Category Archives: Cyberpunk

FACT Rated is our series digging into the sounds and stories of the most vital breaking artists around right now. This week, Claire Lobenfeld talks to Beijing-born club innovator Howie Lee about 3D design, GarageBands Chinese instruments library and the possibility that were all just living in a simulation.

IN SHORT NAME: Howie Lee FROM: Beijing, China MUST-HEAR: Homeless EP (2017, Do Hits) FOR FANS OF: Aphex Twin, M.I.A., James Ferraro

Howie Lee thinks we might be living in the Matrix. Speaking from his home in Taipei, Taiwan, the Beijing-born club producer is waxing on the possibility that weve all just been imagined by someone else, either human or artificial. I dont know what to believe and I dont know what is to value in this world anymore, he says. Im always very anxious about whats going to happen in the short future. I believe in the Matrix and I believe we might already be in it.

Listening to his thrilling recent EP Homeless, one can hear the digital dread he describes, but its substance isnt all future-fearing flourishes. When he speaks to FACT in June, he says hes been digging a lot of old folk music from the Western border of China sounds from Xinjiang, Tibet and Yunnan that meld Buddhist histories with Muslim traditions from Chinas neighbors. This global influence from both the physical and digital worlds is imprinted all over the EP, which was named after the placelessness of the music.

Created with software like the granular synthesizer iPad app iDensity and popular entry-level DAW GarageBand most people delete it, but GarageBand has Chinese drum kit and erhu thats really awesome as well as live instruments, the six-song collection is slaughtering club music made for our nearly-dystopian present. And if you cant grasp the technicolor collage that its sounds invoke, Lees music videos deftly illustrate the world he is trying to sort out.

Im scared about real life, but the virtual life is more scary to me when I play music, I feel safe.

His visual identity is inspired by his wife, renowned designer Veeeky. Im inspired by a lot of cyberpunk things and I always think were already living in a dream and living in a sort of AI-controlled dream, Lee says. You have your own space, but you never really have space. Everything is in front of you like: BUY ME, CLICK ME. He uses Cinema 4D and other 3D drafting tools to make his videos and other pieces of art. For a half decade, Lee has been incorporating these elements into his live show with Veeeky crafting the visual accompaniments to his music and another friend supplying a self-made game engine to the video art.

Lee is part of Do Hits, a label that originated in 2011 as a party at Beijing punk hangout School Bar before becoming fully-realized after moving to underground dance club Dada. But like Do Hits, Lees origins are also in punk. I was in cheesy pop-punk like Green Day, Lee says, looking back at his time as an audio engineering student a Communication University of China. There were just a lot of show opportunities, but I had no idea why I was doing until I said, OK, fuck this, this is boring, its not creative, these are cheesy pop songs.' His roommate at the time taught him how to use Traktor and the two started DJing at bars together. But it was after university that dance music truly became his passion.

When Justice came out and I was like, OK, this is new music. Its not punk, but its not the trance music that I used to listen to. It just grabbed my mind and I said, I wanna do something like this. And like Justice, Lees brand of dance music is all about pushing the conversation forward. Throughout Homeless, there are multiple threads to latch onto in each track that transport its listener across varying musical landscapes. Hes created a kaleidoscopic world in order to grapple with what he sees as an easily manipulated reality. Im scared about real life, but the virtual life is more scary to me, he says. There is no way to get rid of the internet and its not necessary to, either. Its more about self-control and not losing your awareness of yourself. When I play music, I feel safe.

Claire Lobenfeld is on Twitter.

Read next: Icelands Bjarki makes 10 tracks a day and has Nina Kraviz on speed dial

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Howie Lee is the cyberpunk-obsessed club producer concerned we're trapped in the Matrix - FACT

CD Projekt Red has a lot of expectation riding on Cyberpunk 2077. Not only is the studios latest title, The Witcher 3, widely regarded as one of the best videogames ever made, its new project is also based on a tabletop roleplaying game thats been capturing imaginations with tales of leather jackets and neon lights since 1988.

The Polish studio has shown its more than capable of handling complex, multi-layered storytelling across a vast open world so the signs are good that the shift from fantasy to science fiction will be a fruitful one. Beyond an initial trailer, however, theres relatively little known for certain about Cyberpunk 2077.

To keep you abreast with all the latest news and rumours, here is our rundown of everything you need to know about Cyberpunk 2077. Well be updating this page as new information surfaces.

Cyberpunk 2077 was revealed way back in 2012, three years before The Witcher 3 was released. This was followed in 2013 by a trailer that said the game would be released when its ready, which isnt a great deal to go on.

Some further hints came in early 2016, in the shape of a company investor call. This noted a timeframe to release Cyberpunk 2077 before June 2019, as well as plans to release two blockbuster RPGs before 2021. It was later clarified that the first of these would be Cyberpunk 2077.

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In 2016, a grant of 30 million zloty (around 6 million) from the Polish government was given to CD Projekt RED, to research seamless multiplayer and virtual city creation. That comes with a stipulation that the team delivers something over the next few years. Throw in a 2017 financial results conference, which made mention of progress on Cyberpunk 2077 being quite advanced, and wed say late 2018 or early 2019 is a good bet.

