Mirrorshades question 3: Cyberpunk then and now
"Cyberpunk" now seems to have an affinity with a particular retro-future aesthetic (the Blade Runner aesthetic), and the act of rebelling against a grossly unequal society. Is that your understanding of the modern meaning of "cyberpunk"? How much of that modern meaning was present in this collection of stories?
Comments
I think that cyberpunk now has transformed into yet another power fantasy genre. The protagonists of Cyberpunk Red (the game) and The Matrix (the film) are far from ordinary people. They've got special powers, whether through cool cyberwear or gnosis, and they do extraordinary things to faceless corporations. Plus Cyberpunk has the trope that getting more metal implanted reduces your empathy, which is appealing for the murderhobo crowd.
Whereas in this book, the stories are much more personal and depressing. They're stories about ordinary people, lost in a world that's gone mad, cut off from others and even themselves. They're not even raging against the machine: they're too beaten down even for that.
So maybe early cyberpunk has evolved somewhat into the superhero genre?
I read a lot of cyberpunk back in the day. Cyberpunk was indeed about repression and rebellion, but the rebellion was personal - a person rebelling against a reality they did not -could not - accept. They was no expectation of winning. Never. Everyone knew they would lose and that there was no way out. They did it anyway. It lost that aesthetic and became, as Neil said, a pretentious power fantasy. That's when I left it. When the Shadowrun and Cyberpunk TTRPGs came out, the 'movement' was all over.