element. In this respect, an article of Lewis Shiner, published in the NewYork Times and entitled Confessions off year ex-Cyberpunk , will make date, and will involve a long answer on behalf of Bruce Sterling: Cyberpunk in the Nineties , in which he regrets, while having fun some, that this label still sticks to him with the skin, but asserts always high and strong the values conveyed by the movement.

It is Neal Stephenson, in his novel the virtual Samurai ( Snow Crash ) published in 1992, which definitively buries the Cyberpunk in the very first pages. However, this opinion is disputed by people proposing works of new authors like Richard Morgan.

One can possibly explain the reduction in the number of works Cyberpunk by the fact that certain topics approached, which were futuristic and precursory before, are increasingly true in our modern societies. One thinks in particular of the topics, which were innovators but are not it any more, of the emergence of a world network of communication (Internet), Terrorisme of mass, capacity of the State who reduces themselves with the profit of the large companies, the Prothèse S and implants, etc

Nevertheless, there exists still aujourd `today of new more or less artistic Cyberpunk creations, subjectively speaking. One will note in particular the new series Charlie Jade , of 2005, treating parallel universes and of Dystopie, and also MMORPG Neocron . Moreover, many series of animation, in particular Japanese women, generally resulting cartoons known as Manga S , cover this subject directly, thus replaçant it of topicality by projecting relatively new ideas on this topic.

The movement Cyberpunk in arts and the media

Some authors

the Precursors

the Hard core

the Continuators

the artists plastics technicians

  • Mark Pauline American Artist working on the relationship between the control of technology and the loss of control of this same technology.

  • Stelarc known Australian Artist for " greffer" on its body of the electronic modules and for other performances on the same subject.

Some cartoons

Some Manga S and Animates S

Some films

Some roleplays

  • Cyberage : 20 minutes in the future (system Shows, ED. Casus Belli)
  • Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk 3.0
  • Shadowrun (FASA, Descartes Plays)
  • GURPS: Cyberpunk (Steve Jackson Ranges)
  • SLA Industries (Nightfall Ranges)

Plays on Internet Cyberpunk

  • Cybercity 2034
  • Dreadcast

Some Video games

Some Musics

In the musical field, the current " cyberpunk" is often related to the current undue: two principal constants there are found: the presence of electronic sounds and dramatic rather sinks. In addition a tempo close to punk (in the neighborhood of 160 bpm authorizing the pogo) could be seen like an element contributor with the principle " punk" from where the presence in this list of representatives of the Drum & Low or the Techno hardcore. The Dub is also here in its place while representing of Rasta which is a recurring figure of the Cyberpunk (it was caricatural sometimes). But the musical styles most representative are without doubts the Goa and the Psytrance themselves generally represented by a futuristic style and alien.

  • Atari Teenage Riot

  • Front Line Assembly
  • Prodigy
  • Marilyn Manson is sometimes close to the sets of themes Cyberpunk in particular on Mechanical Animals .
  • Ministry
  • Rob Zombie
  • Fear Factory and in particular the album Demanufacture
  • Junkie XL
  • Juno Reactor
  • Hallucinogen
  • Nine Inch Nails
  • Face 242
  • Skinny Puppy
  • Nitzer Ebb
  • Leather Strip and more generally this branch of electro Body Music articulated around Claus Larsen (Klutae, Psychopomps) and all those which were inspired some or approached such as for example Wumpscut
  • Numb
  • Aphrodite
  • Massive Attack
  • Squarepusher
  • Sigue sigue sputnik
  • Autechre
  • Aphex Twin
  • Merzbow
  • Manu Malignant the
  • Mad Professor
  • High Thunders
  • Voivod whose futuristic set of themes and sinks, the imagery sf and declining, and the guitaristic experiments make of it a group with share in thrash-metal, and clearly Cyberpunk.
One can also quote Billy Idol for his album Cyberpunk and in particular the song Neuromancer inspired by the novel of William Gibson. This disc was considered by the majority of the " cyberpunks" like a ashamed commercial recovery. The album of David Bowie Outside is also regarded as a work Cyberpunk with whole share, Hollywood would have bought the rights of them to him; will one see film one day?

In French music:

  • As a precursor, Metal Urbain, which 1976 mixes music Punk and Electronic music.
  • No One Is Innocent, in particular on the album Utopia , realized with the writer Cyberpunk Maurice Dantec.
  • Punish Yourself, a Toulouse group which qualifies cyber-punk-fluo-zombie .

Some emblematic expressions

  • “ No future? Future is now! ”: word game on the Nihilist claim of the culture Punk. Not only there is a Futur well, but in more the company lives inside.
  • “ Mess with the best, die like the rest ”: bravado being used as generic slogan, it is generally employed in the form of tag on the place of an act of revenge.
  • “I am legion”: quotation drawn from the Bible proposing the fact that the person asserts herself like belonging to a group, and is not of this fact not an isolated case: “My name is Légion, because we are numerous” (Mc 5,9-11).
  • “ Attitude is No substitute for competence ”: concise sentence impetus against a person who would take culture Cyberpunk only the esthetic aspect, by leaving side other notions of the movement, in particular the technical sides which require a deep personal investment.
  • “ metal is better than the meat ”: forward the fact puts that technologies (prostheses metal in particular), but also the system, the corporations, are higher than the human being, weak and fragile.

A poem little easily to describe (at least a part) the image of the communication Cyberpunk:

O Great Cyberpunk,

You which are high for you in the middle of all, You saw the world by far, You know that the future is corrupted, You still hear their lies, A world with innumerable star at summer creates, And that with the image of our, Cyberspace is its name, Its symbol is the division of information, You which know the capacity that you have, Of tone knowledge make into good use, The future also depends on you. That is to say near to your friends, But remains encor closer to your enemies, Closely connected to be the first with knowing that they plot against you, No one cannot mislead you because you are quite advised, Information is crowned to you, O Great Cyberpunk, Without fear and embarrassment, Exceed your limits, Courage! Enter the metaphysical world which opens in your eyes, And looks at other with dimensions of the mirror, To admire the depth of the center, It is the calm one before the storm, Yes, the wind of the rebellion rises, Complaints of the failing world, Tear the ravaged hearts, Do the children still have a future? What theirs did we leave? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! … … will not be able stopped us, Us, Cyberpunk… Because we are several… Transmit theirs… Information wants to be free…

EndO

See too

Related articles

  • the Steampunk, another artistic kind having of the common points with the Cyberpunk.
  • Cybernetic Postcyberpunk
  • Hacktivisme
  • , Cyborg
  • Hacker
  • Biopunk
  • Virtual reality

External bonds

  • the file “Cyberpunk” of the “cosmic Cockroach”

  • a whole of news on line in the mobility of P.K. Dick
  • a compilation of mp3 free of the “Nécrophile Hummingbird”
  • a report of control: The contribution of the accounts Cyberpunk to the social construction of technologies of virtual the
  • a report of DEA on William Gibson and drugs electronic
  • Article of '' the Audience '', newspaper of the students of Lausanne (Swiss) on the Cyberpunk and the steampunk

Zh-min-nan: Cyberpunk

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