As for which platforms Cyberpunk 2077 will arrive on, the time frame makes it likely that the game will follow a similar release pattern to The Witcher 3 with a release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The main difference will be the inclusion of 4K editions for Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

Back in 2013 CD Projekt RED's managing director Adam Badowski mentioned in a chat to Eurogamer that Cyberpunk 2077 would have multiplayer features, but tapered this by stressing the game would be a predominantly single-player experience.

News at the end of 2016, about the studios grant from the Polish government, also emphasised that the game would push the envelope for seamless multiplayer.

Will Cyberpunk 2077 have a multiplayer shooter mode? Will it be an MMO? Most likely not. Given CD Projekt REDs track record, we doubt the developers will want to stray too far from the scripted narratives that have made the studios name. Instead, expect a form of pervasive multiplayer that will aim to make Night City feel more alive, perhaps in the strand of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, where the paths of other players are seen as ghosts, and where other players can help or hinder progress through the games path.

Another upcoming AAA sci-fi game, Beyond Good and Evil 2, is aiming to straddle the balance between written storytelling and pervasive co-operation and competition although we expect CD Projekt RED to go less in the multiplayer direction than Ubisoft.

CD Projekt RED visual effects artist Jose Teixeira said in 2015 that Cyberpunk 2077 would be far bigger than anything else the studio has done. Part of the stipulation of the Polish government grant was that the developers create "cities of great scale based on the principles of artificial intelligence and automation", so it makes sense for the studio to approach this on a big scale.

The studio has also doubled in size, with more developers allegedly working on Cyberpunk 2077 than those that worked on The Witcher 3 at its most intensive. Not a lithe indie adventure, then.

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Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in the Cyberpunk tabletop universe, created by Mike Pondsmith, whos also a consultant on the project. Pondsmiths RPG, mainly known by its second edition name of Cyberpunk 2020, is based in a sprawling fictional metropolis on the US West Coast, called Night City.

Even if youre unfamiliar with the details of Pondsmiths world, youll no doubt be familiar with the Cyberpunk tropes it went some way to solidify. From the novels of William Gibson to films such as Blade Runner, the Cyberpunk style tends to feature (in no particular order) rampant megacorporations, hackers, cybernetic implants, social unrest, artificial intelligence, leather jackets, sex robots, mohawks, hardboiled detectives, neon lights. Expect Night City to have all of these things at some point or another.

Marcin Przybyowicz did stellar work on the atmospheric, if occasionally overpowering, Witcher 3 soundtrack. Hes continuing to work for the studio on Cyberpunk 2077, so itll be interesting to see how the composer works within a genre that already has a very established soundscape.

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Set over 50 years after Pondsmiths Cyberpunk 2020, CD Projekt RED has scope to explore technologies and cultures that were nascent in the original tabletop game. One of these will be Braindances virtual reality-like devices that let viewers experience events from the perspectives of other people. "People live someone elses life while sleeping in the gutter," lead gameplay designer Marcin Janiszewski told The Verge. "Its like a new drug."

Given its reverberations with current debates around the limits of immersive technology, wed expect these braindances to be a major part of Cyberpunk 2077s makeup.

One intriguing aspect of Cyberpunk 2077 may be how its creators handle language. While it was only floated as a consideration in 2013, CD Projekt REDs narrative and setting director, Sebastian Stepien, mentioned the possibility of having NPCs speaking in different languages with the player needing a translator implant to interpret what people are saying.

Speaking to dubscore.pl, Stepien said: The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.

"Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation."

Its a very intriguing idea one that could lead to a lot of interesting narrative opportunities from a writing perspective but hasnt yet been confirmed as a definite feature in the game.

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Cyberpunk 2077 release date rumours, news and trailers: Everything we know so far - Alphr

Wadjet Eye Games, one of the few studios still making great adventure games, has just announced that its cyberpunk title Technobabylon is coming to iPhone and iPad devices this month.

Starting August 16, fans of the adventure genre will be able to download Technobabylon via App Store. According to developer Wadjet Eye Games, since its launch back in 2015, Technobabylon has become one of its best selling and best-reviewed games.

Adventure games are first about the atmosphere and story, but puzzles are an important aspect as well. Technobabylon has them all covered since Wadjet Eye Games presents it as a Blade Runner meets Police Quest point & click adventure.

Visually, Technobabylon features retro-styled pixel art, so if you can't stand pixelated graphics, you might want to skip this one, although you'll be missing an intense cyberpunk plotline as well.

The story in Technobabylon takes place in the City of Newton, in the year 2087. The game sets you loose in an amazing world where wetware wires people directly to the web, where the cerebral online Trance has replaced almost any need for human interaction.

You'll be investigating a serial Mindjacker who is hijacking the neural wiring of what appear to be normal people. He steals their knowledge and ultimately kills them. It's up to you to find out who's the person behind that dreaded nickname and what drives him to commit those atrocious murders.

