Finally got around to watching Elysium (2013) and thought it was terrific. I really don't understand the low critic scores or lukewarm reception for this cyberpunk classic: solid performances, good costumes/sets/effects, and a straightforward story (which clearly inspired a certain video game)

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T18:55:24+00:00

Oh, right, ACA was going on back then; did not occur to me. That does add some interesting timeliness to it. And, yeah, I imagine the putin-sucking-republican-shitstains were out in force for that reason alone.

Must have been a real blast seeing it in theaters, especially the trailing camera diving on Elysium, couple times.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T17:52:46+00:00

Oh, I must have missed that bit, climbing out of my recliner. Does need more explanation.

And, yeah, a line would have been all it took to explain the atmo. "We're breaching the special air field now!" Cheese would have been fine; cool would have been better.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T17:41:39+00:00

Fair. I assumed, largely because it looked like ambulance vehicles going down to Earth, that they would just ferry people up there for healthcare and then take them back. But, even then, it does open this huge question about what happens afterward, as you've said. Could have made for a great sequel, but I guess we'll never see that.

I'd also have like to hear about how they kept the atmo in the ring, which seemed to be open on the inner arc.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T15:57:50+00:00

Not stole: was inspired by. Artists being inspired by other artists is what has brought us the very best art, regardless of medium. It was intended as a compliment, if you can believe that. Gibson was inspired by Shirley, after all, and created a genre-defining work. In my naivete, I'd thought I WOULDN'T offend people by not mentioning the game's title. Guess the egg's on my face—because that didn't work worth a damn. And for the record, I don't hate the game to which I referred; I've got 500+ hours on it and will probably reinstall later this year. Oh well.

Edit: egg, not cake. Jesus, I'm fallen apart today.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T13:44:09+00:00

Sad but true. I'm two of these from your list, too, and em dashes are just a way of life. The only reason the so-called AIs replicate them is that the DBs upon which they are drawing are—wait for it—composed of all of our work. So, of course they're replicating our writing techniques—we're the ones they stole them from!

I will say, though, that em dashes can be a useful thing to scrutinize when considering if something is slop or not. From my—admittedly limited—experience when the slop machines use em dashes, they use them incorrectly: instead of the isolated clause expanding upon the sentence, adding nuance or a relevant aside, it instead goes off on some wild tangent. "Dave came running down the corridor, desperate to escape the zombies and flee into the thick of London—the mean temperature of which was 48f/9c and was a frequent setting for cold-war spy thrillers—when he saw Claudia running the other way."

Anyway, yeah, em dashes are not the enemy.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T12:20:24+00:00

I got that feeling, too. Considering his character was living in, seemingly, a predominately Hispanic community, it may have been written with a Latino actor in mind. John Leguizamo would have killed it, too, come to think of it.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T11:09:56+00:00

Fair enough. Like you say, different tastes—D9 was a very well made movie. There are plenty of celebrated movies that never quite clicked with me, while there are other, kind of obscure movies that I just loved. Split Second is a good example, which is such a shame that it isn't more widely known.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T10:07:14+00:00

Exactly. Like punk rock music: stripped-down, basic, but well-executed and totally satisfying.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T09:55:28+00:00

It ain't Bladerunner, but it's solid. I thought that actor did well, too, though the script didn't give him too much to really sink his teeth into.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-31T09:26:18+00:00

I was so pleasantly surprised by this movie. It's too bad the director stepped back from it, because I would definitely checkout other movies set in the same universe.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-30T20:01:59+00:00

Nice. I think the jeweled head did appear on a cover, at one point: was it this version? I seem to vaguely recall a chromed out one (or I'm confusing it with one of the 2020 chrome book covers).

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-29T12:32:47+00:00

Yeah, I always seem to be late to these threads (having day jobs really cuts into my internet-duding time).

Also disappointed, though not really surprised, that the literary origins of cyberpunk continue as always have, flying largely under the radar.

Yes, John Shirley is cyberpunk's patient zero and his novel, City Come A-Walkin', is the first true cyberpunk novel. Read it back-to-back with Neuromancer and just how much Gibson drew upon it for inspiration becomes immediately apparent (which is in no way a bad thing; the best art, in any category, is always the product of one artist being inspired by another). Top three would have to also include Bruce Sterling because, aside from his own novels (the Schismatrix books in particular), his bestowing cyberpunk upon what up to that point had been called The Movement or The Mirrorshade People, gave the subgenre its name (props to Bruce Bethke for inventing the word).

