The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Cyber/Bio punk
ninjai
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've posted a few times on this subforum looking for suggestions on what to read, and have gotten positive results.
This time I'm coming to you all looking for some good cyber/bio punk, future post apocalyptic, often with negative connotations directed at human modification via cybernetics, transhumanism, and "The Net" (cyberpunk), or the same negative connotations directed at nuclear waste and/or pollution, and genetic manipulation/viruses/infections.
Ones I have read recently
Cyber:
Akira
Blame! (manga)
Neuromancer
Syntax (one shot)
Old City Blues (web)
Ghost in the Shell (manga)
Bio:
French one, can't remember the name
Abara
Biomega
Zeb Noid
I can't really find any other comic of these two genre's that stick to the bleak dark mood of cyberpunk. And wind up looking too cartoony, or too colorful.
Suggestions?
This time I'm coming to you all looking for some good cyber/bio punk, future post apocalyptic, often with negative connotations directed at human modification via cybernetics, transhumanism, and "The Net" (cyberpunk), or the same negative connotations directed at nuclear waste and/or pollution, and genetic manipulation/viruses/infections.
Ones I have read recently
Cyber:
Akira
Blame! (manga)
Neuromancer
Syntax (one shot)
Old City Blues (web)
Ghost in the Shell (manga)
Bio:
French one, can't remember the name
Abara
Biomega
Zeb Noid
I can't really find any other comic of these two genre's that stick to the bleak dark mood of cyberpunk. And wind up looking too cartoony, or too colorful.
Suggestions?
ninjai on
0
Posts
Pluto
Hard Boiled
Transmetropolitan has some trappings of each subgenre.
Is about a Human Replicant discovering he's a Replicant.
Also a Deus Ex comic just started up
I second this. It was a really, really great book.
Has anybody read this? DC/Wildstorm have had some surprisingly good video-game licensed books, and some truly awful ones.
Edit: To be fair, I think the parts that have to do with the actual cybertech are pretty neat, and the art is fine. It also gives insight into characters of Deus Ex 3: human Revolution, which has value (if you care about the game). That being said, the characterization is just a hair above two-dimensional (I feel), and I'm not particularly engrossed by the story or the writing.
Ha Ha, sorry forgot about akira. I have only finished the 3rd book :P Just haven't gotten around to the others
Pretty much everything he's done is great, except for his most recent ongoing one "knights of cedonia". Its really. frikkin. lame.
I heard there was a graphic novelization of the Cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, but only got 2 issues in. Anyone seen those?
@oldmanhero .programming .web comic .everything
Thanks for the heads up - I'm a pretty big fan of the games, too, so I'll probably like it.
It is disheartening to me that there is so little cyberpunk. I mean, how is this not a thing yet? Its the only great sci fi genre to emerge since the space opera.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa now
You ain't smack talkin' the Stallone movie and gettin' away with it.
The Judge Dredd movie is fantastic.
Cyberpunk is nearly 30 years old. Different aspects of the genre have been in comics for just as long. DKR and DKSA have cyberpunk elements. Frank Miller's Ronin had some cyberpunk stuff in it. Miller and Darrow's Hard Boiled was based on the Phillip K Dick's Electric Ant story, and and has a lot of cyberpunk elements.
TLB this is the correct answer.
I'm reasonably sure that it's not a thing anymore, not "not a thing yet". Let's be perfectly honest: cyberpunk is a product of the 80s, of their greatest fears, and in many ways it's just not as relevant anymore to the culture at large. I mean, it's kind of a shame, as cyberpunk is my favoritest sci-fi sub-genre, but it's not the way culture generally leans anymore. Cyberpunk's whole thing is basically bleakness and hopelessness. "What can be done to a rat can be done to a human", and all that. The central, defining feature is that the protagonist(s) cannot make a change to the world at large. They might be able to improve their immediate lives, or, I don't know, defeat a bad guy, but they will never topple the socio-economic order that allows for megacorps to run people's lives; never bridge the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots; never circumvent the fact that technology dehumanizing people. It seems like these themes aren't as attractive now as they were twenty, thirty years ago.
I feel like now what I see more of is what can be loosely referred to as post-cyberpunk. It's like cyberpunk, but with half the depression! It still focuses on the same sci-fi themes - megacorps, ubiquitous data tech, cybernetics, etc. - but drops the dystopian social themes. If cyberpunk is defined by the protagonist's inability to change the world, then post-cyberpunk is defined by the exact opposite of that; heroes can and do change the world for the better.
