Why now is the time to pay attention to the cyberpunk genre of fiction

Yes, cyberpunk is my favourite. . . Thing. Not necessarily the new game, but the genre. When I was your age (however old you are) movies were dark and angsty for no particular reason. Misery was a mark of quality. Nowadays, "grimdark" is a term used to disparage that which I love most, cynical sci-fi fantasy that makes you feel miserable about the world.

In my opinion, cyberpunk is such an important sub-genre of science fiction because we've pretty much almost caught up to the bleak, dystopian nightmare first described by William Gibson. Transhumanism? Check! Laissez-faire capitalism that has turned our Democracy into a pitiful sham? Check! Ecological catastrophe that will knee-cap our food supply and reduce us to a bunch of bug eating, selfish, cruel monsters? Check!

I love me some Star Trek, but let's face it. The prospects of seeing that future have sailed. We're not finding any life out there and if we do they will make short work of us. Peace on earth? Not bloody likely. Cyberpunk. That's what's in our future. Some might argue, why read fiction that's about exactly what's going on in the world around us every day? I would answer. . . I don't know. Because it's cool?

I write this post because it has come to my attention that not everyone has read Neuromancer. Not everyone has read Snow Crash. And yet we're all talking about Cyberpunk 2077? Do your homework, people! I was shocked to see this video on YouTube from Daniel Greene, a site dedicated to talking about books, regaled his viewers with the story of how he just read Neuromancer for the first time, after playing the dog's breakfast that was Cyberpunk 2077. As if the latter inspired the former. And to add insult to actual, emotional injury he called William Gibson, William Gibbons. Again. . . And again. . . And again. Every time he said it, it felt like he was punching me in the face.

With more cyberpunk games on the horizon, you want to be able to pretend you were into it before you were cool. You want to thumb your nose at people like I'm doing now, like you got on board with this trend on the ground floor. More than that, you want to read cyberpunk fiction while it's still fiction. Time's running out!

Where do you start? Well, if we're talking about books.

1) Neuromancer.

2) Snowcrash

3)Altered Carbon (for something more recent).

We're talking movies and television?

1) Bladerunner (both)

2) Robocop (yes, of course Robocop is cyberpunk)

3) Matrix

Video games?

1) Deus Ex (This is a must play franchise, whether you like cyberpunk or not. Though you can be forgiven for skipping the sequel, Invisible War).

2)  Perfect Dark

3) One day, when the game is finished, Cyberpunk 2077. As of writing this the game feels like a rough draft for what could and should be one of the best video games ever made.

Honorable mention to the now defunct, Netrunner cardgame. Oddly, few things gave me that cyberpunk feeling quite like thumbing through my Netrunner cards.