Cyberpunk Is Not a Moral System — It’s an Observational One
Cyberpunk does not give us a clean division between good and evil. It gives us systems, incentives, technology, and compromised people, then watches what happens.
Thought Starter
Tech Optimism Didn’t Dilute Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk did not lose its edge. Its ideas became influential enough to split into subgenres, including post-cyberpunk and solarpunk, that answer its questions differently.
Hope Is Not Optimism: Utopia, Dystopia, and Participation
Hope is not optimism, and dystopia is not hopelessness. Cyberpunk and speculative fiction reveal how participation, agency, and local action turn imagined futures into something more useful.
Agency Was Always Distributed, Not Individual
Cyberpunk was never about a lone hero defeating the machine. It predicted a future where agency became distributed across corporations, networks, algorithms, and fragmented identities, making the system itself the true protagonist.
Cyberpunk Insurgency: The Future of Resistance
(This is the fifth article in our What is Cyberpunk? series, in which we’re examining the various perspectives and arguments that influence the definition of the Cyberpunk genre. If you’d like to start with the first article, click here.) For years, people have argued over whether cyberpunk is optimistic or pessimistic. It isn’t. And that …
Cyberpunk Was Never About Resistance, It’s About Entrapment
Cyberpunk has a branding problem. We think it is about rebellion against corporations. But resistance is what cyberpunk characters do. Entrapment is what cyberpunk is about.
Cyberpunk Didn’t Fail. It Won.
(This is the third article in our What is Cyberpunk? series, in which we’re examining the various perspectives and arguments that influence the definition of the Cyberpunk genre. If you’d like to start with the first article, click here.) Every few years, someone declares that cyberpunk has lost its edge. It’s all neon. It’s just …
Cyberpunk Was Always Aesthetic First
Cyberpunk is often framed as political or ideological, but its survival as a genre may come from something simpler: its aesthetic language.
Put the Punk Back in Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk has become one of the most recognizable genres in modern fiction. Even people who have never read a cyberpunk novel can usually identify its visual language immediately: towering megacities, omnipresent technology, corporate power, augmented bodies, and neon reflected in rain-soaked streets. The imagery is so recognizable, in fact, that it often overshadows the ideas …
Why Cyberpunk and Cosmic Horror Work So Well Together
(No spoilers) There’s no doubt that cyberpunk and cosmic horror make strange bedfellows. Both story genres unfold their settings in different ways. Both often have different types of characters. Those differences often create rigid understanding, at least until one begins considering the scalability of insignificance. Cosmic horror, with its core disturbance rooted in its earliest …
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