Cyberpunk
I've been listening to Magnum Bullets arguably too much the last couple days. But it definitely has my mind in a cyberpunk-ish space.
One of the things that came to mind when I first listened to it is a central conceit of the genre that has always been a little... questionable. The genre sets up a society of haves and have nots. Those who are rich with corporate ties have reasonably safe lives where violence is fiction and the latest, greatest technology is within reach. Those without live in relative squalor, scraping by in fear of gang wars and body chop shops. I rather hope I don't live to see real life become that polarized, though it's a plausible dystopia - which makes it exactly why this type of science fiction has the value it does. But when looking at cyberpunk stories or games, there's a fairly large hurdle to overcome in explaining someone with millions of credits/eurobills/nuyen/etc. worth of hardware, weaponry, and skill is somehow existing in a world of criminals and living one score to the next.
It isn't that there's no possible explanation, but it takes something and that seems often overlooked or minimized. There's the disenfranchised military person - that seems an easy go-to, though normal military discharges would probably not let a person run off with high-class cyberware/weapons/armor any more than the US Army currently lets people quit with tank they were assigned. So for there to be a whole class of "Shadowrunners" or the like gets a little bit hard to believe at times. The thought of such a person also maintaining a normal job/lifestyle strains credulity.
The song does remind me, however, that it really only takes one event to start down that path. The fall from have to have not doesn't always take much. Surviving for very long afterward, that's the hard part.
This also has me bouncing around a half-formed character idea, even with lack of any regular game (and wishing Cyberpunk 2077's release would hurry up and arrive, not that I want an unfinished game). Hmm...
One of the things that came to mind when I first listened to it is a central conceit of the genre that has always been a little... questionable. The genre sets up a society of haves and have nots. Those who are rich with corporate ties have reasonably safe lives where violence is fiction and the latest, greatest technology is within reach. Those without live in relative squalor, scraping by in fear of gang wars and body chop shops. I rather hope I don't live to see real life become that polarized, though it's a plausible dystopia - which makes it exactly why this type of science fiction has the value it does. But when looking at cyberpunk stories or games, there's a fairly large hurdle to overcome in explaining someone with millions of credits/eurobills/nuyen/etc. worth of hardware, weaponry, and skill is somehow existing in a world of criminals and living one score to the next.
It isn't that there's no possible explanation, but it takes something and that seems often overlooked or minimized. There's the disenfranchised military person - that seems an easy go-to, though normal military discharges would probably not let a person run off with high-class cyberware/weapons/armor any more than the US Army currently lets people quit with tank they were assigned. So for there to be a whole class of "Shadowrunners" or the like gets a little bit hard to believe at times. The thought of such a person also maintaining a normal job/lifestyle strains credulity.
The song does remind me, however, that it really only takes one event to start down that path. The fall from have to have not doesn't always take much. Surviving for very long afterward, that's the hard part.
This also has me bouncing around a half-formed character idea, even with lack of any regular game (and wishing Cyberpunk 2077's release would hurry up and arrive, not that I want an unfinished game). Hmm...
Comments
Post a Comment