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Cyberpunk adventure game Technobabylon coming to iOS on August 16 - Phone Arena

After the enormous success of the Witcher 3 which is still receiving great sales and acclaims to this date, CD Projekt Red is working hard at its next big IP Cyberpunk 2077. For those who do not know about Cyberpunk 2077, it is an upcoming role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt RED and published by CD Projekt for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (as speculated to date). It was announced way back in 2012 in the form of a short CGI teaser trailer but we didnt hear much about it anytime later. We got snippets of info but no major reveal. It should be noted too that Cyberpunk 2077 is heavily based on the actual tabletop roleplaying game in 1988 created by Mike Pondsmith who is acting as a consultant on the game. We have composed a summary of everything you should know about CD Projekt Reds next big IP, Cyberpunk 2077.

Setting & Gameplay

Cyberpunk 2077 is set in an open world metropolis called Night City. The game will feature non-English speaking characters and players who do not speak the languages can actually buy translator implants to better understand them; depending on the advancement of the implants, the quality of translations will vary, with more expensive implants rendering more accurate translations. This Braindance, is a digital recording device streamed directly into the brain, allows the player character to experience the emotions, brain processes and muscle movements of another person as though they were their own.

Cyberpunk Release Date

So far, there hasnt been any leak or news on when Cyberpunk is coming out, and CD Projekt Red has mentioned that they will reveal it when it is ready and it will be a surprise. But according to the CEO of CD Projekt Red, all of the marketing materials and promotional assets are ready to go but they are just waiting for the time to announce it when it is good and ready. Many are speculating that it will be announced in the time frame of the PlayStation 5 which is due around 2019 according to some analysts.

As Cyberpunk 2077 is heavily based on Michael Pondsmiths tabletop game as mentioned previously, we can expect many elements to be part of the video game. As his table top features classes such as journalists, arockstar, executive and others, Michael Pondsmith mentioned in an interview with Wccftech that you can play as any of those characters.

Yes, you can. Theyre all going to be there, but I can tell youre going to find some surprises about how weve done it and I think youre really going to like it. Theres a lot of subtlety going on there. Adam (Kiciski, CD Projekt REDs President, and co-CEO) and I spent literally like a whole week messing with the ways of implementing that, so you get the most feel for your character.

But you should keep in mind that there are actually nine classes in the tabletop game being: Media, Corporate, Fixer, Cop, Nomad, Rockerboy, Solo, Techie, Net-runner, and Nomad.

In terms of development, Michael Pondsmith is shaping up to his vision. He also stated in the interview with Wccftech that

The vision is really pretty close to what I had in my head years ago. When did the CGI trailer, I looked at it and said, Oh my God, thats like perfect. And there were all these little touches from Cyberpunk in the background, because theyre fans. I said to me, They really did it! Thats awesome. So, the feeling has stayed the same and weve also been continually developing it to keep that feeling.

Along with the single-player story, Cyberpunk 2077 will include a multiplayer component but we are unsure in what context this multiplayer will be like.

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Everything We Know About CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 So Far! (New Details) - Quadoop

My favorite cyberpunk stories are usually the ones about criminals and outsiders in situations way out of their league, and my least favorite are about badasses with future-guns shooting a bunch of cyborgs or robots or whatever. In between there's the third kind of classic cyberpunk story, in which an investigator gets too involved in a case and uncovers something they shouldn't while also confronting a bunch of philosophical questions about what it means to be human. It sounds specific, but that's genre for you. Observer tells that third kind of cyberpunk story, and is about as pure a version as you can imagine.

Developed by Polish studio Bloober Team and launching August 15, Observer is set in Krakow in the year 2084. You play Daniel Lazarski, voiced by Rutger Hauerpresumably cast on the strength of his performance in an iconic cyberpunk detective movie, by which I mean Split Second of coursewho has been cybernetically enhanced to perform neural interrogations, plugging himself into people's brainchips. It's as if he's walking around inside their subconscious, observing their memories and secrets. Observers are basically cops that can climb into your head. Yeah.

These hallways of the mind are represented as literal hallways. Bloober's previous game was Layers of Fear, a first-person horror experience full of mindfuck trickery, and that lineage is obvious when you perform a neural interrogation and find out it's actually super claustrophobic in someone else's head. In the part of Observer I've playedthe opening 10 hours or so, most of which takes place in an apartment building with a bad case of the murderseveryone I plug into is either dying or dead, and their mental landscapes are surreal.

Think Seinfeld re-runs are still on?

One victim works for the same corporation funding the Observer task force, and has been stealing data from them. Plugged in, I experience their fading consciousness as an Orwellian computerized job interview and a stealth sequence in an open-plan office, but also through more metaphorical scenes. In one, I have to cross a field where data cables grow like corn, while eye-in-the-sky camera drones patrol overhead.

At its best, the hide-and-seek pursuit stuff is reminiscent of Alien: Isolation, and at its worst it's every instafail stealth sequence shoehorned into a genre where it doesn't belong.

Sometimes things from outside their brain leak through, in such forms as memories of Dan's missing son suddenly overlaying the scene or a mysterious figure pursuing me through the dreamscapes. At its best, the hide-and-seek pursuit stuff is reminiscent of Alien: Isolation, and at its worst it's every instafail stealth sequence shoehorned into a genre where it doesn't belong. Two of the neural interrogations Ive played so far have involved sneaking. By the second I was hoping there wouldnt be more.

