[drhayes9]

But the concerns expressed in those works were the same as the ones expressed forty years ago; that's the point the original article is making. Bethke himself used the phrase “self-referential metafiction” in describing sci-fi authors in the late 70s. I think a lot of the current cyberpunk work is the same, commoditizing an art movement into a fashion dressing to tell the same kind of stories we always get.

Vast corporations doing what they want to the helpless working class started as an 80s fear in opposition to a largely hopeful view of companies from the 50s and 60s. Just because it's come true, or is still a fear, doesn't mean that it's still exciting or exploring a new frontier.

Bruce Sterling was writing eco-fiction thirty years ago, about humans struggling to survive post-climate-change... except that wasn't a phrase that meant what it means to people today. The edge he was riding on in his work has now headed towards the middle.

Vernor Vinge writing about true names in the early 80s was predictive; Become Human commenting about it now isn't.

It doesn't make it bad or not worthy or anything, but it definitely is a move away from the bleeding edge of a predictive SF movement.

"Snow Crash" and "Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson are interesting books in this sense. "Snow Crash" works best if you're a cyberpunk fan already, if it can relax into the tropes you already know and make an action movie out of it. "Diamond Age" moves away from that towards a definitely post-cyberpunk place with people who aren't criminals trying to make a buck but maybe good people trying to change the world with the power of technology. It's already shedding the trappings and trying to get somewhere else.

It's gotta be a little weird for these authors to see their "movement" co-opted into big media properties that make millions of dollars for big companies. Somebody else said it in these comments; that's not very punk.

[Apocryphon]

Don't blame authors, blame society for failing to break out of the neoliberal (or other epithet) trap started in the '80s. If we had fundamentally different struggles and anxieties now, and perhaps a different, more idealistic outlook, then different genres would emerge.

It's gotta be a little weird for these authors to see their "movement" co-opted into big media properties that make millions of dollars for big companies. Somebody else said it in these comments; that's not very punk.

It's not weird at all. Consumerism has co-opted and commodified every single ideology; there's nothing wiser or more edgy or purer about cyberpunk that would have prevented this from happening to it. If anything, it's very apropos.

[ethbro]

> there's nothing wiser or more edgy or purer about cyberpunk that would have prevented this from happening to it. If anything, it's very apropos.

But that never happened to punk musi... oh, I see your point.

[lobotryas]

For Pete’s sake! The concerns and themes expressed in Shakespeare are the same as what we often see in modern media. The human condition doesn’t change much over the centuries! Why do you think it’s so bad that we continue to examine things like power dynamics, privacy, loss of identity and terrorism (all that Gibson touches upon) through new settings or against updated backdrops?

[drhayes9]

I don't! I literally wrote that in my comment.

But it's okay to like things that aren't cutting edge or groundbreaking or Oscar-worthy, too. Critical discussion != criticism.

[chongli]

The same thing happened to fantasy. How do you think Tolkien would feel if he saw his life’s work get turned into D&D? At the same time, I love D&D and Lord of the Rings and I wouldn’t be too upset if Tolkien was annoyed about it or if he thought it was stupid and derivative.

This is really about genre fiction as a whole and its never-ending struggle for legitimacy in the eyes of literary fiction readers. It’s all tied up in fashion and classism though, to be frank.

[ethbro]

Snow Crash is Last Action Hero for cyberpunk.