I feel like the concept of “cyberpunk” is redundant now—that it’s been overtaken by the real world, like old first-man-on-the-moon stories 
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Frankly, I’m getting tired of new netflix/prime/hbo etc series. I don’t watch first season series anymore. I always wait until there is at least a second season. It’s frustrating to get into a show only for it to become an unfinished orphan. I understand my type of viewing is what could kill a franchise at one season. But it would be simple for the agency to guarantee at least two or three seasons at least as well as making sure there is some kind of finale. That would ensure commitment by the producers and fewer crappy throw everything at the wall ideas to see what sticks. Firefly, RIP.
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It’s the age-old dilemma: is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all? There are plenty of shows that only lasted one or two seasons and yet are still totally worth watching, even with the unsatisfying cliffhanger ending.
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I’ll subscribe to Prime just to download this! I’ve been a huge fan of Bill Gibson’s work since Neuromancer, I saw him do a talk at the WorldCon in Brighton, England in 1985, and had my programme signed afterwards, and also met him in Bath, when he did a talk and book signing with Topping’s Books, for the release of Peripheral.
Lovely bloke, can’t wait for the third book in the series; (he always, despite his best intentions, writes trilogies!)
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Yes, that’s a very good point. It IS possibly a slightly dated view! Perhaps I should be happy with it in my head, for now.
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The Blue Ant series is by far my favourite of Gibson’s work. They are just superb.
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I think the problem with “cyberpunk” as an aesthetic is that it masks what cyberpunk really was at the beginning: an attempt to do realistic near-future science fiction where problems like drug use and so on were not ignored. Cyberpunk was about finding a middle ground between utopia and dystopia.
I personally think Neuromancer could still be done without the cyberspace elements. The story is less about what Case is doing technically, it’s about who he is, who Molly and Armitage are, about who Wintermute is. It’s about people, and how they were made, broken, remade, and broken again. And in the end, about what is a person.
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… and there are quite a few that are probably better if we stop watching after the second season, even though they kept going after that 
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There’s still an awful lot of stuff the genre that our current tech hasn’t caught up with yet, particularly direct-neural-link interfaces, full brain uploads and all the social and ethical implications such technology would entail.
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I find that a bit condescending. I’ve only read it once and I don’t think I missed any of the things in the blog post, from the skimming I just gave it.
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Much as I love the Blue Ant trilogy, they are set in the 2000’s, but in their own, slightly more optimistic, version of that decade. I even hesitate to recommend Pattern Recognition as a book to people, because so much of it is caught up with post 9/11 web forum culture. I think in ten years you could hand the book to someone and say “this is how it used to be”, but right now it’s not long enough ago to be history, but not current enough to easily fit in.
(Doesn’t stop me from re-reading them every few years).
Very excited for this adaptation of Peripheral. Although I did get bored with Westworld, it was a very visually coherent future, and I’m hoping that with a well written plot to guide them, they’ll be able to make something special.
Or we get another Jonny Mnemonic, hooray!
ETA: The one moment they have to nail, is when Netherton explains “the jackpot”. It’s such a simple concept, but when I first read it I realised that it’s probably the most accurate prediction of how our future is going to be. Not any one big apocalypse, just a combination of everything getting fucked up all the time.
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I’m kind of bored with apocalypse/dystopian futures. We’re already there.
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