And wow does it get weird. Rooms repeat, I get trapped in mazes. Chairs and buckets hang in the air. Shadowy people-shapes, abstracted fuzzing representations of humanity, hurry past or block doorways. Sometimes lumps of flesh grow on things. I follow a floating screen and a glowing deer, walls explode into pigeons, and everything goes fish-eyed or wobbly like a Wayne's World dissolve. It's like being trapped in a Tool video. When the walls are breaking into shards that hang in the air or screens are flashing images of Polish dumplings at you, its trippy enough to invoke a full-on Keanu Woah!

Mostly though, it's hallways. It feels a lot like P.T., and after a while I start to develop a kind of psychedelic fatigue. More floating chairs? More old-timey black and white TV footage? Cool, cool. I'm glad to get back to the real world, even though it's a dystopian future Poland controlled by a corporation. Here, it's less horror and more adventure game, all investigating crime scenes and quizzing witnesses.

For the investigation scenes, Dan's cybernetic eyes kick in and I start scanning everything like I'm Batman with the detective vision, trying to piece together clues and find a way out of this apartment complex. It's under lockdown due to a disease called the nanophage because of course there's a cyberplague, and automatic security has trapped us all here together.

It's a long time to explore the one slum (and attached tattoo parlor), but worth it to get to know so many inhabitants. Their faces are obscured by crusty vidscreens because most of the tech in 2084 Poland looks like it comes from 100 years earlier (they even play a pixelated puzzle dungeon game straight off a Commodore 64), and through those screens I talk to a bunch of scared people hiding in their rooms, trapped in here with me.

They all have their stories, whether it's the guy going through holographic projector withdrawals or the widow who lost her wife to the nanophage. Cyberpunk is at its best when it's engaging with characters who usually get ignored in favor of people who fly spaceships. And even though Dan is a fancy cybered-up future cop, he spends a lot of time observing ordinary folks. There's even a confused guy knocked out of an extended VR session by the lockdown whos convinced he's a starship captain.

My favourite character in Observer so far is another ordinary person, a janitor. At first,my Dan is rude to him, a scrappy guy outfitted with junk cyber-parts, but then I get onto the janitor's computer and read his emailsbecause of course a cyberpunk game is about reading everyone's email. Turns out he's a war veteran whose current job excludes him from the veteran's group that used to pay for upkeep of his prosthetics. It's a common, relatable story: the people who most need help are ineligible for it due to bureaucratic nonsense theyre helpless against.

I see the janitor again later and choose a friendlier line of dialogue, and mumbly Rutger Hauer warms up to him. We stand in the courtyard while it rains, Krakow's skyscrapers and hologram ads on the other side of a wall we can't cross while we're stuck with the pigeons and glitching augmented reality data overlays that coat the walls like digital glaze. It's a moment, you know?

When Observer isn't being David Lynch's Blade Runner it's a detective game where you don't have a gun and can't fall back on violence, an adventure game that's all about talking to people, guessing codes, hacking computers, and opening doors. Like all mystery stories, a lot will depend on its finale and whether it ties up the loose ends in a satisfactory way. I'm not allowed to tell you what happens after you make it out of the apartments, so I stopped playing there to write this, but I'm itching to go back and hunt around for more near future philosophy, or at the very least, I hope to have more honest conversations with lonely cyborgs.

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Observer's cyberpunk hallucinations are like being trapped in a Tool video - PC Gamer

CD Projekt RED released The Witcher 3 back in 2015 and to this day it is one of the best looking games out there. The developer is currently working on a futuristic title called Cyberpunk 2077. The game is still far from release and there are minimum details available.

However, a new job listing has pointed out something very interesting about Cyberpunk 2077. According to the listing posted by CD Projekt RED, the game features Photorealistic graphics. The listing confirms that Cyberpunk 2077 developer is putting extra focus on the visual appearance of the title.

CD PROJEKT RED is currently looking for talented artists to join our environment art team in Warsaw to work on Cyberpunk 2077. The Environment Artist will create a wide range of photorealistic environments in futuristic settings, covering also physicalized objects and destruction models.

The artist they are looking for will be responsible for creating photorealistic environments with original textures using various tools and middleware. The game is also believed to be featuring destroyable environments.

This also indicates that PC gamers would require a hefty piece of graphics hardware to run the game. The Witcher 3 proved to be a very demanding title for PC users.

While amazing graphics and environment is something commonly found in modern games, there is one element thats unique about the new game.

Most games that are played on tabletops run a fairly simple group of classes, from warrior to barbarian to paladin to cleric to thief. The Cyberpunk 2077 classes, however, are going to be a little bit different. Based off the tabletop game Cyberpunk 2020, classes in the game include journalist, executive, rock star, and more.

Cyberpunk 2077 is releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. No final release date has been announced. However, its promotional campaign is ready to go.

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Cyberpunk 2077 To Feature Photorealistic Environments ... - SegmentNext

Polish studio Bloober Team are working on a promising new game titled simply Observer. The game starsRutger Hauer, whose name will be instantly familiar to any fans of the original Blade Runner. We actually wrote about the game last year, however the new reveal today is Hauer leading the experience.

