*Gibson has attempted to show us a dystopia with all of the elements of Raymond Chandler’s detective stories of the 1940s

* Film Noir – was a term coined by French film critics who noticed the trend of how ‘dark’, downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war

NEUROMANCERNEUROMANCER

By William Gibson

Film NoirFilm Noir

Film noir is not a genre, but rather a mood, style, point of view, or tone of a film. It developed after WWII, taking advantage of the post war anxiety, pessimism and suspicion. The criminal, hard boiled anti-heroes of film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society’s evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness and sense of injustice.

William GibsonWilliam Gibson

William Gibson is considered to be the inventor of the concept cyber-punk

What is cyber-punk?What is cyber-punk?

In Neuromancer Gibson explores the intersection between technology and life-style

Cyberpunk can best be described as:

•a genre of science fiction texts/film and fiction where setting is a polluted world of inequality

•Characters are cyber-enhanced and technology is used by the powerful to subdue the powerless

Cyberpunk quotesCyberpunk quotes

“Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do almost anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it’s the truth. It won’t go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk.”

Bruce Sterling

QuotesQuotes

“Transhumanism is about how technology will eventually help us overcome the problems that have, up until now been endemic to human nature. Cyberpunk is about how technology won’t”

Stephenis of RPG.net

CyberpunkCyberpunk

THE CORPORATIONS control the world from their skyscraper fortresses, enforcing their rule with assassins. On the Street, gangs roam a shattered urban wilderness, killing and looting.

The rest of the world is a perpetual party, as fashion-model beautiful techies rub biosculpt jobs with battle-armored roadwarriors in the hottest clubs, sleaziest bars and meanest streets this side of the Postholocaust.

CyberpunkCyberpunk

CyberpunkCyberpunk

The Future never looked so bad. BUT YOU can change it. You've got interface plugs in your wrists, weapons in your arms, lasers in your eyes, bio-chip programs screaming in your brain.

You're wired-in, Cyberenhanced and solid state as you take it to the fatal Edge where only the toughest and coolest can go. Because you're CYBERPUNK.

Cyberpunks are young people living in the dark fringes of high-tech culture, using their wits to outsmart the governmental powers that control information and technology

As with other films of this genre, colour plays an important role, signifying mood, time and place in the absence of any more obvious clues.

CYBERPUNK IN FILMCYBERPUNK IN FILM

Cyberpunk in filmCyberpunk in film

The harsh glare of yellow sodium lighting (representing many things, but most importantly conflict) takes the place of the softer blues of the first film, with both flashback scenes and foreshadowed death being represented by a milder, but still oversaturated green.

CYBERPUNK IN FILMCYBERPUNK IN FILM

The yellows and greens give the film a disturbingly organic feel, not the organic of a happy forest, but rather the organic that comes from mold, mildew, and human waste. This world is alive, but decaying, eating itself alive from the inside.

Some cyberpunk filmsSome cyberpunk films

Mad MaxBlade RunnerThe MatrixJohnny MnemonicAlien seriesTerminator

Cyberpunk novelsCyberpunk novels

Gibson is often referred to as the father of the genre

Bruce Sterling is another writer in the genre, his work tends to be less bleak than Gibson’s

John Brunner’s. The Shockwave rider Many of Philip K Dick’s work (Do Androids

dream of Electric Sheep Ghost in the shell stand alone complex

THEMES AND IDEASTHEMES AND IDEAS

•The family has broken down completely – an extension of the present day

•Political organisation has fragmented-

•Technology serves the rich and is denied the poor

THEMES AND IDEASTHEMES AND IDEAS

•All kinds of strange religious cults have developed

•The environment has collapsed so that people live in danger of being affected by pollution.

THEMES AND IDEASTHEMES AND IDEAS

•Corporate greed.

•Security booming as the rich have to be protected from the poor

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUES

•Gibson’s narrative technique switches from one story to another in an almost filmic technique

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUES

•Use of names – Case, wintermute etc.

•Prose is very fast moving, tactile, you really get a feel for the surface of objects, as if you can touch them.

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUES

•Satire – Gibson making fun of some of the excesses of our society

•Use of dialogue and colloquial speech – gives an authenticity and streetwise feel to the text

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUES•Suspense – the text always leaves the reader on a cliffhanger – waiting to see what happens next.

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUES

• Point-of-view – the text positions the reader differently through various points-of-view.

Gibson on his charactersGibson on his characters

Yeah, I think it was an attempt to... Oh I don't know, in some ways as I get older I feel more desperate. I think it has more to do with an attempt at literary naturalism..