this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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The entire reason the cyberpunk genre was invented was to reflect what modern society looks like, and the inevitable outcome if technology improves, but government policy and power dynamics stayed the same.
The counter genres to cyberpunk are solarpunk (merging society and nature together) and sci-fi (Star Trek being the main example here, being a socialist, post-scarcity society)
This is actually kind of funny when you consider a lot of infrastructure refuses to use newer or better technology in the goal of maximizing profit, which the government also supports via lack of legislation.
Cyberpunk always shows some cool stuff around public transport, yet here we still are in 10 lane highway congested traffic with inefficient SUVs and Trucks since they even killed off sedans.
Cyberpunk public transport usually only exists because most people can't afford cars though, and the routes pretty much exclusively go to the general locations of major employers, sometimes only being available to employees of those companies (they still have pay a fare too of course)
Uh, cyberpunk is a sub-genre of sci-fi or, as it’s also known, Science Fiction.
Science fiction usually carries with it a desire to rationalize and explain the technology it's built upon, to try and paint a world plausible from a scientific standpoint. You see this a lot with the technobabble in Star Trek.
Cyberpunk has a lot of overlap with science fiction, but usually dives more into the social commentary on society and capitalism, using the technology within as a vehicle to amplify those criticisms. Some cyberpunk works seek to explain their technology and make it seem grounded in the same way sci-fi does, but that is usually secondary to the social and political themes.
Cyberpunk is not separate from Science Fiction. It is literally a genre of science fiction. citing the DEFINITION of it, available from a simple google search: 1. a genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.
You're being prescriptive and not descriptive with the definitions. Superficially it is the case, and people have created a neat little categorical hierarchy you can keep pointing back to, but I'm telling you that a lot of cyberpunk creative work is sci-fi in the same way that people say Star Wars is sci-fi (it's a space opera, at least the movies are)
and I am telling you you are wrong because the genre of cyberpunk is literally science fiction. Stories, it turns out, can cross genres. That doesn’t change the definition of said genres.
Cyberpunk is considered a sub genre of sci-fi because a bunch of people got together and said that's what it is. Doesn't make it a 100% hard set rule. You just like putting things in boxes. A piece of creative work is what it contains, not whatever categories you shove it into.
I accept that the intersubjective framework of literary genres exists, but have my disagreements with it. You can do that. It doesn't make you wrong, just unpopular.
Suck my peanits.
Then whatever that specific subgenre of sci-fi that Star Trek falls into is called.