While Hauer starred as the leader of a band of murderous replicants in Blade Runner, hes kind of jumping to the other side of the equation with his role as an the eponymous Observer a neural detective that hacks into the minds of people in search of clues behind crime cases.

Featured above, you can view the games latest trailer, which showcases Hauers velvety chords as Detective Daniel Lazarski.

The cyberpunk horror story begins when you get a strange message from your estranged son, a high-level engineer for the powerfulChiron Corporation. Sound familiar?

Set in the year 2084, most of humanity has been wiped out and those who survived live in a disgusting, near-uninhabitable world that sees most people living out their days in drugs, or virtual reality. Each mind hack brings with it horror-like experiences how far will you go in search of the truth?

Here are the games key features:

Observer is launching on August 15th across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Big Papa Overlord at Niche Gamer. Italian. Dad. Outlaw fighting for a better game industry. I also write about music, food, & beer. Also an IT guy.

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Rutger Hauer Stars as a Neural-Detective in New Cyberpunk Horror-Thriller Game Observer - Niche Gamer

(Last Updated On: July 27, 2017)

Cyberpunk 2077 is a sci-fi RPG currently in development and has no gameplay footage for the public to see just yet, but the game has a lot of anticipation surrounding it. As of now, CD Projekt Red seems to be making progress on the game in that the team recently posted up its development team is expanding, revealing that the game will have photorealistic graphics.

CD Projekt Red recently posted up a new batch of job listings via Twitter for its upcoming sci-fi RPG entitled Cyberpunk 2077. The game has a lot of people looking forward to its video game adaptation, as well as the upcoming tabletop game that is set to release around the same time as the video game version.

Looking to step things up a notch from the Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk 2077, the devs behind both titles upgraded the third iteration of RedEngine (the companys game engine) to RedEgnine 4. The step in upgrading the game engine will obviously give the devs behind the upcoming cyberpunk title more room to add better features, like what one of the new job listings reveal which is photorealistic original textures. Additionally, games like Battlefield 1 and Star Wars: Battlefront EA uses a similar photorealistic system that produces graphics that will hold up well in the years to come thanks to the Frostbite.

In addition to the above, the job of the Senior Environment Artist is set to produce such quality graphics for Cyberpunk 2077 and is followed by more job listings:

Moreover, my being a gamer and a crazy fanatic of all things cyberpunk, Cyberpunk 2077 has my attention and many others, and seeing that the game is slated to come out somewhere around 2019 or 2020 means that a lot could go into this game thanks to the game engine receiving an update. This means that the game could potentially be unlike any other cyberpunk title on the gaming market.

Lastly, given Cyberpunk 2077 is using photorealistic graphics in an open world with destructible environments, it could be likely that the game will not debut for PS4 and Xbox One, but the generation of consoles afterward given that the devs want to release it for the latest consoles and for PC when it is complete.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Team Expansion Reveals Graphics To Be ... - One Angry Gamer (blog)

CD Projekt Red is hard at work at the upcoming sci-fi action RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, however, not much is known about the game and the devs themselves have been very quiet on that front. The studio expects the game to be much more successful than The Witcher 3 and now it seems that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature destructible environments.

The hint that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature destructible environments comes from the studios job listing for an Environmental Artist which reveals that the devs are looking for a talented Environmental Artists who will work with the studio and create destruction models for objects.

CD PROJEKT RED is currently looking for talented artists to join our environment art team in Warsaw to work on Cyberpunk 2077. The Environment Artist will create a wide range of photorealistic environments in futuristic settings, covering also physicalized objects and destruction models.

While Cyberpunk 2077 will not launch this year but the next game to be released by CD Projekt Red is GWENT The Witcher Card Game. There is no doubt that GWENT has been extremely popular among The Witcher 3 fans, but the developersdid not anticipate that this mini game would be so popularamong the players.

We wanted to make a fun mini-game that players would enjoy in between saving the world in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That was the plan when we were creating GWENT. And then it turned out players were actually spending a whole lot of time playing GWENT, much more than we anticipated.

GWENT will release for PC and current gen console and will not only feature a multiplayer mode but devs are putting in a single player campaign as well.

Furthermore, the studio has revealed that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature different classes, however, these classes will be unconventional.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a Sci-fi action RPG in development at CD Projekt Red for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Might Feature Destructible Environments - SegmentNext

Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It is one of the best-known works in the cyberpunk genre and the first novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award.[1] It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. The novel tells the story of a washed-up computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to pull off the ultimate hack.

