explanation: https://lemmy.world/post/49898951

It's here! The first teaser! Streaming Jan 22, 2027!

Honestly, I really like the visuals in this teaser. I'm more excited for this now than I was before. It looks very cyberpunk.

Coming soon to Prime Video.

A list of illustrated literature spanning Western comics, Japanese manga and graphic novels. Sorted by publication date.

If you are getting 429 Too Many Request error you can read it at: https://web.archive.org/web/20260712230824/https://shellzine.net/cyberpunk-comics/

I thought the first two episodes would be available today but it looks like it's just the first episode. New episodes will be added weekly

I hate clickbait listicle youtube videos too, but this video actually came up with a pretty good list of obscure cyberpunk movies and I wanted to talk about them. Just to save you a click (so you don't have to watch the video), here are the 10 movies it mentions:

1. Hardware (1990)
2. Nirvana (1997)
3. Avalon (2001)
4. Sleep Dealer (2008)
5. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
6. Metropolis (2001)
7. Possessor (2020)
8. Mars Express (2023)
9. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
10. World on a Wire (1973)

I've already seen all but one movie on this list, but I'm obsessive about cyberpunk so that isn't much of a surprise. Personally, I would recommend Hardware, Nirvana, Sleep Dealer, and Mars Express. I think those are legitimately good movies, although I wouldn't say they were MASTERPIECES THE ALGORITHM BURIED!!!1!! (I hate clickbait). A Scanner Darkly is pretty good too but that one got a wide release, I wouldn't say the algorithm buried it. Also, if you haven't seen Nirvana, it's very difficult to find online in English. I recommend the one posted to the internet archive but let me know if you find a better copy.

Otherwise, I find Avalon and Metropolis boring. And I don't think Possessor is cyberpunk at all. It's a scifi body horror by a Cronenberg so it isn't a bad movie by any means, but I personally wouldn't have included it in this list. And Japanese cyberpunk is so very strange I still think it's weird to call it cyberpunk. If you haven't seen any Japanese cyberpunk before, I recommend starting with Burst City since it almost has a coherent plot (more than Tetsuo anyway).

World on a Wire is the only movie on this list I haven't seen before. It's a German TV mini-series from 1973 so I don't feel bad about missing this one. I guess it's based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3, which was also adapted into The Thirteenth Floor and I have seen that one. I'm not sure if I'm obsessive enough to watch a German TV mini-series from 1973 just because some youtube listicle told me to but if someone here would recommend it maybe you can convince me.

Thrill Switch is a murder mystery set in a cyberpunk world. In it, the majority of people spend all their time jacked into cyberspace but if you die in cyberspace you don't die in the real world. At least, that's the plan. The story is about someone who figured out how to kill people in cyberspace and went on a killing spree. That person was captured and sent to prison.

The book takes place seven years later, when someone seems to have figured out the serial killer's trick as copycat killings start happening in cyberspace. That's the "Silence of the Lambs" part of the book. The detective main character spends time interviewing the original killer for clues on how to capture this copycat (without falling for the killer's mind games).

Overall, I think it's a pretty good book, but there was one plot point that bugged me (non-spoiler). In this version of cyberspace, people can look like whatever they want (similar to Snow Crash or Ready Player One). And yet, real physics exist there. So gravity exists and you can bump into people (and get stuck in traffic). So in that sense, it's more like The Thirteenth Floor. But the part that bugs me is pain exists too. It can't be turned off. And I just can't accept a world where the majority of people live their entire lies online yet they feel physical pain if their avatars are harmed. Also, while not being able to die in cyberspace is a main plot point in the book, an avatar dying in cyberspace is so painful that it sends people to the (real world) hospital. If that was actually how things worked, anyone with a weak heart or other infirmary would absolutely die if their avatar was killed. People would definitely be dying in cyberspace.

