Future as the Past: Does 1980s Cyberpunk Need to Die?

The future as the past, specifically the 1980s, is a well-known trope in science fiction. Paul Walker-Emig emphasises this trope in his Guardian article, highlighting in particular how cyberpunk (as he refers to this 1980s future) needs to evolve or die. He has a point; however, his argument sweeps over crucial influences of the trope, such as continued anxieties and neoliberal capitalism.

Since the 1980s, there have been a myriad of developments in technology, health, entertainment, and much more. Such developments emerged in the 1980s, cultivating anxieties in the general public that persist today. On the representation of the future in science fiction, of which cyberpunk is a subgenre, Walker-Emig states:

"These examples not only serve as evidence of the genre’s endurance, but of how remarkably static its vision of the future has remained. Why is it that cyberpunk still looks like it did in the 80s? Perhaps there has been no need for it to change: it continues to resonate with us because the world it depicts is the one we live in.”

Cyberpunk’s 1980s trope has not changed, because it shares contemporary anxieties over various tech, health and other evolutions. Walker-Emig’s point further resonates with Fredric Jameson’s emphasis on how science fiction does not aim to “give us ‘images’ of the future […] but rather to defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own present” (Jameson 1982, 151). In his article, Walker-Emig asks the cyberpunk genre to change and yet clearly states why it does not.

Employing the 1980s to represent the future in science fiction relates to the pervasion of neoliberal capitalism. Capitalism is a mode of production that promotes the private profits of individuals rather than a community while under neoliberal governance, as industry and trade are regulated not by the state, but by private organisations. Established in the UK during the 1980s, neoliberal capitalism has, as David Harvey claims, “succeeded remarkably well in restoring […] the power of an economic elite” (Harvey 2007, 19). Individual success is encouraged, as the responsibility of wellbeing is transferred from the state to the individual, insinuating the neglect of communities as people prioritise their own wellbeing. It is no surprise then that this rise of capitalism and neoliberalism spawns similar and constant themes in cyberpunk, as Walker-Emig explains: “This political event horizon was also a death for utopian sci-fi. We internalised the idea that the system we live in is an inevitability and with that, our imaginations stalled, unable to conceive of a future that moves beyond it—like we’re stuck on a loop in one of those computer simulations the genre loves so much." Walker-Emig’s perspective of imaginations having stalled over this theme is problematic once the all-encompassing and ubiquitous nature of neoliberal capitalism is considered. It is not a matter of changing imaginations, but of social and political environments.

The unprecedented scale of current markets and industries has instigated identifying the contemporary world as living in “a new era: the Anthropocene—the age of humans” (Purdy 2015, 1). Jedediah Purdy continues to describe this era as relentlessly hostile due to the inequality it perpetuates: “I would call this dystopia the neoliberal Anthropocene. It is distinguished by free contract within a global market, which launders inequality to the point of invisibility” (Purdy 2015, 48). Capitalism manipulates people into perceiving the system as beneficial to all and not to a select few. This manipulation ensures that those who do not benefit cannot be self-sufficient without the system, as it seeps into everyone’s life until the system’s ubiquitous influence becomes difficult to represent and separate from. Walker-Emig’s article echoes Mark Fisher’s statement on the present encouraging “the inability to imagine alternatives to capitalism’s entropic, eternal present” (Fisher 2010, 15-6). No matter how well intentioned people are, capitalism silences all pleas for change. Walker-Emig comments:

“It is alarming that we are starting to accept the dystopian features of cyberpunk as an inevitable part of our future. The neoliberal milieu, the crucible in which cyberpunk was formed, is crumbling. Cyberpunk’s stasis leaves little room to map the emerging nationalisms, fascisms, political populisms and revitalised leftist movements seeking to challenge political and economic orthodoxy. New potential futures are finally emerging. It may be time for cyberpunk to evolve or die."

The “neoliberal milieu” is far from crumbling, as it consistently affects behaviour: “[neoliberalism] is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity”. Writing also for the Guardian, Stephan Metcalf’s point conflicts with Walker-Emig’s, agreeably so. In a society governed by individuals who benefit from and are intoxicated with capitalism, such demands for alternative systems will continue to be unheard.

There are, however, inklings of change within the science fiction genre, such as the Vagina Dentata magazine that embraces the non-binary and colourful side to science fiction that lacks representation. There is always more scope for change, as Walker-Emig rightly highlights, but it is easier said than done.

References

• Fisher, Mark (2010), “The Lonely Road”, Film Quarterly, 14-17.
• Harvey, David (2007), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jameson, Fredric (1982), “Progress versus Utopia: Or, Can We Imagine the Future?”, Science Fiction Studies, 147-158.
• Purdy, Jedediah (2015), After Nature, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.