The Cyberpunk thread

[Lord Varys]

I really enjoyed the three parts (so far) of this history of Cyberpunk by Indigo Gaming:

I'm not that familiar with the genre in general, anyway, but I found it really interesting that it also includes music and videogames.

[Werthead]

That reminded me that I never posted the third and final part of my potted history of the genre. Rectified.

[C.T. Phipps]

I just picked this book up on Kindle Unlimited and its fantastic.

My Behind Blue Eyes review - 4.5/5

 

Spoiler

BEHIND BLUE EYES by Anna Mocikat is a independent cyberpunk novel. It is a story that draws on dystopian science fiction tropes as well as puts the author's own spin on the subject. It also incorporates the journey of its heroine from being a pawn of a corrupt system to being her own woman, finding out along the way that you can't trust anyone even if they seem to be the good guys. A lesson that she learns multiple times with increasing bitterness.

The premise is that in the distant future, humanity has mostly destroyed itself with the survivors living in arcologies run by various megacorporations. Olympias City is run by one and survives due to the efforts of a cybernetic assassins called the Guardian Angels. Blue-eyed mercenaries. they are created from children taken from the dregs of society or its outcasts then upgraded into unfeeling weapons that eliminate all dissidents.

Nephilim is one of the best of the Guardian Angels, soon to be promoted to their Archangel ranks that answer only to the mysterious Metatron. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she is damaged during one of her battles and starts to question her role as a government cleaner. Assisted by a nerdy computer programmer named Finwick, she manages to buy herself some genuine freedom and explores it with a young rebel named Jake. However, totalitarianism turns out to be harder to escape than it sounds.

I like the world-building in this book. Olympias City is a dystopia in the vein of Brave New World versus 1984, focused more on bread and circuses versus direct oppression. You are provided a job, security, and all the sex as well as mindless entertainment you could want. It just requires you to have your news edited, to never disobey your superiors, engage in no religion, and ignore the perversities of the society like legalized child trafficking. Anna introduces the darker elements one at a time so that it takes awhile to understand just how fully messed up the society is.

Nephilim is a fantastic character and one of the more likable heroines I've encountered in the genre. She desperately wants to be free and the good guy but is still fairly naive due to being programmed to trust her superiors as well as believe in her society's propaganda. This pays off in a way that I feel is the highlight of the book. I'm also a fan of Finwick, who is both repulsive and likable in equal parts. I mentally cast him as Seth Green just like I used Kate Beckinsale for Nephilim. Now there's a movie I would have liked to have watched.

Metatron is a fantastic villain and comes across something like a Bond villain transported to a cyberpunk dystopia. Educated, charming, and urbane, he's a fellow that thinks he's less of a complete monster than he is. Despite my earlier statement that it's more BNW than 1984, he reminds me strongly of O'Brien from the latter. A man who has immersed himself in the culture of the old world and is aware of the Party's flaws but gleefully pursues its goals anyway.

The book is extremely action heavy and those people looking for something like Underworld or Resident Evil will appreciate this. The Guardian Angels have numerous chapters where they go Wolverine on their enemies and show exactly how dangerous they are. Well-written action invokes both emotion as well as suspense in readers so Anna Mocikat deserves props for achieving both.

In conclusion, I think this is a book that fans of cyberpunk and scifi action thrillers will enjoy. There's lots of fantastic movie-esque set pieces and scenes as well as a strong character heart. I'm not a big fan of Nephilim's romantic interest but that's a small complaint in an otherwise solid story. Definitely recommended. The ending is going to frustrate a lot of readers but I also think it was a good method to get readers to buy the next book.

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by C.T. Phipps

[C.T. Phipps]

My review of Bubbles in Space: Tropical Punch - 5/5

 

Spoiler

BUBBLES IN SPACE: TROPICAL PUNCH is a discovery for a jaded cyberpunk fan like myself. It is a surprisingly lighthearted story despite the noir elements it posses as well as its techno-dystopian setting that manages to absolutely bleed neon from every pore. It is also a book that I not only finished in a single day but proceeded to immediately buy the rest of the series of when I finished it. Bubbles is a fantastic heroine and its a ridiculous but well-developed mystery that she's found herself investigating.

