Tuesday, October 4, 2011

On Cyberpunk

So I have been thinking lately about a cyberpunk novel idea. Why I would be wandering off on the subject when I already have so much to do, I have no clue, but the bits I've cobbled together have come from a few different sources.

Cyberpunk, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, involves a future setting in which the boundry between machines and humanity is explored. It tends to be pretty gothy, and the main protagonist tends to be a loner who hacks his way to victory against cold, unfeeling corporate overlords. Cyberpunk tends to be pretty dark, and grim as well. I guess the Matrix was a good example of cyberpunk genre in film, and there's a lot more out there.

My first exposure was a game that I ran across called Deus Ex. It was a pretty fun game, but kind of dated. A new prequel to it has come out recently called Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For those of you who like videogames, look it up. It looks awesome. Sadly I am denied the opportunity to play it since I have no console or TV, but the entire concept of the game is fascinating to me. The setting is in a future where mechanical augmentations--and later nano augmentations--are widely available. Something about that caught my attention, and I have been studying it for a while.

Of course, another source of interest in cyberpunk comes from the fact that cyberpunk is closely related to steampunk. My foray into the world of Hector Kingsley has so far turned out to go very well, so why not try a related culture?

I think that if I wrote it though, I would try to turn some of the conventions on their heads. That seems to work well for me. The only problem that I would see is that cyberpunk always seems to carry some kind of political context to it, and that might turn away readers. Oh well, I won't have time to explore it for quite a while yet anyway. I will continue to ponder it more. See ya!

1 comment:

  1. Interesting -- I'd always thought of steampunk and cyberpunk as being kind of opposite, one usually featuring refined manners and the other not so much, but it still sounds like lots of fun.

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