Sci­ence fic­tion — before the cyber­punk split — was more or less dif­fer­ent retell­ings of the same arche­types where ali­ens replaced ghosts and mon­sters, space replaced the oceans and tech­no­logy replaced magic. This provided the grounds for sci­entific speculations, — and for a long time that was the main theme — and that was the fuel of the (tech­nical) ima­gin­a­tion of the man­kind. We reached the Moon in a story first in Kepler’s “Som­nium,” then with Jules Verne’s “From Earth to Moon.”

Those stor­ies were mostly glor­i­ous in nature, pro­mot­ing tech­no­logy and not invest­ig­at­ing its side effects. Cyber­punk looked closely at the human nature, at how we man­age tech­no­logy. Tech­no­logy not only enables but also dis­ables; tech­no­logy can be stolen, abused, mis­un­der­stood, mis­ap­plied, smuggled and coun­ter­feit. Tech­no­logy can fuel ideo­lo­gies and enable coer­cion and control.

MORPHEUS “What is the Mat­rix? Con­trol. The Mat­rix is a computer-​generated dream world built to keep us under con­trol in order to change a human being into this.“
[holds up a Dur­a­cell battery]

Those dreams from com­mon sci­ence fic­tion become night­mares in cyber­punk; not by turn­ing good into evil but through the blur­ring of the dis­tinc­tion between good and evil, day and night (the sky in “Neur­oman­cer”), between pred­ator and prey (Blade Run­ner), between flesh and metal, human and non-​human (the Voight-​Kampff test is not infal­lible). The mere dimensions/​values of the world col­lapse, there are no stable met­rics nor references.

This claus­tro­phobic atmo­sphere is amp­li­fied by lay­ers of detail, “kipple” and par­al­lel story lines with idio­syn­cratic char­ac­ters. Moreover the prot­ag­on­ists are drift­ing in these worlds with almost no free will, fact that con­trib­utes to the char­ac­ter­istic dystopic atmosphere.

[Do you won­der why people would read such things? A cyberpunk-​like answer would be that the cyber­punk meme is a spe­cially designed highly addict­ive drug; and the first book is always free…]

Actu­ally read­ing cyber­punk is quite an exper­i­ence — it is an immers­ive one — where you have to live in those dystopic worlds (oth­er­wise you would not under­stand them) and you have to fight your way out of there. The fas­cin­at­ing thing is that it is so easy to dive into those worlds as their ter­ri­fy­ing fea­tures are so famil­iar (with our dark pre­dic­tions of our near future), and your fight along with the prot­ag­on­ist to get out of there is lib­er­at­ing. Oddly, writ­ing this brought this scene into my mind:

Ghost in the Shell, Scene where Motoko is diving in the har­bour and then talk­ing on board a boat with Batou.

BATOU “A cyborg who goes diving in her spare time. That can’t be a good sign. When did you start doing this? Doesn’t the ocean scare you? lf the float­ers stopped working…”

MOTOKO “Then l’d prob­ably die. Or would you dive in after me? No one forced you to come out here with me.”

BATOU “So, what’s it feel like when you go diving?”

MOTOKO “Didn’t you go through under­wa­ter training?”

BATOU “l’m not talk­ing about doing it in a damned pool.”

MOTOKO “l feel fear. Anxi­ety. Loneli­ness. Dark­ness. And per­haps, even hope.”

Com­mon sci­ence fic­tion is ‘fic­tional.’ Cyber­punk is about fic­tional set­tings ran in real-​world sim­u­la­tions. It is the­ory versus prac­tice (read sim­u­la­tion), and prac­tice (read sim­u­la­tion) feels real.