Exploring the principles of cyberpunk, part 1

This is the start of a mini-series of articles I want to do, focusing on the genre of cyberpunk. It is one of my favorite genres, one that is often argued about, and one that has very particular origins.

At its core, cyberpunk began when authors, writers, and directors began imagining our future with technology and how technology would change and direct human life. The “punk” side of cyberpunk rose out of the counterculture movements of the 70s and 80s, and on the literary side, the genre was born out of the New Wave science-fiction movement.

For a genre that has its origins in punk and counterculture, it is also a very highly debated genre. There are more people on Reddit and the internet who want to tell you what cyberpunk is and what it isn’t than most any other genre it seems, something which I always found counterintuitive to what cyberpunk is. That being said, there are valid criticisms to how the genre has evolved, especially when it has been distilled down to its aesthetics and loses the punk side that is meant to hold the social critique.

Cyberpunk is often summarized by the phrase: High tech, low life. I think that is too simple a descriptor, but it does begin to point to the essence of the genre. A world where the quality of life has suffered, while at the same time, technology has boomed. It often depicts a world ruled by mega-corporations, overrun by capitalism, and its stories generally focus on the outsiders of society—the street kid, the hacker, the everyman.

But as editor and anthologist Jared Shurin writes in his article on cyberpunk on thefantasyinn.com, “cyberpunk, philosophically, eschews gatekeeping”, so it cannot be pinned down very easily. Shurin’s article is great, and his insight into the genre is deep. He dispels some myths about cyberpunk and it is absolutely worth a read for anyone interested in the genre. But Shurin was also the editor for The Big Book of Cyberpunk, a massive anthology that collected stories from across time and across the globe. It is a must have for anyone trying to read widely in the genre.

In his introduction to the book, Shurin lays out five principles of cyberpunk. While he once again assures us that these are not hard and fast rules, the principles give us guidelines to better understand what cyberpunk is trying to accomplish. In this series of articles, I want to look at each of Shurin’s principles and do a little bit of a dive into each of them, seeing what holds up, where I might push back, and what this might mean for the genre going forward.

Some people believe that cyberpunk is dead—that it was a lightning in a bottle movement in the 1980s that is now deflated because of where our world is with technology. I think for a lot of us that write cyberpunk, however, that is exactly why cyberpunk is still relevant today. Maybe more so than ever. Because we are crossing over that line where aspects of it have become reality.

The five principles that Shurin lists are:

Let’s dive into Shurin’s first principle:

Cyberpunk is not about technological supremacy. In fact the reverse is true: cyberpunk is about the perseverance of humanity.

Early on in my cyberpunk reading journey, this was one of the first conclusions I came to that felt like an “Aha!” moment. I really liked cyberpunk and wanted to start writing stories in the genre, but I couldn’t exactly figure out why. I had mostly been writing fantasy up until that point, but I began to have a lot more interests in the little, human moments inside of my novels. I also always had an interesting in technology, but never saw myself as a science-fiction guy. But something kept leading me in that direction, and I followed it.

To use technical writing terms, if I couldn’t put my characters in a conversation where a cup of coffee and a cigarette felt natural, then I didn’t really want to be writing in that register. I loved the fantastical and the speculative and the weird, but it had to be mixed with the human. In those small moments, I found a lot of what I was interested in.

But I don’t think the light bulb really went off for me until I read T.R. Napper’s essay on his website called “The Punk in Cyberpunk: a cyberpunk manifesto”. Napper is one of the great, current cyberpunk authors, and his manifesto posits what it means to be “punk” in 2021 (the time he published the article). It is an insightful read about being nuanced, private, anti-elite, and ultimately, human. Near the end, he states that cyberpunk is humanist, and that is his “unalterable conviction.”

When I read that, it really clicked for me. That’s exactly what I was feeling with the cup of coffee and the cigarettes. The tech and the neon soaked streets and the sleek noir are all cool, but cyberpunk was calling to me because I wanted to write about the humanity in the face of technology. Something that we are currently feeling now more than ever with the rise of AI, mass surveillance, and corporate control.

A lot of cyberpunk is dystopian (but also according to Shurin, does not need to be), and it can often be criticized as nihilist. I don’t think these criticisms come in bad faith, but I also don’t think you need happy endings or world altering revolutions in order to be humanist. The best cyberpunk focuses on that nearly feral desire to retain our humanity in the face of a crushing technopoly. It shows the lengths people will go to for that cup of coffee or cigarette, because it is not just a cup of coffee or a cigarette. It is the conversation shared with the person while you enjoy them, it is the warmth of breath and touch in the face of cold chrome, it is the control over our own lives and the moments we create through that.

Cyberpunk is about reclamation. Reclaiming our humanity in a world that constantly tries to strip us of it through the use of technology.

I think this point is also where a lot of cyberpunk media stumbles. Much of the aesthetic has been co-opted (often by the very corporations that the genre pushes back against), and it is repackaged and sold to us in a neat little package. This ‘cyberpop’ really misses the whole point of what the genre is trying to do. Because cyberpunk has become synonymous with the rain soaked, neon aesthetic, you will often see “cyberpunk clothes” selling for hundreds of dollars, or the smattering of “cyberpunk” novels on Amazon that put some sexy cat-robot girl on the cover. It’s not that you can’t enjoy these things, but the basic premise of cyberpunk is totally lost. It is no longer about the perseverance of humanity (or even the tech for that matter), it’s only about the aesthetics.

When cyberpunk is watered down to this cyberpop surface, it no longer holds weight. The load bearing springs are removed and the genre becomes a hollow skeleton of itself. There is a natural grit in cyberpunk, an uncomfortable essence that needs to be there. It is far from clean, far from pretty (even though the neon may be pretty), and it eschews that kind of simple lack of nuance.

Even look at a media product like the video game Cyberpunk 2077. I love that game, but I’ve often wondered what it means for a multi-million dollar gaming corporation with investors and shareholders to package up the cyberpunk experience and then sell it to consumers to pass a bottom line? I mean, the “Cyberpunk” name is even trademarked by CD Projekt Red—there’s no greater irony than that. I love running around Night City as much as the next guy, but it does leave a certain bitter taste in my mouth. Something is off about it, and now the IP is just expanding into more video games, anime, and a trading card game. Do I think CDPR is the bad guy? Not necessarily, and there is no doubt amazing, passionate developers who pour their art and hearts into making a game like this, but I think the system in which this type of co-opting can flourish deserves criticism.

A money-making product feeding into corporations based off a literary genre that was all about the little guys and resisting the corporations.

This is why we must continue to keep the humanist aspects of cyberpunk. In this point, I am completely in agreement with Shurin’s principle. I think cyberpunk that is about the dominance of technology or the aesthetic and not about the perseverance of humanity wouldn’t be cyberpunk at all. In my opinion, this captures the most important part of the genre.

In the next article, I’ll discuss the second point: Cyberpunk has clear origins in both the “genre” and “literary” worlds.