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What's this all about then?

Cyberpunk, the genre, and sometimes a TTRPG (& video game) that I've never played. I won't rehash what the cyberpunk genre is on here because there's a Wikipedia article that has everything I'd say anyway. Ok, well, I'll say a little bit so you don't have to click off of here and get lost in the electric labyrinth.

A little pessimistic, a little optimistic, a lot of crusty blocky technology, and a lot of neon that makes my shitty light sensitive eyes tear up, but that's what the mirrorshades are for, right? The cyberpunk genre hit its stride in the mid-1980s and was declared "dead" by the movement's founders before the end of the decade. Unfortunately, they gave it too much pizazz and everyone loves a guy with a leather jacket and an attitude. So it's still very much alive, despite everything.

I don't wanna do what everyone else is doing and list off cyberpunk's greatest hits here; I want this page to serve as a sort of... I don't even know, springboard, I guess, to maybe inspire something. If you really want just the "best of the best," go read William Gibson's Neuromancer, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, and then wash it down with Blade Runner or Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. 90% of cyberpunk stories post-y2k are probably riffing off one of those four anyway.

That said, a lot of the stuff here is generally "older" because I'm a sucker for big clunky tech and 1980s/90s cheese. There's a lot of good cyberpunk stuff too, I just don't tend to engage with it much.

Alright, let's hear it.

Click the titles to go to the page. Alphabetized.

Canyon.MID

Is this cyberpunk? No. I'm putting it here anyway.

KeygenMusic

This website used to collect music from keygen software, usually ones made by pirates to bypass cracked software or DRMs. The original website went down kind of recently but still exists on the Wayback Machine, this github repository and in spiritual successors.

Mirrorshades

Yeah, this is one of those "greatest hits," but it was converted to HTML by Rudy Rucker himself and put on his website, and also I ripped the cover art as the background image for this page so I gotta have it on here somewhere anyway. It's good, it's short, it's out of print. Check it out.

Pre-Release Guilty Gear (pre-1998)

You knew I was gonna get Guilty Gear on here somehow. In early drafts of Guilty Gear's initial story (Missing Link, 1998), they were indeed planning on it being more in line with the cyberpunk genre, even going as far as straight up calling it "cyberpunk" on the "Peculiarities" page on the old website. Here's a translation of the bit that calls it that:

A futuristic cyberpunk world

A universe that looks familiar, yet is unlike anything else. The setting of Guilty Gear brings unparalleled style to the world!

Set 200 years into the virtual future, its gritty atmosphere and breakneck speed strongly pulls in the player.

Its heavy story unfolds with multiple twists, leaving you spellbound by the thrill of unraveling its secrets until the very end.

Textfiles

A collection of text documents mostly from the 1980s, but a few a little before and a little after. You'll notice the tone on some of these matches some early cyberpunk literature especially — that dry, biting, tone. A fun time capsule of old internet.

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Cyborg Feminism

Edited by Takayuki Tatsumi

1991 May 20

Translation: Takayuki Tatsumi, Mari Kotani — Cover illustration: Jim Burns

A book in my collection that I got from a local used book store on impulse based solely on the cover and title. Inside are a collection of essays on feminism, cyborgs, gender, and media. The texts were translated from English into Japanese for this volume. The subject feels relevant to cyberpunk and I know most of my readers don't know Japanese. So, here are most of them in English. Presented in the order they appear in the book.

Takayuki Tatsumi's essays seem to have never been "officially" translated into English and are currently missing from this webpage; I'll probably have to translate them myself someday. Some other text, illustrations, and the Index are also currently missing.

The cover art for this book first appeared in the British magazine "Interzone" (Spring 1986) as an illustration for William Gibson's short story, Winter Market. The story also appeared in Gibson's Burning Chrome short story collection, but without Burns' illustration.

Prologue

"On Cyborg Gender" — Takayuki Tatsumi

A reading of James Tiptree Jr.'s "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," Roland Barthes' "S/Z" and David Henry Hwang's "M.Butterfly," in terms of Donna Haraway's poetics.

Chapter One

"A Manifesto For Cyborgs -- Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism In The 1980s" — Donna Haraway

Translated by Mari Kotani.

Chapter Two

"Reading At Work & Other Activities Frowned On By Authority: A Reading of Donna Haraway's 'A Manifesto For Cyborgs'" — Samuel R. Delany

Translated by Takayuki Tatsumi.

Chapter Three

"Gender Structuring of Shell Persons in [Anne McCaffrey's] 'The Ship Who Sang'" — Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Translated by Tatsumi & Kotani.

Epilogue

"M.Butterfly: Otherwise" — Takayuki Tatsumi

An interpretation of Richard Calder's concept of "nanotech gynoids."

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