Cyberpunk

This is the original short story that coined the word 'cyberpunk', free to read online.

I tried finding a pdf of the story rather than embedded in some old static webpage (most of the links on this page are dead now) but everything I find just points me back to this webpage. It's even linked directly in the wikipedia article. So I guess this is the best place to read it.

They seem to have cyberpunk influences so I assume this community will enjoy the bulk of its posts.

Planned to release in September 2023 on Windows/PlayStation/Xbox.

RoboCop is voiced by the original actor, Peter Weller.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1681430/RoboCop_Rogue_City/

While the show does have a lot of human augmentation and corporations with too much power, there aren't any glowing neon lights here. So from a visual standpoint this is more of a "low cyberpunk" since it doesn't have many of the visuals you expect when you hear the phrase "cyberpunk anime". Aside from the human augmentation, the world just looks like the industrial part of a modern city. This isn't a bad thing, I'm just saying it leans more on the cyberpunk themes than cyberpunk visuals.

My only real complaint about the show is that the character is a stoic, gruff, serious person yet there will be these occasional moments where something completely surprises him and it'll jump to this weird chibi-style animation for a reaction shot:

They only do it once or twice per episode and it really is just a half-second reaction shot, but it's pretty jarring since the rest of the show is so serious.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQyWoG43kRI
It's streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll

Headline screamed high tech low life to me!

Drugs and Wires is a cyberpunk webcomic set in a fictional post-soviet, eastern European country in the 1990s. It primarily follows cyborged members of a now-collapsed scene for VR junkies, and the woman who runs an unlicensed chopshop, and a conspiracy around a worm that's been killing cyborgs. It's on hiatus at the moment, but it still has eight chapters of excellent content worth checking out.

About a month ago, I made a post about the Amazon series Upload. It turns out a surprising number of you had actually watched the show. So for those people, I want to let you know season 3 will start on October 20.

That's right, they cancelled The Peripheral but we're getting more Upload.

On paper, Freejack sounds like the perfect cyberpunk movie. The rich have their consciousness uploaded onto a server when they die. They then pull someone's body from the past into the future so they can download their consciousness into that body and continue living. The corporations are in control, there's a massive rich/poor divide, etc.

Yet in execution, I just find the movie boring. It might be due to Emilio Estevez always looking bored throughout the movie. Or maybe it's the costume design that's so bland. The poor areas have people with sufficiently dirty clothing but in the rich area, people are just wearing... clothes. For most of the movie, Emilio just wears a tan jacket. It's weird how the cars are crazy futuristic in the rich part of town yet everyone dresses like it's the early 90s (when the movie was made).

The movie almost could've been another Johnny Mnemonic given the plot. And yet, by losing the wacky over-the-top acting and designs of Johnny Mnemonic, Freejack just feels bland to me.

But maybe I'm being too harsh on it. It's streaming everywhere, so go see for yourself if you haven't watched it. Tubi, Freevee, Roku, Kanopy, Shout-TV

I do not think this has already been mentioned. As I guess most of you are also an mastodon (or another fediverse-enabled playform)

More info also here: https://github.com/revengeday/blackhand-mastodon-bot

A project I found while exploring git. It looks interesting, maybe Ill give it a shot. https://github.com/toshydev/netRunner

This show was probably the first time i saw the cyberpunk fomula on a greater level.

The Protagonist is a punk, the main themes are the duality of rich corpos and the poor workers scraping by and cops use decks to hunt down and implant criminals with tracking chips.

The outfits are clearly inspired by Akira and the show has an interesting combination of higher tech and ancient beings.

The uncensored original version can get relatively violent for a childrens cartoon.

It's close to perfect for my taste and i wish we got a bit more media with the focus on this aspect from konami

I know this isn't your typical cyberpunk artwork, but I personally think it depicts a failed attempt to achieve divinity via cybernetics. And since so many cyberpunk works ask the question "can an android have a soul?", I consider this artwork to be cyberpunk. Do you disagree?

Larger version here.

Not too surprising given the writers and actors strikes. Still, that sucks.

A unique, Third- and First-Person Action Role-Playing Game; a deep, cinematic Detective Thriller that takes place in a dark future vision of Berlin. Solve a far-reaching conspiracy on an emotional Cyberpunk Journey about Justice, Friendship, Love, Guilt, Sacrifice and Betrayal.

Planned to release next year on Windows/Playstation/Xbox.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2326200/NEO_BERLIN_2087/

I've been hesitant to recommend this movie because while the first half is all-in on the cyberpunk visuals, the second half of the movie takes place in the desert/wasteland. But, the theme of "what does it mean to be human" is prevalent throughout the entire movie so I'd say the story remains cyberpunk even when the visuals aren't.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyacm2FNSO4
You can stream it on Hulu, Freevee, Kanopy, Plex, Roku, Peacock. Wherever.

