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My feelings as to why we cannot move past cyberpunk: Because we havent moved to the point where that future is not likely.

Fiction (Especially science fiction) tends to relate to current climate. Since the 80’s, it’s only gotten worse, and we never solved any of those problems addressed in cyberpunk.

Star Trek took off whenever we got a revival in space exploration, for example.

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      I’ve been thinking lately about the tildeverse and its relation to cyberpunk. The tildeverse is DIYers using bright text against a black terminal to seek refuge in a megacorporation-dominated, totally surveilled technological landscape. It is computing and communication infrastructure that would have been unthinkably out of reach in the 80s cyberpunk heyday, commodified to a degree that it can be rented for few bucks a month and shared with the likeminded. It’s not injectable nanobots or immersive brain-computer-interfaces, but the tildeverse is a cyberpunk dream come true. It is a reaction to cyberpunk warnings which have also come true.

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      OMFG, there is so much just utterly and completely wrong in that article, I scarce know where to begin.

      The “Hero’s Journey” archetype isn’t a feature of cyberpunk so much as it’s a feature of narrative structure. Likewise, the concept of the individual progression is also a feature of narrative structure. The central criticism, which this piece calls “cyberpunk”, is a critique of narrative.

      Even saying that, there are literal mountains of SF/F from the last 35+ years which don’t necessarily follow either of those structural elements - I’m thinking of Steven Erikson’s “Malazan Book of the Fallen”, or China Miéville’s “Bas Lag” novels, or, more recently, Megan O’Keefe’s “Velocity Weapon” or, even more appropriately, Carrie Vaugh’s “Coast Road” Novels or Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven”.

      If the author sincerely thinks SF hasn’t moved past cyberpunk, then he just hasn’t been reading enough.

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        I didn’t get the impression that the author believes the only sci-fi coming out now is cyberpunk, but rather the “Why is is even still a thing today?”

        Another genre of scifi has taken off over the past decade, decade and a half: Dystopian Fiction. But, my explanation for “why” remains the same.