Cyberpunk: Is this trope article meaningful any more?: Cyberpunk

Reading through the examples listed in the Cyberpunk article, it seems that Tropers treat Cyberpunk as "Any science-fiction dystopia ever in the history of the genre". We already have Dystopia, CrapsackWorld, WretchedHive, and so on. Cyberpunk certainly is a genre and trope, but is there any point to the article?

edited 14th Jul '11 5:01:44 PM by Mercy

Yes, it is relevant. There may be some examples that need to be scraped off.

Doesn't that indicate a problem with tropers rather than Cyberpunk, hmm?

Break off Dystopian Future or something.

A Dystopian Future article would need to specify how it differs from Bad Future.

Bad Future is about a bad possible future, which the heroes are trying to prevent. Dystopian Future would be about works set in The Future where it is a dystopia. That said, I'm pretty sure we already have a trope for generic future dystopias, just not under that name.

Dytopian Futue Work?

We already have dystopia.

Ah, found it! The Future Is Noir covers a lot of the misuse, I think.

Edit: Wait, nevermind - it's only about the lighting.

edited 15th Jul '11 6:01:47 AM by nrjxll

Fast Eddie found it. Adding a redirect at Dystopian Future pointing to Dystopia might help, though, since that seems like a very common term for people to use.

Technically, it's possible to have a dystopia that's not set in the future (in a fantasy or Alternate History story), but by far the most common use of dystopia is "in the future, things suck".

To further help reduce the misuse of Cyberpunk, it might help to have a more explicit and prominent link to Dystopia there, and maybe to Crapsack World as well. Some misuse is probably inevitable, though, as the term was widely misused within the publishing industry for a while, back when it was hot.

I think this might be due to the fact that, even amongst the writers specializing in the genre, there's vast argument over just what Cyberpunk is. There's sort-of agreement about what it isn't, but that's not exactly helpful for our purposes.

The key to Cyberpunk is the "cyber" part - an emphasis on futuristic information technology, such as directly-plugging the brain into things, AI, Cyberspace, Hollywood Hacking becoming important rather than just a sideshow, editing memories, etc.

Although the dystopian/cynical element is pretty significant - if you drop that and keep the rest, you get Post-Cyberpunk. So by our definition the dystopian stuff is actually a necessary part of Cyberpunk, without which it's a different "genre".

Wouldn't it be good to change the title to Cyberpunk Genre and let other tropes handle the setting and other stuff.

All other genres are getting this treatment.

I agree, all the "Punk" genres need to be changed to indicate that they're a genre.

Already so much confusion between Desert Punk and Desert Punk

edited 27th Aug '11 1:35:05 PM by DRCEQ

Um - I misread one of those to 'Dessert Punk'. A whole new take on Death by Chocolate... the cocoa must flow? <wince>

edited 17th Oct '11 4:08:58 PM by Euodiachloris