I honestly can't believe I didn't think to recommend this comic earlier. It's an awesome cyberpunk tech-noir tangle of crime and revenge and plots in a very cyberpunk city just loaded with awesome visuals. It's gritty and dark and sometimes funny, and I have no idea how the author is managing the update schedule he's been doing for years now. It's got over 600 pages and just updated three days ago. I have no idea the size of their audience, there aren't often tons of comments on the site itself, maybe a bunch of you are already reading it, but if anyone's missed out, take a look!

Interesting use of Johnnie Walker! This is a pretty cool recipe. I prefer the one I posted before, but this one definitely has a lot more symbolism.

I'm not going to claim this show has aged well, or that it was even all that great during its peak, but it was cyberpunk.

Created by James Cameron, the show was was about a genetically engineered super soldier (Jessica Alba) who escaped from a secret government facility to hide in the cyberpunk city of Seattle. She works as a bike courier with a bunch of other low-lifes and can barely afford rent. She meets up with an underground activist who's trying to expose the lies and cover-ups of governments and corporations. Society has totally broken down and the corrupt police force has checkpoints setup between neighborhoods.

So a totally cyberpunk premise, but the show was basically a CW show before the CW existed. It's all beautiful 20-somethings and cheesy writing. And then season 2 came along and the show was now about all the half-human/half-animal hybrids Jessica Alba helped escape from the secret government facility in the season 1 finale. It got weird.

Here's a clip from early season 2 where Jessica Alba's character returns to work after almost dying in the season 1 finale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKClsvQ4QQ
Yes, her friend's name is Original Cindy and her boss's name is Normal.

I'm not sure if I'd call this post a recommendation since I can't find many good things to say about it. But I've seen the entire show and I'm curious if anyone else remembers it and has more fond memories of it than I do.

Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcFt-c_dBx0

This is a slow "day in the life" type of short film but the production quality is incredible.

This webcomic has been around for awhile but the illustrations are incredible. It's incomplete and I don't think the artist will come back to it, but you should definitely check it out.

https://www.yuumeiart.com/fisheye-placebo-chapters

The next Protocyberpunk story I wanted to recommend is a bit more of a stretch than The Space Merchants but I'm prepared to argue for it. It's a short story called The Velvet Glove written by Harry Harrison (the prolific author behind the Stainless Steel Rat, Deathworld, Make Room Make Room, Bill the Galactic Hero and like a hundred other stores) in 1956.

It's short, it's available for free on Project Gutenberg. I think I'm going to spoiler-tag the rest of my case for this being protocyberpunk because it's a fun little piece and even the premise is a little bit of a spoiler that wouldn't ruin it for you but might change the reading experience.

There's a good cyberpunk story being told here, but I actually think the decision to make the movie in black & white worked to its detriment. I had trouble distinguishing between minor characters since there's so little detail in the faces. Also, that screenshot makes it look like an action movie, it's more of a detective story. I do recommend it though.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ftZhphGgwo

If you've ever dabbled with the synthwave subgenres of outrun (AKA: retrowave, new retrowave, & futuresynth) then you're probably familiar with the Finnish group known as Nightstop. Albums of theirs like “Streetwalker” and the single, “Drive by Stalking” have been staples in the subgenre(s) for years.

Well, I’m here to tell you that their new album is very different from their previous works. It’s a surprisingly magnificent evolution and easily a cyberpunk masterpiece!

Here’s the description from their website (cleaned up for English):

“DEAD GIRLS DON’T DANCE” (2023) is a more-sinister and dangerous dark electro than our previous Streetwalker, synthwave-style releases. The album is inspired by the ultraviolent “Berserk” manga and anime classics like “Akira” and “Cyber City Oedo 808”. It’s a love letter to 80s and 90s Japanese cyberpunk pop culture with a pinch of western imagination. The atmosphere revolves around themes of despair, trust, and betrayal in a Blade-Runner-style dystopia with blade-wielding androids mixed with occult demons and devils.

A few months back, one of my favorite let's play channels introduced me to Shadows of Doubt, a procedurally-generated cyberpunk detective game that plays like an immersive sim. I find it kind of fascinating, and love the look, the crowded, densely-packed setting, and the depth of the simulation, where it maps out stuff like every NPC's routine whether they're relevant to a case or not, where they live, even where they leave fingerprints.

I don't play many games, mostly for lack of time, and tend to avoid proc-gen stuff that relies on emergent gameplay and emergent storytelling (I guess I have an easier time justifying a story-based game as it's more like reading a book or watching a show? I don't know). But I keep thinking back to this one and wanting to give it a shot because the cyberpunk immersive sim thing is very much my jam. I thought I'd see if anyone else has played it, and if you've had any good adventures in it.

Here's an article I stumbled onto while gathering links, in case you want more info: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-procgen-cyberpunk-detective-game-is-like-an-endless-deus-ex-and-it-could-become-a-stone-cold-classic/