The premise is that Bubbles Marlowe is a cybernetic armed ex-cop and recovering alcoholic who screws up a mission to contact a young woman. Said woman is killed before Bubbles has the chance to make contact, only for an identical one to show up seconds later and get killed herself. This is just the start of her very bad day as she finds herself also hunted by her old boss. Thankfully, she wins a lottery ticket that promises her the space luxury cruise of a lifetime. It's just she didn't enter the contest in the first place.

Bubbles is a fantastic character that fills the role of a 1930s film noir private eye while also being a pink-haired sarcastic screwup that is just trying to keep her head above water. Given the water in the future is radioactive, this is probably futile. The world is incredibly dark but she handles it with a can do attitude and perserverance that makes her a deeply enjoyable heroine.Bubbles doesn't want to save the world or even her client. She just wants to avoid being murdered and actively resents the conspiracies she's repeatedly drawn into. I think she has more in common with the Dude in adaptations of The Big Sleep than her surname-sake.

The absurd idea of placing a noir and cyberpunk dystopian heroine on a cruise ship is a hilarious juxtaposition. Bubbles is surrounded by the ultra-rich and decadent of the future while having not a credit to spare. What she wants more than anything is to hit the buffet but soon finds herself in the machinations of a sinister cult, a drug deal gone wrong, and a science experiment that potentially could help humankind evolve into gods.

I have to say my favorite character, after Bubbles herself, is her A.I. pig companion. Choosing to go by the pun-laden title of Hammett after Dashielle Hammet, he provides the majority of common sense as well as hacking support to our heroine. The character is just adorable and I hope to read more about them. About the only thing they could have done that was more on the nose would make him an electric sheep.

The antagonists in the book are an interesting mix with Chief Swain being a hate sink of corruption and police brutality that already ruined Bubbles life once before. The Last Humanist Church doesn't initially appear to be bad but it's pretty hard to be sympathetic to an organization that considers Bubbles to be an abomination just for having a prosthetic arm. Other characters are good or bad depending on whether their agendas conflict with Bubbles' at the time. Specifically, her survival.

This is a flat out great book and I strongly recommend people pick it up. It has the cool quality of using variants of 1920s and 1940s slang to help make the language appear different from typical speech of the 21st century. It works surprisingly well and lends a sense of otherness that would otherwise be lacking if they didn't have their own unique oddball phrases. Mind you, hearing "skirt" used unironically as a bit bizarre. The book is available on Kindle Unlimited and is definitely worth a read.

Available here

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by C.T. Phipps

[dwellordream]

I would highly recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's thriller The Water Knife. It's debatably more ecopunk (I think that would be the term for it?) than cyberpunk, but it's still heavily focused on renegade characters who wind up going against the status quo (for both good and evil), in a high-tech but very dystopian and grimy society. The rich are living ludicrously large, where the poor can't even survive in their ruined environments and the American government is breaking down into militarized state versus state. One of the main POV characters is a private eye/assassin, and another is an undercover reporter, and the third is a teenage girl on the run after accidentally stealing a crucial data file, so I feel like those all align with the cyberpunk aesthetic as well. 

[C.T. Phipps]

The Guardian did an excellent couple of articles on cyberpunk's problems as a literary genre of the modern day:

Whatever happened to cyberpunk?

Why does cyberpunk refuse to move on?

[C.T. Phipps]

Okay, either Tor is just hanging around our forums copying what we write in order to make articles or pretty much what we've said many times is accepted truth about the genre.

 

https://www.tor.com/2021/12/15/our-cyberpunk-year/

[C.T. Phipps]

I just read one of the original classic works of cyberpunk:

My When Gravity Fails - 4.5/5

 

Spoiler

WHEN GRAVITY FAILS by George Alec Effinger is one of the seminal works of science fiction but, sadly, has fallen out of reading order for a lot of modern fans. Which is a sham because it does belong there with Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Hardwired, and Synners. It still has a lot of respect but is something that should probably come up more. It is dark, gritty, imaginative, and presents a vision of the future that not only remains internally consistent but socially relevant. Has it aged 100% well? Not entirely, no, but better than a lot of other fiction from the Eighties.

The premise is that in an undisclosed period of time both the United States and Soviet Union have fallen into competing states as the Cold War didn't turn hot but both economies collapsed. So, the book is half right. Instead, the Middle East rather than China or Japan has risen to become the dominant power in the world alongside a united Europe. None of this particularly matters, though, because the world for our protagonist begins and end with the Budayeen.

