Cyberpunk in a Transnational Context

Mike Moshers Some Aspects of Californian Cyberpunk vividly reminds us of the influence of West Coast counterculture on cyberpunks with special emphasis on 1960s theoretical gurus such as Timothy Leary and Marshall McLuhan who explored the frontiers of inner space as well as the global village. Frenchy Lunnings Cyberpunk Redux: Dérives in the Rich Sight of Post-Anthropocentric Visuality examines how the heritage of Ridley Scotts techno-noir film Blade Runner (1982) that preceded Gibsons Neuromancer (1984) keeps revolutionizing the art of visuality even in the age of the Anthropocene. If you read Lunnings essay along with Lidia Merass European Cyberpunk Cinema which closely analyzes major European cyberpunkish dystopian films Renaissance (2006) and Metropia (2009) and Elana Gomels Recycled Dystopias: Cyberpunk and the End of History your understanding of the cinematic and post-utopian possibility of cyberpunk will become more comprehensive. For a cutting-edge critique of cyberpunk manga let me recommend Martin de la Iglesias Has Akira Always Been a Cyberpunk Comic? which radically redefines the status of Akira (1982-1993) as trans-generic paying attention to the genre consciousness of the contemporary readers of its Euro-American editions. Next Denis Taillandiers New Spaces for Old Motifs? The Virtual Worlds of Japanese Cyberpunk interprets the significance of Japanese hardcore cyberpunk novels such as Goro Masakis Venus City (1995) and Hirotaka Tobis Grandes Vacances (2002; translated as The Thousand Year Beach 2018) and Ragged Girl (2006) paying special attention to how the authors created their virtual landscape in a Japanese way. For a full discussion of William Gibsons works please read Janine Tobek and Donald Jellersons Caring About the Past Present and Future in William Gibsons Pattern Recognition and Guerilla Games Horizon: Zero Dawn along with my own Transpacific Cyberpunk: Transgeneric Interactions between Prose Cinema and Manga. The former reconsiders the first novel of Gibsons new trilogy in the 21st century not as realistic but as participatory whereas the latter relocates Gibsons essence not in cyberspace but in a junkyard making the most of his post-Dada/Surrealistic aesthetics and Lo-Tek way of life as is clear in the 1990s Bridge trilogy.