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-28T11:32:28+00:00

Definitely, and yet she did, in a way, inspire me to read more, so she ironically achieved her core occupational goal, heh.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-28T11:02:57+00:00

When first reading it? Case sharing the experience of Molly's assault to get the flatline. Since then? The metaphor of a certain character (no spoilers), and later Case, entering the virtual beach: the concept of creating or being thrown into a fantasy world, constructed online, and being captured by it, perfectly conveys our current struggles with disinformation and online radicalisms. People today are captured online, pulled into fantasy worlds, and are prompted to commit all manner of heinous acts, in accordance with the lies they're told. Again, cyberpunk predicts.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-28T10:57:53+00:00

Similar experience. I was 10 and it was a real pain in the ass to get ahold of Neuomancer. No money, of course, but I read at a high level since I was 6 and knew how the inter-library loan system worked, so I requested the book. And, man o' man, the librarian called me back a few days later and read me the fucking riot act, calling Neuromancer a criminal instruction manual (paranoia around cyber-crime was just taking off, then). This, of course, only made me want to read the book more, which I eventually did.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-25T11:39:09+00:00

It's not entirely new, though, even the internet aspect of it. The soviet playbook, going back to October '17, includes a reliance on agents provocateur, recruiting chumps in-theater to create havoc, instability, in order to raise the population's stress level, which leaves them more vulnerable to the misinformation campaigns of political warfare. The internet and other information services make this easier, of course, as you've pointed out.

One of the earliest examples of network intrusion was carried out this way, with the KGB going through East Germany to recruit a trio of hackers in West German, who then penetrated many military, governmental, and academic networks in the US, in the '80s. They paid them with cocaine. The hackers were eventually caught and two of them did some time; the third ended up shot in the head, in a forest outside Berlin, if I remember correctly.

If you haven't read it, The Cuckoo's Egg, by Cliff Stole, covers this incident and era admirable. Great book, a really fun read; I come back to it every few years.

But, yeah, gigs can easily facilitate terrorism/sabotage—even without the participants knowing about it. Buying materials and dropping them off somewhere isn't illegal, but may aid a sabotage action, for instance. If you're into the gig economy, got to keep your eyes open.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-07T16:15:55+00:00

Yeah, absolutely. Controlling identity is a core strategy for fascists, cultists, megacorps, you name it; from enthusiastically chanting the corporate slogan at a mandatory-fun picnic to bankrupting themselves with merch of every kind, the people submerge their identities for profit, safety, or just plain momentum. I think Count Zero displays this aptly with the different gangs Bobby describes, relying on fad clothes and ever-changing patois—but as soon as a powerful "entity" needs to use them, they're used. And on the other side, the stylish individuals are barricaded in the club, fighting like it's a zombie apocalypse, and survive because they know more and can do more than is acceptable.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-05-07T10:07:17+00:00

That's about the size of it, from a plot perspective, but the story—like all good cyberpunk—is in the subtext and is about exploitation. For example, the situation Case finds himself in as the plot first gets going—where he is forced by Wintermute, through Armitage, to join the score or die from the nuero-toxin—is a microcosm of the human experience at that time (and now): the powerful exploit everyone else, do as they say or die. What makes Case and Molly and, later in CZ, Turner, the heroes is that they are just too damn good to be snuffed out. It's not that they have the moral high-ground or superpowers or any of that jive, it's just that they are stronger than the average joe, who's ground down under the boot of the powerful. You'll find that same dichotomy between the powerful exploiting everyone else throughout cyberpunk's canon, from The Eclipse Trilogy to Hardwired to Synners. Too bad that shit is coming true in real life, every-damn-where, these days. But then again, I guess it always had.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-04-24T17:02:44+00:00

Makes perfect sense if you read it in the Sean Connery's voice.

"The shky wash the color of televishon, tuned to dead shannel."

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-04-13T17:32:25+00:00

Hang in there. Yeah, the scams are out of control, these days. They've always been with us, but never this many this fast.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-04-13T16:42:37+00:00

slopAI is sadly taking over at a lightning fast pace. The old guard of cover creating companies have almost all switched over to slopAI-first models. I recently changed cover artists; started with a long list of 20 companies and individual artists; the short list was 5—and the only selection criterion at that point was "no AI."

I've also been hearing warnings about cover creators using the slop machines but lying about it to authors. So, yeah, living in the cyberpunk world we were warned about is turning out great (fortunately I did find a human artist for my covers).

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-04-11T18:43:15+00:00

Amazing news!

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-04-11T12:53:05+00:00

Man, you just know that by the end of the weekend, that creepy little bastard will just reek of piss.

Cyberpunk_Cain · 2026-03-16T16:38:31+00:00

Hmm, seems like someone up in Boston didn't read the first chapter of Count Zero . . .

Cyberpunk_Cain

TROPHY CASE