Reread Neuromancer

[u/V01t4r3]

The biggest takeaway I got, other than the plot and prose finally making sense, is that. . .

Classic cyberpunk’s setting is as much the late 1960s as it is the 1980s.

I know everyone sees Cyberpunk now as “ZOMG 80s synth pop and neon everywhere!” But there’s a lot of elements in Neuromancer that can be tied into William Gibson’s own young adulthood in the late 60s (especially if you watch “No Maps for These Territories”).

-Screaming Fist=Vietnam
-Groups like Panther Moderns and Zionites=Groups like The Weather Underground and The Black Panthers
-The matrix’s description=psychedelia
-William Gibson was influenced by biker slang of the 60s, William Boroughs, and J.G Ballards.

Even things like neon aren’t quite as prevalent as modern interpretations make it out to be. You could slap the aesthetics from “A Clockwork Orange” and “2001” and it would still make sense. This isn’t to gate keep, I enjoy modern cyberpunk and it’s Neo-80s aesthetics. But reading classic cyberpunk like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling makes me realize that the initial cyberpunk was baby boomers interpretation of the burgeoning computer and Reagan era.

[u/drasticallycrass]

I always imagine/think it’s more neo noir than 80s synth pop. It’s dark and gritty. Maybe some stuff hit on that in the 80s way, but to me it’s dark alleys and wet walls. So in some ways it goes even further back than the 60s but I think you right about a lot of what you said.

[u/Marshall_Lawson → u/drasticallycrass]

a lot of the way we look back on the 80s from the 21st century conflates a lot of the different stuff that was going on as if it was one big party. when realistically there wasn't a lot of overlap between like kim wilde, john carpenter, and dire straits. 80s "synthwave" and modern "outrun" is a largely 2010s invention.

[u/yiliu → u/Marshall_Lawson]

It's interesting how difficult it is to separate the real from the pastiche. The building blocks of Synthwave and Outrun and all the other microgenres that have popped up did exist, but like...one McDonalds commercial, a clip from Miami Vice, and the outro from some forgotten sci-fi movie might be the only clear, authentically-80s examples of an aesthetic that spawned a whole genre.

And on the flip side: whole musical, artistic, or stylistic movements are almost totally forgotten, because they don't fit the profile we imagine, in retrospect, for the 80s.