Artificial intelligences and artificial humans (sometimes corrupted) are everywhere, while Everything Is Online. Since the Turn of the Millennium, it's become commonplace to swap out the Japanese influences for Chinese - though, given the impact that this era had on the genre as a whole, as well as writers' unwillingness to offend China (or else they can get kicked out), a retro-style Japanese aesthetic isn't uncommon even today note And that, portraying the Japanese as the bad guys are still considered more welcome, given the sore history between Japan and China.Įxpect the scientific philosophy of transhumanism to be a feature, what with Artificial Limbs and cable jacks in the skull that allow access to artificial realities. If the work dates from The '80s, there's a good chance that there will be a theme of East Asian economic dominance, with the evil corporations being sinister Zaibatsu (possibly collaborating with or even run by the Yakuza) and Asian-sounding advertisements, consumer products, brand-names and anime influences liberally scattered around.
On the other hand, major villains are almost inevitably Police States or multinational conglomerates led by powerful businessmen with a number of gun-toting Mooks and corrupt politicians ( or even an entire nation) at their beck and call. This emphasis on the misfits and the malcontents is the "punk" component of cyberpunk. These characters - "criminals, outcasts, visionaries, dissenters and misfits" - call to mind the private eye of detective fiction. Heroes are often computer hackers or rebels, antiheroes almost to a man.
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