I've got Gibson on the Brain

So this post is mostly the byproduct of reading into the think of Neuromancer (yeah...I'm a little late to the game), but I want more cyberpunk on TV. The genre itself has seemed to meet with limited success when crossing mediums from the literary to the visual. Most the instances we do see are usually either incorporated into other types of science fiction or die off after a couple seasons.

But before I go too far, a think a brief explanation is due of what I mean exactly by “cyberpunk” The Cyberpunk Project (TCP) describes the genre as “a literary movement, born in the 1980's, that seeks to completely integrate the realms of high tech and of pop culture, both mainstream and underground, and break down the separation between the organic and the artificial.” There are also dominant themes of total dystopia, usually in the wake of a catastrophic or apocalyptic event, and protagonists are often unlikely heroes. Like TCP says, importance should be placed the ideas of a super high tech age, in an intolerably low point in culture.

As I said, the TV fare for such a niche genre has been slim. Robocop, a television serious based on the film, toyed with the ideas of civil unrest in a high tech age where a single corporation controlled the city of Detroit. One of the more well-known cyberpunk series, Max Headroom, featured Edison, an ace news investigator for the biggest TV network in the world, and his computerized AI double, Max, solving crimes and turning in stories. The series expanded on the genre with ideas of flooding the streets with information, in a world where people must abandon their names and documented identities in order to live in privacy. Max was canceled in 88 and faded into obscurity by the early 90's. The last real Cyberpunk themed show seen in recent times was Dark Angel. Starring Jessica Alba, the series follows Max Guenevera, a genetically pumped up super soldier, on the run from her creators since she was very young. Living in Seattle after an EMP blast wipes out America's technological superiority, Max works at a courier service while helping her rich underground journalist friend, Logan find truth and corruption in the morally bankrupt city. It also lasted two seasons.

It may be hard to find shows about cyberpunk, because, when it comes down to it, maybe it is more of an aesthetic than a genre. It is hard to make entire shows around an aesthetic, not to mention one that hasn't made any clear definitions on what it should exactly be like. Sometimes cyberpunk it's a world like Brazil. Other times a world like Johnny Mnemonic, or Max Headroom. There is really no distinguishing ties. Or maybe cyberpunk is hard to visualize because it just looks a little too close to our world now. What do you think?