This companion collects original entries that engage cyberpunk's diverse 'angles' and its proliferation in our life worlds. With technology seamlessly integrated into our life and our selves, and social systems veering towards globalization and corporatization, cyberpunk has become a ubiquitous cultural formation that dominates our 21st century techno-digital landscapes. To put it directly: we are living in inescapable cyberpunk futures bleeding into the interstices of our present, and these cyberpunk realities intersect with our mainstream culture at every possible angle. The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture traces cyberpunk through its historical developments as a literary science fiction subgenre to its spread into other media such as comics, film, television and video games. Moreover, seeing cyberpunk as a general cultural practice, the Companion provides insights into photography, music, fashion, and activism. Cyberpunk, so the chapters presented here argue, is integrated with other critical theoretical tenets of our times, such as posthumanism, the Anthropocene, animality, or empire. And lastly, cyberpunk is a vehicle that lends itself to the rise of new futurisms, occupying a variety of positions in our regionally diverse reality and thus linking as much as differentiating our perspectives on a globalized technoscientific world. An international range of contributors examine with the cultural formation of cyberpunk from micro-level analyses of example texts to macro-level debates of movements, providing readers with a snapshot of cyberpunk culture and also cyberpunk as culture.
Author(s): Anna McFarlane, Lars Schmeink, Graham Murphy
Series: Routledge Companion
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 467
Tags: Cyberpunk Culture
Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title Page......Page 3
Copyright Page......Page 4
Dedication......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of Figures......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Notes on Contributors......Page 13
1 Cyberpunk as Cultural Formation......Page 20
PART I: Cultural Texts......Page 23
2 Literary Precursors......Page 25
3 The Mirrorshades Collective......Page 33
4 Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix Plus (Case Study)......Page 42
5 Feminist Cyberpunk......Page 50
6 Pat Cadigan: Synners (Case Study)......Page 59
7 Post-Cyberpunk......Page 66
8 Charles Stross: Accelerando (Case Study)......Page 74
9 Steampunk......Page 82
10 Biopunk......Page 91
11 Non-SF Cyberpunk......Page 99
12 Comic Books......Page 109
13 American Flagg! (Case Study)......Page 119
14 Manga......Page 125
15 Early Cyberpunk Film......Page 137
16 Strange Days (Case Study)......Page 146
17 Digital Effects in Cinema......Page 152
18 Blade Runner 2049 (Case Study)......Page 162
19 Anime......Page 169
20 Akira and Ghost in the Shell (Case Study)......Page 180
21 Television......Page 187
22 Max Headroom: Twenty Minutes into the Future (Case Study)......Page 196
23 Video Games......Page 202
24 Deus Ex (Case Study)......Page 211
25 Tabletop Roleplaying Games......Page 218
26 Shadowrun (Case Study)......Page 227
27 Photography and Digital Art......Page 234
28 Fashion......Page 246
29 Music......Page 256
30 Janelle Monáe: Dirty Computer (Case Study)......Page 263
PART II: Cultural Theory......Page 270
31 Simulation and Simulacra......Page 271
32 Gothicism......Page 280
33 Posthumanism(s)......Page 289
34 Marxism......Page 298
35 Cyborg Feminism......Page 307
36 Queer Theory......Page 316
37 Critical Race Theory......Page 324
38 Animality......Page 333
39 Ecology in the Anthropocene......Page 342
40 Empire......Page 351
41 Indigenous Futurisms......Page 360
42 Afrofuturism......Page 369
43 Veillance Society......Page 378
44 Activism......Page 389
PART III: Cultural Locales......Page 398
45 Latin America......Page 399
46 Cuba’s Cyberpunk Histories......Page 409
47 Japan as Cyberpunk Exoticism......Page 415
48 India......Page 422
49 Germany......Page 429
50 France and Québec......Page 437
Index......Page 446