The Budayeen is the Red Light District in an unnamed city somewhere in the Levant. I'm going to guess it's in Syria, possibly Damascus, but it's a bit like trying to guess where Springfield is. The Budayeen is full of cybernetically modified sex workers, many of whom are trans, and caters to every possible impulse. Whether sex, drugs, or cybernetic modifications. George Alec Effinger supposedly incorporated many elements of the French Quarter into his book and I have to wonder whether it was different in the Seventies since it is like a much seedier Mos Eisley.

The protagonist is Marid Audran, a self-described small-time hustler who is quite content with his life of grifting and drug use. He has a part-time girlfriend names Yasmin, one of the trans sex workers, and generally has managed to stay on everyone's good side by acting as a neutral party during business deals.  This goes out the window when another associate of his, Nikki, stiffs him on a deal he negotiated to buy out her contract. Right after his latest employer, a Russian politician, is killed right in front of him by a guy modded to be James Bond. Believe me, that's the least strange element of Marid's adventures. By the end, he'll have dealt with everything from international intrigue to alleged serial killers.

The Budayeen is one of those fictional locations that leaps off the page so well that you can taste the air, however foul, and believe in the characters as real people. George Alec Effinger has a talent for writing eccentric larger-than-life characters that stick in your mind. Mike Pondsmith created a roleplaying game supplement for the Budayeen and I can understand why. It's the kind of place that would be very fun to wander around and experience in a roleplaying game.

Technologically, the book explores two pieces of technology that are interesting to see the results of in "Moddies" and "Daddies." Neuroscience has advanced in this world to the point that you can upload skills [Moddies] to learn new languages, kung fu, or whatever but only so long as you have the program uploaded via cartridge. Remove it and, poof, it's gone. Daddies are the more extreme version where people can upload an entirely new personality to replace your existing one. Want to be James Bond, Nero Wolf, or Jesus? All available. For those who like scifi that explores unique tech, I think this is definitely appealing.

The book has some flaws: Marid Audran is a protagonist who needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the plot by outside forces. Dead friends or not, he wants nothing to do with solving crimes or dealing with dangerous people with guns. Which, to me, says that he's probably in the wrong business as well as location. George's handling of trans issues has not aged "entirely" well and can probably be put under the trope: "Fair for its day." Trans characters are treated as normal and an every day part of life but after the fifth or sixth sex worker described in such terms, it starts to look a bit fetishistic. Plus, we've come a long way in terms of the psychology of gender, transitioning, and so on that certainly isn't apparent here in a 1986 book. Race issues are also, um, interesting with Marid as a person of color in a city of very few white people who occasionally refers to himself as a racial slur.

Still, this is a book that is one of those rare occassions that I do feel like I was transported into another world. It is cyberpunk with an emphasis on the PUNK as the world is sleazy, dark, and full of corruption but that just makes it interesting. I think it's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for some great crime fiction but don't mind something that deals with some truly gruesome subject matter. Marid's experiences are not for the faint of heart and would come with multiple warnings today given he's dealing with a misogynist serial killer among other unpleasant people.

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by C.T. Phipps

[C.T. Phipps]

Funny conversation I got into was with a guy who was passionate The Matrix wasn't cyberpunk.

He had a very specific and very rigid view of what cyberpunk was and wasn't.

Edited September 23, 2022 by C.T. Phipps

[C.T. Phipps]

I'm very excited about the upcoming Edgerunners anime and what it may do for a revival of the genre. I was very disappointed by the video game crashing and burning but it seems to be rising like a Phoenix from the ashes.

Literary cyberpunk will benefit from the tie-in media to, IMHO.

Edited September 23, 2022 by C.T. Phipps

[C.T. Phipps]

Some fun articles that I've encountered that I think people would very much enjoy.

Ten Recommended Indie Cyberpunk novels

Arvekt by Craig Lea Gordon review

The Blueprint by Wesley Cross

The Auxiliary by Jon Richter

Edited October 9, 2022 by C.T. Phipps

[Ran]

The cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades has been made available for free online by the authors. Pretty great list of writers, including Gibson, Greg Bear, Pat Cadigan, and Bruce Sterling (who edited it).

[Wilbur]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

The cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades has been made available for free online by the authors. Pretty great list of writers, including Gibson, Greg Bear, Pat Cadigan, and Bruce Sterling (who edited it).

That was a tremendous collection of stories and writers when it came out.  Back in the days of Internet 1.0, you still had to use books like this to see who the authors were who were writing in the genre unless you were hooked in to the Con circuit.