[mcv]

The headline asks the question and doesn't provide a clear answer. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

The genre is definitely not as fresh and new as it was in the 1980s, but that's unavoidable when a genre is over 30 years old. One of the people in the article calls it paint-by-the-numbers Gibson. But someone also mentions that fantasy was huge back then, and that it was all trying to copy Tolkien. Paint-by-the-numbers Tolkien, I guess.

I guess every genre starts with a few innovative writers breaking new ground, and then a few decades of copycats, until finally someone gets tired of all that and reinvents the genre again.

The big question is whether that's possible with cyberpunk; it's already a pretty specific genre. It's really a reinvention of SciFi. Maybe transhumanism can be seen as a reinvention? Solarpunk maybe? Neither seem to have anywhere near the same impact, though. Maybe they're just riding on the coattails of cyberpunk. Those are clearly still going strong.

[badsectoracula]

Cyberpunk can easily be reinvented if writers take their heads out of the 80s. At its core it isn't about people with neon hair shooting lasers out of their eyes to paint fluorescent graffity with Japanese letters, but about trying to imagine all the ways that current technology can affect the human society in the near future and answering the question of 'what can even go wrong?' with 'everything'.

If there is anything we have in abundance today is tech that can be horribly abused by those in power.

[toyg]

I think we're getting a bit too liberal with labels.

"Trying to imagine all the ways that current technology can affect the human society in the near future and answering the question of 'what can even go wrong?' " is basically just "doing SciFi the way SciFi should be done". There is nothing eminently cyberpunk in the technique. Obviously "SciFi done right" will forever self-reinvent, that's how cyberpunk came to be in the first place; but it has little to do with the health of cyberpunk as a genre.

We usually talk of cyberpunk specifically to restrict the argument to a subset of scifi topics and literary aesthetics common to the self-declared cyberpunk artists: the influence of networks, body augmentation, and corporate feudalism (or rejection thereof). A scifi text that does not touch on any of those items, is unlikely to be seen or defined as cyberpunk.

So imho a "cyberpunk reinvention" would need to find something fresh to say on those topics. If I were to write a book on reusable rockets, for example, I would be "doing scifi right" (spaceX etc) but not really "doing cyberpunk".

[badsectoracula]

You forgot the most important part: "answering the question of 'what can even go wrong?' with 'everything'."

This isn't about making stories on reusable rockets, it is about how those reusable rockets would affect the common man's life negatively. You know, "high tech, low life". Of course if that wouldn't make sense (cannot think how reusable rockets could affect everyday life, at least in a direct way), then it isn't much of a fit for Cyberpunk.

Framing Cyberpunk as only about networks, body augmentation and corporate feudalism is IMO too narrow and restricting - these can be the symptoms of high tech but they aren't the only thing that high tech can do or affect negatively.

I mean, what is next? Restricting Cyberpunk works to only be set at night while raining? :-P

[toyg]

That’s a pessimistic view of cyberpunk. “Maneki Neko” by Sterling is a short story about positive impacts of tech, should it not be considered cyberpunk? It certainly was included in the genre when it appeared.

I think you’re actually restricting the category more than I did.

[EthanHeilman]

The parts of Cyberpunk that are valuable are the aesthetic and the way in which it provides tropes, and expectations that let you tell different stores. If someone picks up a cyberpunk book they expect the protag to be an antihero or even a villain. They expect noir themes.

In Neuromancer the protag murders a bunch of people in an office building because he and his friends want to steal something in the basement of the building. If you set that story in the modern day readers would likely have far more empathy toward the victims of the attack. If you put that story into the startrek universe and readers likely wouldn't finish the book. The aesthetics of Cyberpunk is a sleight of hand that let's get away with themes that you couldn't tell in other genres.

[badsectoracula]

Yes there are some other tropes that are into play, but those aren't always important - e.g. there are Cyberpunk works where you do not play the antihero or villain. E.g. in movies Alex Murphy in Robocop isn't exactly an antihero and certainly not a villain. Similar in games with JC Denton in Deus Ex (though of course in such games this particular aspect isn't clear since it is up to the player - but you are essentially playing as a glorified cop).

That some popular works in the genre share some of these tropes doesn't mean that the genre is all about those tropes.