Cyberpunk

[Alkaloid]

So I played Alpha Protocol the other day, and my one man war against an evil corporation got me a hankering to watch/read some cyberpunk. Problem is I have read/watched all the cyberpunk I can think of (mostly just the well known stuff, Johnny Mnemonic and related, Blade Runner, Richard Morgan, GITS sort of thing), and need some recommendations. I watched Ergo Proxy over the last few days and kind of enjoyed it, but would hesitate to call it cyberpunk, but that's all I got. Any advice here would be appreciated.

[Stark]

If you want grubby sex with hookers in warehouses powered by 8-tracks you're 20 years too late.

If you want themes of resistance and identity in an authoritarian and classist society you'd do better ignoring the 'genre' 'cyberpunk' and just chase the themes.

I never saw or read anything 'cyberpunk' that went nearly far enough with it's social themes, but the baggage of saying megabyte and upload constantly will do that to a work.

[Alkaloid]

If you want themes of resistance and identity in an authoritarian and classist society

Yeah, that's what I'm after. Hookers and 8 tracks aren't compulsory, grubbiness is preferred.

you'd do better ignoring the 'genre' 'cyberpunk' and just chase the themes.

Are there other genres that often comine such shitty people with such a shitty place to live as well as occasionally punching an electronic shark in the face? Because that's part of the attraction.

I never saw or read anything 'cyberpunk' that went nearly far enough with it's social themes, but the baggage of saying megabyte and upload constantly will do that to a work.

I think it's because the setting usually has to be terrible and impossible for the characters to change so the important thing is how the characters change within it, otherwise you loose that sense of struggle with/for identity to a tract about the evils of homelessness and poverty. Although I am already at the stage where I close a book as soon as it mentions a Pentium II or gives a number for how much RAM the awesome computer has because it's always laughable and annoys me, so that definitely hurts. Funnily enough I can still stomach tape drives as a storage medium though.

[Spectre_nz]

I may be asking the obvious, but have you checked out anything by Neil Stephenson?
In particular, Snowcrash.
I found that catered to my cyberpunk interests nicely. I found another book of his, Cryptonomicon, really good. Even if it isn't particularly futuristic.

There's also Two Ghost-in-the-shell movies and at least two seasons of a TV show for the same. Although they can be pretty confusing and require re-watching to actually adsorb what the fuck is going on sometimes.

[Alkaloid]

Yup, read/seen it. Snowcrash was OK, GITS I struggled with the movies because the Major is a fucking annoying character, liked the show more because it actually expanded on the other characters and what made the Major like she was in a way that made sense. It would have been better if she also made the concession of wearing fucking pants like the rest of society, in the first season anyway.

[Stark]

Did you miss her attitude towards her body and appearance in general in a posthuman world? The way characters try to retain their connections to 'humanity' or their old lives is one of the strongest parts of the work; the dystopia/posthuman stuff is informed by this pretty directly.

[Alkaloid]

No, I got it, but it was really only clear in the last few episodes, after she went in to get a replacement body that that was what was going on, and they didn't even look at why she was that way until the second season. And they could certainly have gotten the damn point across while still having here wear pants, it's just blatant fan service to have her not. (I'm not against fan service in general, just when it's stupid)

[Stark]

Yeah, all the GitS stuff has a lot of assumptions built in around posthuman stuff, but that's Japan for you. I think the different attitudes towards identity (extremely clear in the movies) was pretty clear in first season... not that I can stand to watch it again to find out. I mean a core element of the setting is 'we need Togusa because he's useless', which should draw your attentino immediately to how the posthuman world is changing perceptions and realities of identity.

PS pretty much nothing branded 'cyberpunk' is about this stuff.

[Alkaloid]

It was generally pretty clear, yeah, but mostly for the other characters. That was part of the whole Togusa not having any cybernetics thing, it was a big part of his identity and he sacrificed it to take over in SSS. It was just it wasn't explored with Katsuragi until very close to the end of the season, which made it weird before that. The second season is better about it and jumps in much sooner.

PS pretty much nothing branded 'cyberpunk' is about this stuff.

Thinking about it I suspect you're right, which is weird given I have always thought of it as on of the defining characteristics of the genre. Probably comes from my first real exposure to it being Blade Runner.

[Stark]

The second season is better in all kinds of ways; I'm tempted to try and watch the first season again just to see if it's as incoherent and all over the shop as I remember.

The wierd thing about cyberpunk is once I was chatting to Ford and Shroom about cyberpunk craps (like Shadowrun etc) and thinking between the explicit stuff, and I found some pretty powerful themes that were probably accidental - but they are much more closely linked to the 80s anti-authoritarian globalistation stuff that spawned the genre. And not MAN HAS CYBERCLAWS IN HIS CYBERARM INSTALLED BY CYBERSURGEON bullshits.

[Alkaloid]

The actual episodes linked to the main story are pretty good, but there are really only about five of them spread over the whole season. The others are occasionally good, but mostly just bad filler.

I don't think the themes are accidental, they were very much a product of their time, but the ended up being strapped to the setting and the whole cyberisation deal because they do fit well with the themes and make the story more exciting. Shadowrun and the like remembered the cool robot assassins and electronic STDs but forgot the themes, or maybe they just never picked up on them in the first place.

[Stark]

Well Shadowrun has in their stupid worldbuilding all kinds of interesting stuff; it is just never addressed and often never mentioned in the actual material, because it was about having a plug in your head and a mac-10 in your pants, not social schism or devaluing of labour or the cycle of reliance between megarich and dispossessed.

[Alkaloid]

Yeah, but those interesting ideas are normally inherent to the type of setting, in the same way that racism is inherent to anything that involves humans dwarves and orcs. It isn't really often explored because awesome gunfights between cybernetic killing machines or massive sieges with steam powered flamethrower tanks are more exciting than speculating on the nature of ones existence in a world that increasingly doesn't need you or when your quest to defend yourself from the rampaging barbarian orc tribes goes from self defence to genocide.

[Bright]

Have you played Deus Ex? Alpha Protocol was created as something of a spiritual successor to it. The original Deus Ex - though its graphics are a little dated - is a classic of the genre, and its prequel Human Revolution did quite well in regards to cyberpunk too. While the original is all about conspiracies in a decaying world, the prequel puts a lot of focus on transhumanism and social change brought about by technology.

Also, if you're not adverse to comic books, read Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan. It's basically about Hunter S. Thompson trying to take down a corrupt president in a somewhat crazy, dystopian United States.

[Stark]

DEHR says a lot of things really poorly, but not many of them are very interesting. What themes did you find compelling?