I didn't recommend Transmetropolitan earlier because to me it seems like a pretty clear example of post-cyberpunk: the whole point of the series is how Spider Jerusalem improves quality of life for people, and that's not what ninjai wanted to see. On the other hand, I'll say this: I cannot imagine a person more punk than Spider Jerusalem.
Hy ninjai, I'm curious, what do you consider to be a punk art-style? Pink mohawks and mirrorshades?
Probably into transhumanist fiction. Guys like Richard Morgan who would have been writing cyberpunk twenty years ago are no writing about re-sleeving and body swapping and farcasting and so on. It's a different genre which seems to have evolved out of cyberpunk.
Also I think what hurt cyber punk the most as a genre is that most of it has actually happened in real life and has largely (for the western world anyway) been benevolent.
Agreed.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Which brings up an interesting question: what would today's cyberpunk analogue rail again?
Greg Pak's Vision Machine is basically all about questions of copyright, about a corporation taking all content that people created just because they created it with their tools. It's about ubiquitous surveillance, it's about tailored, targeted ads, and so on. In other words, it's about what quite a few people are concerned about now. Facebook privacy concerns, corporations using their lawyers to quash derived content created by Average Joes, etc. That probably qualifies as modern day ______punk.
Hmm. This needs a catchy name. Contenpunk? Copypunk? I kinda like "copypunk".
It's a free download under Creative Commons from the web if you're interested.
love it love it love it
@oldmanhero .programming .web comic .everything
I'll probably get all of these recommendations at some point, I've added them to my amazon wish list, but the fact of the matter is that along with the new interpretations of cyberpunk is a very seamless art style. If you google "cyberpunk fashion" you'll see what exactly I'm getting at.
The problem is that I can't find any of this in graphic form. There are few animated series, the RARE cyberpunk film that comes out is stripped of all character, and as we've discovered here, there aren't all that many graphic novels to speak of.
Shadowrun's latest corporate book has a concept of post-capitalism where the machinery of corporations and governments reinforce a particular orderthat reflects how economies can be directed by political decisions to undermine or corrupt market capitalism combined with corporate anticompetitive behavior, e.g. collusion, price-fixing.
If you accept the premise of people like Matt Taibbi this is basically the system in place, really originating in post-Soviet Russia and now a system where the largest state economies underwrite politically powerful businesses and industries even if those industries undermine those states' populations through transnational business practices that propel the per capita GDP while creating underclasses in the states that previously never existed.
Put another way, cyberpunk's problem is that the future it feared came so quickly that in spite or because people thought they knew better now we live in what was considered a dystopian, dark future. However, the good news is that basic international economic theory held and global standard of living is improving and leveling out. The problem is that if you live in the richest country on Earth leveling out means you get fucked economically. People have been dogging on CNN for today's article on whether white people are being prejudiced against. It makes a fair point that this country began to see in the '70s and '80s people who had never known what it was like being on the wrong end of economics and politics are now faced with that fact in their lives, and they are confused and pissed.
Tl;dr cyberpunk can pretend reality is what cp was, it can focus on developing states like the author of Wind-up Girl and others do, or it can move onto post-cp genres like transhuman.
My last tumblr was reblogged by dystopiantimes. It's about FF and how life can be seen as swell even in the dark future.
In any case, it is a form of fiction one way or another. How can that be restricted based solely on the fact that it has already transpired? There are historical fictions that are published all the time. I honestly don't understand how this doesn't appeal to a wider audience.
The issue of VR and augmented reality is one we discuss regularly. One can say that VR isn't around because it is a horribly inefficient interface in practice. I mean there is a reason you don't see sites using VRML. But we do have some swell VR entertainment. Augmentations will probably bypass cyber for bionics, cloning, and nanotech. DNI and neuroscience comes in leaps. Supposedly there is a boy who can play Mario with his brain now.
Usually when I say it came to pass I mean socioeconomically and politically.
I'm certain the fact this remains an obscure and relatively unkown subgenre is a direct result of a majority of people not knowing what the hell it is.
I mean, they're coming out with another Blade Runner for christ's sake. (its about time)
there's a bunch of cyberpunk stuff out there that isn't labeled as such anymore. And the reason (to completely disagree with Solar's analysis) is that the cyberpunk future as envisioned 30 years ago has come to pass. We are living it.
Look at Web 2.0 and the Obama campaign's success. Then Citizens United made corporate entities direct contributers to the American political process above and beyond what any single actual living human being could hope to accomplish. And then Bradley Manning, Julian Assuange and Wikileaks started an avalanche that has toppled governments.
Anyway, there's a bunch more stuff out there like Hypervelocity that is extremely cyberpunk but no longer labeled as such, and I'll tell you about it as soon as I remember the names....