This is the time.



It’s been a weird era for cyberpunk. Not some four years ago, I remember staring at a screen in a now defunct bar, when Hilary lost. She wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t him.

During that election, I had hoped that some mass media Ant Farm art-terror event would eliminate the orange dude as he spouted tactical static on TV. It’s why I watched, waiting, itching for a non-fiction fantasy: a traveler would appear and eliminate the bad man, pulling him into a portal– maybe even severing a small hand off as the aperture closed. But what I remember most, in that climactic moment as the polls sunk in, was a stark detachment. I couldn’t really process it, because I wasn’t really there. It was just a movie.

Years later, I would be sitting at a chinese restaurant watching live aerial views of the Grand Princess Cruise ship docking at the Port of Oakland. There were fences and tents and sealed vehicles broadcast live on the local news. Everyone was hazmat-ready. I thought back to that time when the lady lost, and realized this Covid-19 moment was an extension of that detachment, the next sequence in the movie: a series of news clips and disturbing facts, mixed with Verhoeven commercials. It was time to introduce the would-be protagonist.

Instead, an ochre authoritarian antagonizes a public with daily disinformation. There are mobile fridges filled with the dead. Millions have been made jobless. EPA rules have been suspended. Unemployment relief chokes on a demand for COBOL. Remote learning classrooms are harassed by bigots. Homeless shanty towns expand as streets empty. That orange covidiot says none of this is his fault?

This was real before, but it’s in our faces now, or even on our faces: salient, frustrating and fogging up the view. This forced pause looks no different than what we see at Cyberpunk Cinema. Are we supposed to buy this shit?

And this is the record of the time.

Cyberpunk was once a small branch of print science fiction, informed by blossoming technology trends and crime-noir. Oftentimes, it is distilled into pure aesthetic, to a certain gaze, a visual shorthand for a hurried imperfect future: neon lights, hard tech, inequity, wet pavement, cigarettes, robo babes and “damn the man.” A lot of this circulates around the ‘net as over-saturated sexy robot renderings interspersed with slice of life images like a protestor in neon-lit Hong Kong. But this content manifests itself remotely for most users, on a screen, in an era where everything on a screen can be faked. But for Cyberpunk fans, Covid-19 has catalyzed what once flickered on the liminal screen into an uncanny reality. Dystopia now?

If we look through the canon of Cyberpunk, we can see the common backdrop of dystopia, either veiled or in plane view. The word dystopia itself means “bad utopia,” and utopia means either an “imaginary place where everything is perfect,” or “no place.” Are we in a real world where everything is perfectly bad?

On the flip side, Cyberpunk protagonists thrive in a moral grey area, where it’s okay to be uncertain, to play the odds and angles, to question authority. It’s a genre without absolute good or bad, and often lacking hope. Characters like Deckard, Major Kusanagi, Angel Velasquez or even Takeshi Kovacs rely on pragmatic action against the existential crisis. And sometimes, a little utilitarian decision benefits the masses, even if at the hero’s own peril.

Cyberpunk spins us fiction so that we can see the truth. As aspects of Cyberpunk become more real, where do we go? Have we passed the peak of human human civilization as posited in the Matrix? Or perhaps we are just entering Gibson’s Jackpot, with a series of looming global catastrophes significantly altering life on Earth. And while the master has stated that the future is here but unevenly spread (and perhaps very, very tacky), it may be that the future just needs more people of cooperative positive action.

With each step you fall forward slightly.

A portion of people have the luck for bandwidth, digital subscriptions, delivery services and comfort at home. Others are working the various frontlines. Some people have it piecemeal, or even nothing at all. It’s a poignant time to ponder what people really want. The structures all around us, that keep this planet as we know it going, are transitory. Some of these are artificial constructs, others are ecological realities. These structures require a flow and exchange to operate. But without that movement, the system goes stagnant. Do people enjoy corrupt governments, mega zaibatsus, surveillance-states, face mask shortages, gerrymandering and that damn spray tanned puppet?

I’m not sure what the next few months or years will be like, but as our science non-fiction dystopia movie manifests and becomes documented history, perhaps we need to reach deep and build what tomorrow ought to be? The air seems temporarily cleaner. Oil temporarily has no value. Service workers are always essential.

Maybe it’s a time to consider the options. Doesn’t everyone have healthcare, a job, sufficient housing and a hobby in a future-imperfect? Maybe “now” is just a crash screen, an errant data point when graphed over a long enough timeline. Maybe, we are the protagonists in our collective cyberpunk movie.

Anyhow, our future is always serviceable. And remember, until we get to reconvene: keep your distance space cowboys :)

10 things to watch at home, not strictly Cyberpunk:



And one edit: Please donate to the Knockout staff fund and keep the venue alive!