If you do an online search for "cyberpunk", you will notice that Cyberpunk 2077 has nearly made the word synonymous with a video game. This was probably the last stepping stone that made "cyberpunk" fully mainstream.
It appears to me that the word "cyberpunk" is now stuck to mean some kind of entertainment dressed in something from Bladerunner, with a few glowing lines from Tron, riding the remnants of the last 80s retro futurism wave.
In its heyday, cyberpunk as a literary genre was very far from being mainstream. Mostly, because it wasn't easy to get into. A major ingredient of cyberpunk is an ever changing world that has everybody in it on the edge of being overtaken and alienated by technological advance and cultural change. Often the reader would just be dropped into it, get a few paragraphs of background, and then was left to figure out the rest by themselves.
What changed is: Most of it happended and is here now and is also part of our news. You can see people around you being left behind if they don't adapt to smart phones or the internet. It's not an exciting rollercoaster of a novel anymore if the backdrop isn't a hypothetic low-life street hustle but could be set in a major city near you. Or if a documentary on the opioid crisis or tent cities of homeless looks like it could be part of Gibson's Bridge trilogy, but it isn't. It's reality.
In the 70s and 80s, technology was the path to bright utopias. The 90s had an even brighter outlook on the future after the cold war ended. That was the mainstream. Cyberpunk was the edgy punk who told you the near future might not be so bright. Nowadays you won't have anyone argue with that. All of that is mainstream now. It's not edgy anymore. It's just the sad reality.
Anyone who wants to talk about these societal issues needs to find a different vehicle for it. At least by name. "Cyberpunk" is someone's brand now.
It appears to me that the word "cyberpunk" is now stuck to mean some kind of entertainment dressed in something from Bladerunner, with a few glowing lines from Tron, riding the remnants of the last 80s retro futurism wave.
In its heyday, cyberpunk as a literary genre was very far from being mainstream. Mostly, because it wasn't easy to get into. A major ingredient of cyberpunk is an ever changing world that has everybody in it on the edge of being overtaken and alienated by technological advance and cultural change. Often the reader would just be dropped into it, get a few paragraphs of background, and then was left to figure out the rest by themselves.
What changed is: Most of it happended and is here now and is also part of our news. You can see people around you being left behind if they don't adapt to smart phones or the internet. It's not an exciting rollercoaster of a novel anymore if the backdrop isn't a hypothetic low-life street hustle but could be set in a major city near you. Or if a documentary on the opioid crisis or tent cities of homeless looks like it could be part of Gibson's Bridge trilogy, but it isn't. It's reality.
In the 70s and 80s, technology was the path to bright utopias. The 90s had an even brighter outlook on the future after the cold war ended. That was the mainstream. Cyberpunk was the edgy punk who told you the near future might not be so bright. Nowadays you won't have anyone argue with that. All of that is mainstream now. It's not edgy anymore. It's just the sad reality.
Anyone who wants to talk about these societal issues needs to find a different vehicle for it. At least by name. "Cyberpunk" is someone's brand now.