Before Neuromancer, Gibson had written several short stories for American science fiction periodicalsmostly noir countercultural narratives concerning low-life protagonists in near-future encounters with cyberspace. The themes he developed in this early short fiction, the Sprawl setting of "Burning Chrome" (1982), and the character of Molly Millions from "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981) laid the foundations for the novel.[2]John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) influenced the novel;[3] Gibson was "intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' [sic] It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF, where a casual reference can imply a lot."[1] The novel's street and computer slang dialogue derives from the vocabulary of subcultures, particularly "1969 Toronto dope dealer's slang, or biker talk". Gibson heard the term "flatlining" in a bar around twenty years before writing Neuromancer and it stuck with him.[1] Author Robert Stone, a "master of a certain kind of paranoid fiction", was a primary influence on the novel.[1] The term "Screaming Fist" was taken from the song of the same name by Toronto punk rock band The Viletones.[4]

Neuromancer was commissioned by Terry Carr for the second series of Ace Science Fiction Specials, which was intended to feature debut novels exclusively. Given a year to complete the work,[5] Gibson undertook the actual writing out of "blind animal panic" at the obligation to write an entire novela feat which he felt he was "four or five years away from".[1] After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner (1982), which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured [Neuromancer] was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume Id copied my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film."[6] He re-wrote the first two-thirds of the book 12 times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was seen as a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist.[1] He added the final sentence of the novel, "He never saw Molly again", at the last minute in a deliberate attempt to prevent himself from ever writing a sequel, but ended up doing precisely that with Count Zero (1986), a character-focused work set in the Sprawl alluded to in its predecessor.[7]

Henry Dorsett Case is a low-level hustler in the dystopian underworld of Chiba City, Japan. Once a talented computer hacker, Case was caught stealing from his employer. As punishment for his theft, Case's central nervous system was damaged with a mycotoxin, leaving him unable to access the global computer network in cyberspace, a virtual reality dataspace called the "matrix". Case is unemployable, suicidal, and apparently at the top of the hit list of a drug lord named Wage. Case is saved by Molly Millions, an augmented "street samurai" and mercenary for a shadowy ex-military officer named Armitage, who offers to cure Case in exchange for his services as a hacker. Case jumps at the chance to regain his life as a "console cowboy," but neither Case nor Molly knows what Armitage is really planning. Case's nervous system is repaired using new technology that Armitage offers the clinic as payment, but he soon learns from Armitage that sacs of the poison that first crippled him have been placed in his blood vessels as well. Armitage promises Case that if he completes his work in time, the sacs will be removed; otherwise they will dissolve, disabling him again. He also has Case's pancreas replaced and new tissue grafted into his liver, leaving Case incapable of metabolizing cocaine or amphetamines and apparently ending his drug addiction.

Case develops a close personal relationship with Molly, who suggests that he begin looking into Armitage's background. Meanwhile, Armitage assigns them their first job: they must steal a ROM module that contains the saved consciousness of one of Case's mentors, legendary cyber-cowboy McCoy Pauley, nicknamed "Dixie Flatline." Armitage needs Pauley's hacking expertise, and the ROM construct is stored in the corporate headquarters of media conglomerate Sense/Net. A street gang named the "Panther Moderns" is hired to create a simulated terrorist attack on Sense/Net. The diversion allows Molly to penetrate the building and steal Dixie's ROM with Case unlocking the computer safeguards on the way in and out from within the matrix.

Case and Molly continue to investigate Armitage, discovering his former identity of Colonel Willis Corto. Corto was a member of "Operation Screaming Fist," which planned on infiltrating and disrupting Soviet computer systems from ultralight aircraft dropped over Russia. The Russian military had learned of the idea and installed defenses to render the attack impossible, but the military went ahead with Screaming Fist, with a new secret purpose of testing these Russian defenses. As the Operation team attacked a Soviet computer center, EMP weapons shut down their computers and flight systems, and Corto and his men were targeted by Soviet laser defenses. He and a few survivors commandeered a Soviet military helicopter and escaped over the heavily guarded Finnish border. Everyone was killed except Corto, who was seriously wounded and heavily mutilated by Finnish defense forces attacking the helicopter as it landed. After some months in the hospital, Corto was visited by a Government military official and then medically rebuilt to be able to provide what he came to realize was fake testimony, designed to mislead the public and protect the military officers who had covered up knowledge of the EMP weapons. After the trials, Corto snapped, killing the Government official who had contacted him and then disappearing into the criminal underworld.

In Istanbul, the team recruits Peter Riviera, an artist, thief, and drug addict who is able to project detailed holographic illusions with the aid of sophisticated cybernetic implants. Although Riviera is a sociopath, Armitage coerces him into joining the team. The trail leads Case and Molly to Wintermute, a powerful artificial intelligence created by the Tessier-Ashpool family. The Tessier-Ashpools spend most of their inactive time in cryonic preservation in a labyrinthine mansion known as Villa Straylight, located at one end of Freeside, a cylindrical space habitat at L5, which functions primarily as a Las Vegas-style space resort for the wealthy.

Wintermute's nature is finally revealedit is one-half of a super-AI entity planned by the family, although its exact purpose is unknown. The Turing Law Code governing AIs bans the construction of such entities; to get around this, it had to be built as two separate AIs. Wintermute (housed in a computer mainframe in Berne, Switzerland) was programmed by the Tessier-Ashpools with a need to merge with its other half, Neuromancer (whose physical mainframe is installed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Unable to achieve this merger on its own, Wintermute recruited Armitage and his team to help complete the goal. Case is tasked with entering cyberspace to pierce the Turing-imposed software barriers using a powerful icebreaker program. At the same time, Riviera is to obtain the password to the Turing lock from Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool, an unfrozen daughter clone and the current CEO of the family's corporation, Tessier-Ashpool SA. Wintermute believes Riviera will pose an irresistible temptation to her, and that she will give him the password. The password must be spoken into an ornate computer terminal located in Villa Straylight, and entered simultaneously as Case pierces the software barriers in cyberspaceotherwise the Turing lock will remain intact.

