Attitude is everything: The importance of Cyberpunk to contemporary society

Edwards, Adam T ORCID: 0009-0001-8879-5711 (2024). Attitude is everything: The importance of Cyberpunk to contemporary society. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

We are living in cyberpunk times. Not just because we are reaching and surpassing the years in which notable cyberpunk texts set their futures, but because the conditions of contemporary society continue to fit those that inspired the arrival of cyberpunk fictions into the science fiction scene. However, cyberpunk analysis is still commonly rooted in the idea that the movement was an artefact of the late 20th Century, that its revolution failed and that its message can be defined entirely by the same core texts. This thesis disproves these beliefs, returning cyberpunk to the critical focus and embracing its varied nature to reveal its continued production and relevance to contemporary society. In this work I set out a new definition for cyberpunk, one which proposes an open conception of genre based on core elements to reject historicization and demonstrates this variety in a close study of early cyberpunk fiction; I then prove cyberpunk’s contemporary relevance, analysing its transmission into the real world and the damage it can do when appropriated by the tech elite; finally I analyse contemporary cyberpunk to show how it does more than imitate a dead genre, but reinvents its own style to reflect 21st Century concerns. Through this work I show how cyberpunk is still an important tool for understanding our contemporary society and how it should be returned to critical attention to best understand our relationships with cyberpunk’s technological and political interrogations of the world around it.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):