Welcome to Cyberpunkery, Covering the Best in Cyberpunk, Tech-Noir, Future-Dystopian, and Other Technologically-Themed Media
Hello and welcome to Cyberpunkery. This is both a personal blog and media site through which I endeavor to give you the latest news, reviews and features about ‘cyberpunkery.’ That is cyberpunk, but also related genres such as tech-noir, future-dystopian, and other technologically-themed stuff happening in media, culture, and art. My goal with this site is to have a magazine type of focus that will hopefully give readers a reliable source of in-depth coverage of these genres, both current and retro.
This blog is definitely one created out of enthusiasm. My history with cyberpunk goes back to when I was a child. Since the genre was really born in the 1970’s with origins going back even further, by the time I was old enough to be consciously aware of things around the mid-1980’s, the genre had already had a significant influence on a lot of other media.
Even as a young child, I was drawn to it whenever I would see it. I grew up around computers and was always drawn to technology. I would speculate endlessly about what the future of that technology would be like and so I was drawn to fiction that represented that. I loved science fiction in movies, books, video games and even art.
But more specifically, I was fascinated with the way technology was represented in that media and how it both positively and negatively affected modern society. I would pick out bits and pieces of this media that I found interesting and expanded stories around it in my mind. I would dream of future worlds dominated by this technology and pondered what it would be like to live in those worlds. That is what cyberpunkery is for me. Bits and pieces of cyberpunk in things that I would pick out, isolate and dream about.
I wasn’t even aware of cyberpunk as its own genre until later on. Even if I had experienced entries in the genre directly—such as Blade Runner (both the film and the book) and Neuromancer—it wasn’t until I realized I was drawn to a thing that actually had a name that I began seeking out things specifically related to it.
Not Just Cyberpunk
However, despite there being plenty of entries in the genre, cyberpunk is still a rather nebulous concept. When Phillip K. Dick wrote his most famous works such as the aforementioned Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, he probably wasn’t aware that he was writing cyberpunk. And indeed, not a lot of what he wrote could even be considered explicitly cyberpunk. But so much of what is in those books laid the foundation of cyberpunk and would inspire later works by other creators like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Richard K Morgan, among many others.
Then there are other similar genres like tech-noir, neo-noir, post-apocalyptic, future-dystopian, retro-futurism, and cyber-80’s, etc. Works in these genres may contain bits and pieces of cyberpunk or share a similar aesthetic while not being cyberpunk per se. For example, James Cameron’s Terminator films undoubtedly have elements of cyberpunk without being explicitly part of the genre. All of these genres undoubtedly share concepts, ideas, and aesthetics.
Cyberpunkery is here to celebrate and discuss all of them.
Support the Site
Unlike the governments and mega-corporations of various cyberpunk and future-dystopian works, I want to be completely transparent with the intent of this site. I am a huge enthusiast of the cyberpunk genre and art form and I write from that enthusiasm. My main goal is not to make money with it. At least not right now. My ultimate goal is to write for a living. And I’d like to do it with this site. While it might not ever happen, that’s what I’d like to do. If I can do it writing about something I love, that would be ideal. So right now making a little extra money is maybe a secondary goal, even if it only pays for the site’s hosting and nothing else.
I also don’t like Google, Facebook, and Amazon and I have chosen not to affiliate this site with those services for the purposes of serving ads, or for anything really.
So if you really like the site and want to see me expand it to include things like podcasts and videos, I have set up a Patreon account for it through which you can support the site financially. Funds used from the Patreon will be put back into the site by paying for hosting, podcast and video equipment (if I get to that point), and of course purchasing media which will be reviewed on the site. I’d also like to eventually hire other writers to contribute articles, these funds would be used to pay those writers for their work.
The more funds the Patreon generates, the more I will be able to dedicate more time to the site. The end goal to be able to do it full time.
So with that out of the way, I again welcome you to Cyberpunkery. I hope you stick with me going forward to celebrate this genre that we have so much affection for. Let’s together discover fresh perspectives on things from the past, discuss the most recent entries in the genre from the present, and celebrate the potential of the genre for the future!
Update 10/13/2019: I have updated this article to remove any reference of utilizing ads and affiliate links since I have opted not to use these types of revenue generation services.
