Culture

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Not to worry, though; when life hands us lemons, we ask David Rutland to make lemonade. Sometimes, it’s spiked with Cialis.

If all this tech-noir, computer-babble sounds interesting to you, the cyberpunk books listed below are what we’d consider the definitive crash course in cyberpunk reading. Please note that the selections do not fully represent the diverse landscape of cyberpunk writers and texts that can be encountered in the genre; with that in mind, CyberPunks.com is proud to tell you about FIVE CYBERPUNK BOOKS YOU’VE GOTTA READ.

While sex robots are inevitable eventually, in the meantime, many are trying are circumvent the technical barriers of manufacturing by producing sex robots . . . minus the sex robots.  And for reasons that can best be explained as “God damn it Japan,” these virtual girls are generally anime-esque. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting — the virtual waifu.

We know cyberpunk movies, so let us tell you what you’re missing. What’s timeless? What didn’t age so well? Share this article, and we’ll make the case for Hackers.

Steven Kotler’s Last Tango in Cyberspace makes culture a character to be explored in equal measure as the main character. Lion, an empathy-tracker, or em-tracker for short, uses his unique talent to consume curated content provided by clients and extrapolate a future. Not at an individual level, mind you, rather as a glimpse at the cultural significance regarding the content in the future.

What Is Cyberpunk? A Neon City In The Rain? The scene opens on a rainy, smog-shrouded, hypercapitalist, neon, surveillance state and the viewer is dropped in without context. There’s an inciting incident to plunge you into the story, and you, the viewer, are gripped for the next two hours.  Any scene setting is left to the imagination, and questions of why the world is this way, and how it came to be, are left to fan fiction and speculation. This is the future. Deal with it. 

If you got your nerd game on point then obviously you know all about Neill Blomkamp cinematic hits like District 9 and Elysium. But what you’ve gotta see is Chappie. The 2015 hit coming-of-age tale with a remarkable twist spotlights a robot being raised by gangsters. The film itself did well and more than doubled its budget of $49 million. It was another successful feather in the film making cap of Blomkamp as a writer and director. The film is a bad-ass fun watch with crazy characters and insane action. Chappie is well worth anyone’s time to check out.

It can take decades for something to become a cult classic. When it was released in 1994, System Shock was a commercial failure, despite widespread critical praise. Let’s find out why this cyberpunk horror flop is now so highly revered and has served as  inspiration for games like Deus Ex and BioShock. The remake is due later this year.

Comic reading has been around for decades, but a new app has changed the game. Line Webtoons is a digital comic reading app…

Uh oh. Claire “Grimes” Boucher might have spoiled some CyberPunk 2077 details in a live stream with fans earlier this week. Of course, this post may spoil a potential plot point for Cyberpunk 2077. You have been warned.