However, while I think it's a terrible idea to experience pain in cyberspace with no "off" switch or pain dial, this wasn't an oversight on the author's part. There's a lot of discussion in the book about whether dying in cyberspace should kill the person, just to provide some consequences for their actions. The argument one character makes is that if there are no consequences for people's actions in cyberspace then they'll start feeding their darkest desires just feel something after becoming so jaded.

Since pain and death (and murder) are such major themes in this book, there are multiple scenes of torture. Fortunately, most (if not all) torture is done with knives. Considering how gruesome torture scenes can get, I think this book keeps it relatively tame. Also, while there are some references to sexual violence in a character's past, there are no scenes of sexual violence in the book. Again, given the subject material, I'm glad the author showed some restraint. It could've been a lot worse.

I read a lot of random indie cyberpunk novels and most of them aren't worth discussing. But I had a lot of thoughts about this one and I wanted to talk through them. I don't know how strong of a recommendation I would give it for others to read, but the author definitely had more to say than most cyberpunk novels these days.

Here's the kindle book, although I listened to the audiobook on Hoopla.

And we’re back with a new, much longer issue of my Skulljack comic, now with more micro plastics per square millimeter: https://michaelwmoss.com/skulljack-2

It looks like Nivalis, the game that takes place in the same world as Cloudpunk, now has a release date of Sept 29. It also has a new name: Nivalis Nights.

This game is basically a life-sim where you run a ramen shop in a cyberpunk city. Or at least, that's how it starts. The game's description makes it sound like it'll grow from there.

Grow your business, manage restaurants and nightclubs, make friends and enemies, buy and decorate apartments, go fishing and maybe even find love in a cyberpunk city that stretches from the ocean to the clouds.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1488490/Nivalis_Nights/

Well this is escalating quickly... we just got character designs yesterday and now there's already a full teaser! Can't wait!

It was suggested I post this here too. I hope you like it!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48807332

A few folks mentioned my last piece looked more cyberpunk and less magical. I decided to lean into it as I loved Shadowrun and Johnny Mnemonic in my youth. What are your thoughts on the character?

Timelapse: https://bsky.app/profile/ballshapedman.bsky.social/post/3mph6zeddrc2y

I didn't realize they released a poster for Edgerunners 2 so I wanted to make this a separate post.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/television/p/2171992/cyberpunk-edgerunners-2-reveals-female-main-cast-member-taliya-yang-fall-2026-release-d

Another trailer for the new Ghost in the Shell anime. I don't know if this had been announced before but this trailer shows that it'll be re-telling the plot from the first movie. That is, it'll be about the Puppet Master.

This video doesn't say anything I didn't already know, but I think it does a good job of explaining where cyberpunk came from and why what we have today isn't really cyberpunk anymore.

Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play action RPG. It looks like they'll be adding Lucy and Rebecca (from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) as playable characters. This mod/DLC/expansion/whatever will be available June 8. So, Monday.

I've never played this game before and I don't know anything about it, but if it's free... maybe I should give it a shot.

Not a joke, just a movie quote and words of advice from J-Bone (Johnny Mnemonic). Also, I like the idea of this image popping up as you scroll mindlessly through posts.

I actually found this image as a sticker if that interests you.

I think there's some debate over whether Escape From New York is cyberpunk or just post-apocalyptic but I think it's close enough that I wanted to share this news.

Long sonic stimulation for all netrunners here who need to focus

Unix nerd dissects a blink-and-you-miss-it shot from Tron: Legacy. And I'm here for it.

I like how he explains which commands are valid and which ones are invalid (or at least questionable) without ranting about these stupid hollywood types. He knows it's a movie, he just wanted to dissect what you see on screen.

Most of the explanation is within collapsible sections, so make sure you expand everything to read it.

It was recently announced that 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In' is going to be turned into a movie. I'd never heard of it before but the synopsis sounded pretty cyberpunk and since it's just a short story, I decided to give it a try.

