Postcyberpunk

Cyberpunk as a literary genre is generally seen as having died in the 1990's. The beginning of the decline can be traced to the late '80s, when many of the leading cyberpunk science fiction writers were declaring that the subgenre they founded had become commercialized and lost the creative edge it once had.

By then many of the superficial devices and conventions that cyberpunk started with and became defined by, had become cliched and lost their original impact.

The innovative originators of the genre seemingly abandoned the genre. For example William Gibson, the inventor of cyberspace, has mov Cyberpunk as a literary genre is generally seen as having died in the 1990's. The beginning of the decline can be traced to the late '80s, when many of the leading cyberpunk science fiction writers were declaring that the subgenre they founded had become commercialized and lost the creative edge it once had.

By then many of the superficial devices and conventions that cyberpunk started with and became defined by, had become cliched and lost their original impact.

The innovative originators of the genre seemingly abandoned the genre. For example William Gibson, the inventor of cyberspace, has moved away from the archeotypical cyberpunk devices in his later fiction. In his so-called San Fransisco trilogy; Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties, the cyberspace is replaced by an equivalent of the modern day Internet. However, the issues that his fiction deals with, the social and philosophical implications of new technology, have not changed.

The main argument against the death of cyberpunk is that only the superficial and most extreme "punk" elements of the genre have been abandoned. The so-called post-cyberpunk literature still shares the sensibility that set cyberpunk apart as a genre of science fiction. It is still literarily ambitious postmodern science fiction about the near future Western society; often even written by former cyberpunks like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. However, below the surface there can also be seen a slightly different attitude that is less extreme than original cyberpunk's. Where this shows most clearly is perhaps the softening of cyberpunk's extremely anti-humanist view of the relationship between man and technology.

I will bet that the digital counterculture will reject this bleak vision of a future in which technology enlarges the human spirit as a new tool for consciousness in much the same way that the hippies appropriated the psychoactive chemical spinoffs of the military- industrial complex. This new movement will be cyberpunk imbued with human warmth, substituting a deep sense of interdependence in place of lone-wolf isolationism. Cyberpunks envision humans as electronic cyber-rats lurking in the interstices of the information mega-machine; the gospel of the post- cyberpunk movement will be one of machines in the service of enlarging our humanity.

Paul Saffo, Wired Magazine

The so-called "hardcore" cyberpunk that utilizes it's superficial characteristics is still alive in more commercial literature, movies and computer games. This is demonstrated, for example, by the immense popularity of movie Matrix that makes use of archeotypical cyberpunk devices.

Instead of saying that cyberpunk as a literary style is dead, it is perhaps more correct to say that it has moved on. ...more