I have trouble understanding when a genre becomes “post-” so I’m curious what people here might think.

What cyberpunk work do you think moved us into post-cyberpunk? Is there one? Or is this “post-cyberpunk” stuff nonsense and it’s all just cyberpunk?

I’ve heard an argument that Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) is post-cyberpunk because it’s a satire of the cyberpunk genre, but I’ve heard the same thing said about Bruce Bethke’s Headcrash (1995). And is satire of the original genre a requirement to move post- a genre?

I could see an argument that post-cyberpunk takes place in worlds that know what the modern-day internet looks like (with social media and disinformation) but I’m not sure if there’s a cyberpunk work that really carries that flag. That is, I could see an argument for post-cyberpunk being a “refresh” of the 1980s cultural fears to fit our modern times, but I’m not sure if there’s a work that ushered in this new genre. I’ve made the argument that Elysium updates cyberpunk with modern cultural fears, but I don’t think it led to a wave of updated cyberpunk works (it was an outlier, not the progenitor of a new genre).

So what do you think? What requirements would you have for the cyberpunk genre to become post-cyberpunk? And does that cyberpunk work already exist?

(Note: for the picture in this post, I was trying to show the juxtaposition of “classic cyberpunk” vs “modern cyberpunk”. I’m not arguing that Deus Ex is post-cyberpunk.)

  • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    i will agree that solar “punk” seems to primarily serve as an aesthetic, rather than being any kind of punk. the hegemonic system in a solarpunk society probably isn’t something that needs to be rebelled against. “steampunk isn’t punk” arguments used to be more of a thing, but the answer was that cyberpunk wasn’t really all that punk to begin with either.

    not being able to write stories in a solar punk setting is a skill issue. much like the Kurtzman star trek failure to be optimistic. a drama in such a society could be about getting other villages to agree to a huge collaborative project. Without being sectarian about it, it’s logistically much easier for a state to run a space program than it would be to get hundreds of autonomous communes to agree to every little part and the pollution inherent to launching rockets.