With the release of the Hollywood live action version of Ghost in the Shell I’ve started to reconsider cyberpunk as a genre. I’ve always been a fan since Blade Runner (movie, 1982) and Gibson’s 1984-88 novels and short stories. Last year I picked up collector copies of Gibson’s novels where I could and added Neil Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snowcrash as another seminal cyberpunk work due to Hamish’s Kickstarter reigniting my interest.
I participated in the development of The Sprawl by contributing some material about the sort of things I did with network security working for NASA in the early 1990’s, prior to the development of the WWW. SInce then I’ve run occasional games at UK conventions.
Seeing a review of the current GitS which suggest that cyberpunk as a genre wasn’t sufficiently embedded in public consciousness for the new film to be particularly well received, I was sufficiently intrigued by this to give some consideration to the topic.
Many of the cyberpunk stories from the 1980’s seem to be set in the early 21st century with their mix of new tech and old infrastructure. However now we’re here the world hasn’t moved as far as the novels would suggest. Elon Musk has just announced/mentioned investment in Neurolink, an implant that links the human brain to AI. This is probably at least 10 and probably 25 years away from actual availability.
At this rate it’ll be 2050 before the cyberpunk future will be here and I’ll be long dead without the chance for kidney and heart implants to extend my lifespan. Pity about that, I always thought we’d have some of the benefits of technology and AI by now.
I’ll just have to run games set in the cyberpunk future and dream.
Cyberpunk is an interesting genre, in that so many of the ideas that emerged from it have been very influential on the modern world, but the genre itself is far less known (outside of gaming).
From what I’ve seen of reviews, a lack of audience knowledge of cyberpunk isn’t to blame for the film’s reception. It seems to be a big dumb Hollywood action movie with little of the serious questions about human identity asked by the original.
CAVEAT: I haven’t seen it yet.
Neither have I, but I did rewatch the original yesterday which sort of spawned this post.
BTW I’m watching Elysium later for another take (sort of ) on cyberpunkish concepts.
I just replaced my copy of GitS. I was going to watch it first, but I think now I might watch it second so I can try to see the new movie on its own terms.
Well, we’re (humans) doing our best to have the dystopian parts of cyberpunk be in the here-and-now…
In terms of the cyberpunk genre not being in the public consciousness, I guess that’s somewhat true. I wasn’t really aware of the sub-genre of “cyberpunk” as a named thing until I met Hamish, although I had been avidly consuming cyberpunk anime (and a smattering of novels) for years – I just always thought of them as “sci-fi” or “dystopic tech”. And as Hamish pointed out above, a lot of cyberpunk thoughts and terminology underpins critical parts of people’s day-to-day lives… So it’s THERE, it’s just not… noticed? named?
Also, I suspect that there are major flaws in the new GitS movie that are making it not do well, separate from the popularity/ unpopularity of the genre.
I watched the new GitS and I did like it.
We had some discussion afterwards regarding original version/ new version, changes, what change I liked and what I did not. I think it’s worth a look, though you may still like the anime more.
I spent yesterday afternoon watching Elysium. I liked it as a vehicle for cyberpunk inspiration – the drones for example and the weird bullets with remote detonation. I liked the exoskeletons but did think that the amazing recuperative process after screwing these things onto a person’s skeleton and cutting into them to attach bits was a bit naff.
I liked the space station/ring but did feel that the 20 minutes to orbit with the shuttles was a bit crap ( having supported 31 Shuttle launches and a host of expendable launches during my time at NASA this was probably the hardest bit to swallow). Not so much the time, which was reasonable, but the thrust required simply couldn’t be acquired from those ships.
Still something to note down for use as examples for players.
I tend to clip short sections out of films to use as examples and the drones bit will go into my library as soon as I can.
I liked the airburst ammo so much I inserted it into The Sprawl as soon as I got home from the movie!
I thought that might have been where it originated from. I’m going through a number of movies for inspiration and adding bits to my example library. No doubt I’ll come across some more stuff like that.
Boy…you need to watch the new GitS. Its awesome Cyberpunk Action! Fresh & New. Fucking sexy Cyborg stuff. Hightech + Lowlife.