Week 9 - Lecture Response and Tute*Spark

Hi,

The lecture this week went deeper into the idea of Cyberpunk. It's part of the science fiction genre, though often it draws on he hard boiled crime fiction of the post WW2 era. I never thought about it in regards to Cyberpunk before but it's so true: The Running Man, 1984, Repo! The Genetic Opera and Oryx & Crake all have science fiction elements as well as elements of hard boiled fiction and film noir. The books and films of this genre have a real gritty aesthetic, and are often very existential. The stories are often told in fragments, rather than the long descriptive paragraphs commonly found in fantasy stories.

The stories often deal heavily in self-interest and have anti-heroes as protagonists, which is something found in hard boiled fiction. I think the film Repo! The Genetic Opera is a really good example of Cyberpunk. It's set in the future, where everything is controlled by a company that grows organs and you can rent them out in your body but if you fall behind on payments the Repo Man comes to collect it. The city is dark with lots of drugs, sex and crime. There is a drug found in the city the film is set in that eases pain when getting surgery (and since everyone gets plastic surgery, a lot of people become addicted). While many of the films topics discuss self-interest and lust, the film also discusses the ideas of the fear society and private corporations having too much power.

In both the Running Man and 1984 (which have both been made into films), I found similarities in the protagonists. They both were screwed around by the government and were disillusioned with the state of the world while everyone else seemed to be going with the flow. They tried in two different ways to become free, and it cost both of them their lives. In 1984 the government is the all powerful thing, and in the Running Man the media outlets are all powerful.

Oryx & Crake focuses on one character, a man who has given up on life and hides in a tree from predators. He believes he is the last real human on earth (Crake, before his death, had created a new species of 'perfect' human beings). He drinks alcohol and lies to the new species of humans to keep them content. Before the humans were wiped out, the world used genetic engineering and focused on commercialism. The world is full of lust, with heavy emphasis on child pornography and other taboo topics. The book focuses on the ethics of genetic engineering, the idea of living for eternity (if you don't know you're going to die one day, does that means you're invincible?) and the overall aesthetic has a feel of existentialism.

The main writers of Cyberpunk are: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner and Rudy Rucker. In the lecture we went into some detail about William Gibson, and talked about the trilogies he has written including the Bride Trilogy and the Blue Ant trilogy.

Cyberpunk is really interesting, and before this week I never knew I had read and seen so much of it.

This week there is no Tute*Spark.

Emily