All About Cyberpunk — Ep. 102 of Intentionally Blank

Speaking as someone who grew up in the 90s, the term "Punk" has no special meaning beyond a general knowledge that it's a music genre and a popular suffix for story genres.

I look forward to seeing Brandon's Star Wars project...

So glad Brandon mentioned Frostpunk. That game is incredible, and everyone should play it.

It was good to give the food heist thing a break , maybe just a food heist every ten episodes, I always want to skip through them

You are referring to Blade Runner, especially the flight through the city. You know the inspiration for this scene comes from Fritz Lang's
"Metropolis" (1929/2010)? It's worth a watch, and also the documentary about the discovery of the long lost reels and the making of exactly that scene!

Picard 3 was better than 1 or 2 by far.... But that is not a high bar to clear. It's still a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas that still breaks with established stories and details in so many ways in order to still fit within Kurtzman-Trek's style and reinterpretations. It's inconsistent even within Nu-Trek itself. One example: whatever happened to Riker and Troi's _daughter_?? She was still alive. it had fun moments and callbacks, but seeing **spoilers** the Enterprise D handling like an X-Wing diving into the second Death Star would have yanked me out of the immersion if there had been any left for me at that point.

I'm curious now whether Silver Metal Lover counts as cyberpunk, I would recommend it if it does because I remember it being a book that took me places.

I would argue that Ghost in the Shell is very Cyberpunk.

"Where's my flying car?" We already have those, its called a helicopter

Regarding the conversation about VR, one of the most interesting recent fictional takes I’ve seen about VR was A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green.

Cough cough Patrick Rothfuss

Would love to hear your thoughts on solarpunk

It's not possible for Neuromancer to have inspired Blade Runner - Blade Runner came out 2 years before Neuromancer was published.
It is possible earlier stories, like Johnny Mnemonic might have been inspiration though.

Johnny Mnemonic the movie wasn't the best movie, but gave us some pretty good memes and one great monologue about room service.

Where is my food heist? I want my food heist! 😢

The first three minutes of this is just Brandon and Dan saying, "hmmm, yes" 😂

funny i wouldnt consider the matrix a cyberpunk story... for me in cyberpunk stories the city would be the villain.

Dude, I forgot about Uglies. Excellent books

Would The Expanse count as Cyberpunk? Seems to tick all the boxes, but the show aesthetic isn't what I would normally think of as cyberpunk. It's not colorful enough. But it has big corporations, implants, questions about humanity, near future, etc.

1984 was the best cyberpunk story ever told. Rebellion agianst insturmountable technological oppression. Delicious.

genericization? generalization?

Executive producer with someone else taking the helm who can handle the property well is the best answer.

“Excuse me while I pee myself!” 😂😂😂

a dumb term that we use all the time and have become use to is "organic" for a long time, i would cringe, if it once lived, it is organic.....I am use to it now, finally, but still annoys me sometimes to this day.

Other then Akira as it’s been mentioned I would include the following. Bubblegum Crisis, Ghost in the Shell, A.D. Police (same world as bubblegum crisis), Mardok Scramble, and Cyber City Oedo 808.

Edit: Alita: Battle Angel (blanked out on this one) but all could be considered cyberpunk.

Theres a great Mitchell and Webb look sketch on Watergate gate

I also ADORE Cyberpunk! I'm writing a book series set in a cyberpunk universe and I love original works from back in the 70s and 80s

Speaking of deep purple, have Brandon or Dan seen hunter x hunter?

Cyberpunk is why I lean conservative and want the decentralization of entertainment and government.

"I'm deeply upset it's called cyberpunk because it makes searching for other cyberpunk stuff..." 100% agree! So annoying

There's a great mitchell and webb sketch explaining watergate-gate because it is a scandal about watergate and not a scandal about water.

The best Cyberpunk is near future noir.

Or in other words, the tone and style of the storytelling is as much a part of cyberpunk as the worlds the stories happen in.

This episode was a couple weeks too early, before Apple’s AR headset announcement. I’m curious what their initial thoughts are on it

ok but Frostpunk is actually punk

Solarpunk is cool

Is Asimov's Robot Series early early cyberpunk??

I am surprised Dan didn't mention (or probably doesn't know) about Akira or Battle Angel Alita. Especially Akira whose influences can be seen in cyberpunk media all over the world after it

Hooker with a heart of gold--classic trope of Cyberpunk. Both Blade Runners have the hard-boiled cop analog and some elements of the hooker thing going. The game has that too. I'd recommend playing it, as it does have a number of real-future-looking-feels-bad-that-this-is-true-man moments. Especially the main and Delamain stories (important to read all the emails on the computers to get more understanding). The Cyberpsychosis is also poignant and Johnny's arguments, but they are a little abstruse. Also, Deus Ex is entirely a form of super cop, and excellent games that, especially with Mankind Divided, hit what the future may look like.

Cyberpunk is just dystopian scifi, so The Matrix fits nicely into that ecosystem. The machines in The Matrix are interchangeable as the "oppressing force" like Big Brother in 1984 or the Megacorps in generic cyberpunk fiction. You can trace it back through all the straight-to-video post-apoc scifi movies of the 80's and 90's, Akira was the first dystopian scifi Japanese manga in 1982, the 1950's atomic age scifi, and probably land on Metropolis (1927) as being the first major dystopian scifi work to catch the public's attention. And William Gibson is a hack 🐝itch who ripped off Philip K. Dick!!! Bro, do you even scifi?? 🔫🤖

Blade Runner wasn't inspired by Neuromancer. On the contrary :)

Quite late commenter. One big reason that Japan is so cemented in cyberpunk is how connected the corporations are. We look at Meta or Amazon and wonder if they’re too intrusive (which sure, they are), but look at Mitsubishi. Cars, Ac units sure. But also the biggest bank in Japan and 9th biggest in the world.

If you want good, contemporary, relevant cyberpunk, then look to T. R. Napper. His works: Neon Leviathan (2020), 36 Streets (2022), Ghost of the Neon God (2024), and The Escher Man (2024). He's won a bunch of awards in his home country of Australia, and is highly regarded.

The thing about P.K. Dick being the first cyberpunk author is that his cyberpunk book is not Do Androids... , but rather Ubik. It more or less satisfice all genre criteria, and handles deeply cyberpunk-ian themes.

battle royale did hunger games better imo and predates it too

The Akira movie might have played a large part in Japanese/Asian cultures being involved in cyberpunk, (or perhaps might have been the result instead).

wow, that was a load of horseshit.😆😆😆