It's crazy to me that this story was written in 1974. It's about an ugly girl who gets hired by a megacorp to remotely control the body of a beautiful celebrity in order to sell products in a world where advertising is banned. It's literally about a social media influencer in a cyberpunk world and was written in 1974. Also, while the author is listed as James Tiptree Jr, that's actually the pen name of Alice Sheldon. She used a male pen name in order to get published in the 1970s. The wikipedia page has an entire section about the role of gender in the story and the author.

The story is only about 30 pages long so it's a quick read and I highly recommend it. The author even has what I would consider a "cyberpunk voice" where the narrator is constantly yelling at the reader. The narrator calls you a "zombie" and a "dummy" and it just feels more aggressive than I'm used to reading in a story from 1974. It very much feels like a precursor to cyberpunk writing.

As always, being a short story, it should be pretty easy to find online. Here's a text version of the story but I'm sure you can find a pdf if that's what you prefer.

I'll admit I don't have an account at cyberspace.online so this is mostly just a post to bring it to other people's attention who might be interested.

Cyberspace.online is a social network that intentionally attempts to re-create the feel of the "old" internet. It basically behaves like Twitter except It doesn't support video and only allows for monochrome images. Instead of those fancy bells and whistles, it has an interface you can run in a terminal. It also has a Commodore 64 theme and a VT320 theme. So that's the audience they're shooting for. This is an anti-AI, anti-algorithm social network from the past. They also have a chat room feature that mimics IRC.

Given the restrictions they're imposing on themselves, I think it's obvious what type of audience they're trying to attract; the Gen X and elder Millennials who remember this version of the internet. And yet, they're also working on an interactive 3d world called The Grid, which is entirely made up of wireframes. So they aren't just trying to mimic the internet of the 90s, they're trying to mimic a cyberpunk internet of the 90s.

Overall, I think this is an interesting concept. It has been online for 7 months and so far has attracted 11,000 users. For a social network, that's incredibly small. But for a hobby project, this seems like a massive success. And I'm curious to see what The Grid looks like when they're done.

With all that said, this feels like Mastodon but with fewer features. It isn't open source, it isn't federated, it isn't encrypted. If you want a cyberpunk version of Mastodon, you could just go with a cyberpunk-themed instance like https://corteximplant.com/ and keep all its modern features and larger user-base. Of course, this project is for the people who actively don't want that, and I figured there might be some Lemmy users here who agree.

https://cyberspace.online/

https://greasygoat.substack.com/p/arc-review-midwest-chrome-by-michael

The review is perhaps a little dramatic but I'm still looking forward to the book. My favorite cyberpunk scenes and stories take place in rural areas (Turner's brother's place in Count Zero, basically all of The Peripheral and some of the later scenes in Virtual Light). so I'm interested to see what they do with the setting here:

I feel like the review didn't say much about what the story was about so here's the description from the publisher :

A burned-out detective trapped in a cold case finds a curious lead—the severed head of an android who cries for help in the voice of his dead wife. It has her memories. It has her personality. But is it…Elsie?

Welcome to the frayed-wire-and-spare-parts autopsy of a near-future Nebraska, lit bright by neon promises and smoldering with broken dreams. Society is high on body augmentations and self-interest and low on moral reckonings.

Harlan's cold case takes center stage in the novella Our Bird Trills Mechanical, but desperate people willing to do whatever it takes fill the pages: people like Lucian Lucky, an augment-addicted prizefighter who must decide if the cost of winning is worth the size of the purse; or Javier, a love-struck henchman who’s fallen for the niece of his violent boss.

Freaks, fighters, fixers and f&%k-ups: fortune favors the corrupt in MIDWESTERN CHROME.

When I first watched this trailer, I assumed it was made by the same people as Katana Zero or was maybe a sequel. But nope, I'm pretty sure this game is unrelated to Katana Zero. Looks like fun though.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2685100/NOIR_BLOOM/