13 Mar Cyberpink: The Genre
Cyberpink: The Genre
Cyberpink was started as a literary movement. However, over time it became a substructural organism. However, when it comes to an understanding what is Cyberpink, then the answer to this question is pretty layered. Do you also want to know about Cyberpink? Well, let’s indulge into its details below to know different aspects of Cyberpink below to get a better idea about the things in this regard:
What is Cyberpink?
- Cyberpink is a genre that is using an amazing variety of visual aesthetics. However, more commonly, it is known for its encompassing theme that’s “high tech, low life.”
- The stories in this genre feature stories based on futuristic technologies used by people who are just trying to survive in a heavily crime-infested city.
- However, Cyberpink became world-famous in the 1980s, all because of authors like Roger Zelazny, Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, Harlan Ellison, and J. G. Ballard.
- They examined the effects of the sexual revolution, drug culture, and technology while avoiding the earlier science-fiction utopian tendencies.
The Cyberpink genre settings range from the urban jungles of Akira that used to look rough, richly colored, and around the edges to the neon cityscapes that are hyper futuristic and Blade Runner 2049’s bleak wastelands.
Origin of Cyberpink
The term Cyberpink was coined by a writer named Bruce Bethke. Bruce wrote a story in the year 1982 with this title. The term Cyberpink was derived from two words cybernetics and punk. Here cybernetics represents the science of replacing normal human functions with computerized functions. Simultaneously, punk is nihilistic sensibility and cacophonous music that developed in the 1970s to 80s youth culture.
However, Gardner Dozois, a well-known science fiction editor, is more commonly credited for popularizing this term.
Cyberpink’s roots extend past the tale of Bethke to the technological fiction of years between the 1940s and 50s.
Themes of Cyberpink
Well, the themes that were used in the Cyberpink media were including:
- Class uprising
- Artificial intelligence
- Gang warfare
- Anarchy
- Corporate and governmental corruption
- Transhumanism
Even though the range seems to be pretty broad, however, the aesthetics of Cyberpink are more often used to convey deeper meanings as well as commentating on modern society and predictions about the future as well, sometimes.
Cyberpink was more likely the Solarpunk partial inspiration. Solarpunk is an aesthetic that aspires to cast a look into the future as well. However, it does so with very little nihilistic perspective as well as playing a role in inspiring the vaporwave. At the same time, both of these seem to share a contempt for conventional capitalism.
However, if we are going to have a general overview of vaporwave, it looks more sarcastic as well as mocking as compared to Cyberpink.
Final Thoughts:
So, all the background and details of Cyberpink the genre has been discussed above with great details to help everyone to understand better.