Armitage's team attracts the attention of the Turing Police, whose job is to prevent AIs from exceeding their built-in limitations. As Molly and Riviera gain entrance to Villa Straylight, three officers arrest Case and take him into custody; Wintermute manipulates the orbital casino's security and maintenance systems and kills the officers, allowing Case to escape. The Armitage personality starts to disintegrate and revert to the Corto personality as he relives Screaming Fist. It is revealed that in the past, Wintermute had originally contacted Corto through a bedside computer during his convalescence, eventually convincing Corto that he was Armitage. Wintermute used him to persuade Case and Molly to help it merge with its twin AI, Neuromancer. Finally, Armitage becomes the shattered Corto again, but his newfound personality is short-lived, as he is killed when Wintermute ejects him through an airlock into space.

Inside Villa Straylight, Riviera meets Lady 3Jane and tries to stop the mission, helping Lady 3Jane and Hideo, her ninja bodyguard, to capture Molly. Worried about Molly and operating under orders from Wintermute, Case tracks her down with help from Maelcum, his Rastafarian pilot. Neuromancer attempts to trap Case within a cyber-construct where he finds the consciousness of Linda Lee, his girlfriend from Chiba City, who was murdered by one of Case's underworld contacts. Case manages to escape after Maelcum gives him an overdose of a drug that can bypass his augmented liver and pancreas. Then, with Wintermute guiding them, Case goes with Maelcum to confront Lady 3Jane, Riviera, and Hideo. Riviera tries to kill Case, but Lady 3Jane is sympathetic towards Case and Molly, and Hideo protects him. Riviera blinds Hideo with a concentrated laser pulse from his projector implant, but flees when he learns that the ninja is just as adept without his sight. Molly then explains to Case that Riviera is doomed anyway, as he has been fatally poisoned by his drugs, which she had spiked. With Lady 3Jane in possession of the password, the team makes it to the computer terminal. Case enters cyberspace to guide the icebreaker to penetrate its target; Lady 3Jane is induced to give up her password, and the lock is opened. Wintermute unites with Neuromancer, fusing into a superconsciousness. The poison in Case's bloodstream is washed out, and he and Molly are profusely paid for their efforts, while Pauley's ROM construct is apparently erased, at his own request.

In the epilogue, Molly leaves Case. Case finds a new girlfriend, resumes his hacking work, and spends his earnings from the mission replacing his internal organs so that he can continue his previous drug use. Wintermute/Neuromancer contacts him, saying that it has become "the sum total of the works, the whole show," and has begun looking for other AIs like itself. Scanning old recorded transmissions from the 1970s, the super-AI finds an AI transmitting from the Alpha Centauri star system. In the matrix, Case hears inhuman laughter, a trait associated with Pauley during Case's work with his ROM construct, thus suggesting that Pauley was not erased after all, but instead worked out a side deal with Wintermute/Neuromancer to be freed from the construct so he could exist in the matrix.

In the end, while logged into the matrix, Case catches a glimpse of himself, his dead girlfriend Linda Lee, and Neuromancer. The implication of the sighting is that Neuromancer created a copy of Case's consciousness when it previously tried to trap him. The copy of Case's consciousness now exists with that of Linda's, in the matrix, where they are together forever.

Neuromancer's release was not greeted with fanfare, but it hit a cultural nerve,[10] quickly becoming an underground word-of-mouth hit.[2] It became the first novel to win the Nebula, the Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award for paperback original,[11] an unprecedented achievement described by the Mail & Guardian as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt, Booker and Pulitzer prizes in the same year".[12] The novel thereby legitimized cyberpunk as a mainstream branch of science fiction literature. It is among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history, and appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.[13] The novel was also nominated for a British Science Fiction Award in 1984.[14]

Neuromancer is considered "the archetypal cyberpunk work".[15] and outside science fiction, it gained unprecedented critical and popular attention,[1] as an "evocation of life in the late 1980s",[16] although The Observer noted that "it took the New York Times 10 years" to mention the novel.[17] By 2007 it had sold more than 6.5million copies worldwide.[11]

The novel has had significant linguistic influence, popularizing such terms as cyberspace and ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics). Gibson himself coined the term "cyberspace" in his novelette "Burning Chrome", published in 1982 by Omni magazine.[18] It was only through its use in Neuromancer that the term Cyberspace gained enough recognition to become the de facto term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s.[19][20] The portion of Neuromancer usually cited in this respect is:

The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.[21]

The 1999 cyberpunk science fiction film The Matrix particularly draws from Neuromancer both eponym and usage of the term "matrix".[22] "After watching The Matrix, Gibson commented that the way that the film's creators had drawn from existing cyberpunk works was 'exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis" he had relied upon in his own writing.'"[23]

In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide Web), after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks "[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?" (269).

Norman Spinrad, in his 1986 essay "The Neuromantics" which appears in his non-fiction collection Science Fiction in the Real World, saw the book's title as a triple pun: "neuro" referring to the nervous system; "necromancer"; and "new romancer". The cyberpunk genre, the authors of which he suggested be called "neuromantics", was "a fusion of the romantic impulse with science and technology", according to Spinrad.

Writing in F&SF in 2005, Charles de Lint noted that while Gibson's technological extrapolations had proved imperfect (in particular, his failure to anticipate the cellular telephone), "Imagining story, the inner workings of his characters' minds, and the world in which it all takes place are all more important.[24]

Lawrence Person in his "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" (1998) identified Neuromancer as "the archetypal cyberpunk work",[15] and in 2005, Time included it in their list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that "[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [Neuromancer] was when it first appeared."[13] Literary critic Larry McCaffery described the concept of the matrix in Neuromancer as a place where "data dance with human consciousness... human memory is literalized and mechanized... multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman."[1] Gibson later commented on himself as an author circa Neuromancer that "I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money," and referred to the novel as "an adolescent's book".[25] The success of Neuromancer was to effect the 35-year-old Gibson's emergence from obscurity.[26]

In 1989, Epic Comics published a 48-page graphic novel version by Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen.[27][28] It only covers the first two chapters, "Chiba City Blues" and "The Shopping Expedition", and was never continued.[29]

In the 1990s a version of Neuromancer was published as one of the Voyager Company's Expanded Books series of hypertext-annotated HyperCard stacks for the Apple Macintosh (specifically the PowerBook).[30]

A video game adaptation of the novelalso titled Neuromancerwas published in 1988 by Interplay. Designed by Bruce J. Balfour, Brian Fargo, Troy A. Miles, and Michael A. Stackpole, the game had many of the same locations and themes as the novel, but a different protagonist and plot. It was available for a variety of platforms, including the Amiga, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and for DOS-based computers. It featured, as a soundtrack, a computer adaptation of the Devo song "Some Things Never Change."

According to an episode of the American version of Beyond 2000, the original plans for the game included a dynamic soundtrack composed by Devo and a real-time 3d rendered movie of the events the player went through.[citation needed] Psychologist and futurist Dr. Timothy Leary was involved, but very little documentation seems to exist about this proposed second game, which was perhaps too grand a vision for 1988 home computing.

The BBC World Service Drama production of Neuromancer aired in two one-hour parts, on 8 and 15 September 2002. Dramatised by Mike Walker, and directed by Andy Jordan, it starred Owen McCarthy as Case, Nicola Walker as Molly, James Laurenson as Armitage, John Shrapnel as Wintermute, Colin Stinton as Dixie, David Webber as Maelcum, David Holt as Riviera, Peter Marinker as Ashpool, and Andrew Scott as The Finn. It can no longer be heard on The BBC World Service Archive. [1]

In Finland, Yle Radioteatteri produced a 4-part radio play of Neuromancer.

Gibson read an abridged version of his novel Neuromancer on four audio cassettes for Time Warner Audio Books (1994). An unabridged version of this book was read by Arthur Addison and made available from Books on Tape (1997). In 2011, Penguin Audiobooks produced a new unabridged recording of the book, read by Robertson Dean.

Neuromancer the Opera is an adaptation written by Jayne Wenger and Marc Lowenstein (libretto) and Richard Marriott of the Club Foot Orchestra (music). A production was scheduled to open on March 3, 1995 at the Julia Morgan Theater (now the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts) in Berkeley, California, featuring Club Foot Orchestra in the pit and extensive computer graphics imagery created by a world-wide network of volunteers. Unfortunately this premiere did not take place and the work has yet to be performed in full.[31]

There have been several proposed film adaptations of Neuromancer, with drafts of scripts written by British director Chris Cunningham and Chuck Russell. The box packaging for the video game adaptation had even carried the promotional mention for a major motion picture to come from "Cabana Boy Productions." None of these projects have come to fruition, though Gibson had stated his belief that Cunningham is the only director with a chance of doing the film correctly.[32]

In May 2007, reports emerged that a film was in the works, with Joseph Kahn (director of Torque) in line to direct and Milla Jovovich in the lead role.[33] In May 2010 this story was supplanted with news that Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube and Splice, had taken over directing duties and would rewrite the screenplay.[34] In March 2011, with the news that Seven Arts and GFM Films would be merging their distribution operations, it was announced that the joint venture would be purchasing the rights to Neuromancer under Vincenzo Natali's direction.[35] In August, 2012, GFM Films announced that it had begun casting for the film (with offers made to Liam Neeson and Mark Wahlberg), but no cast members have been confirmed yet.[36] In November 2013, Natali shed some light on the production situation; announcing that the script had been completed for 'years', and had been written with assistance from Gibson himself.[37]

In May 2015, it was reported that movie got new funding from Chinese company C2M, but Natali is no longer available for directing the movie.[38]

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Neuromancer - Wikipedia