Thinking at William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, it come to my mind a reflection about the future of cyberpunk.

Usually cyberpunk literature used the "future" like preferred playgrounds. Now most of the theme of that kind of literature are now pretty actual.

Do you think/hope cyberpunk will remain science-fiction/future oriented or a mirror of the hi-tech present?

I think that a cyberpunk mirror of our days will be useless, his strength was in describing things that in the '80 cannot be imagined.
Otherwise, it's my humble opinion :)

I think I see cyberpunk more as a style than a theme. When you read Mirrorshades, Bruce Sterling's "cyberpunk anthology", their isn't really a common theme. William Gibson's story isn't even set in the future and it's supposed to be the story that started the whole cyberpunk thing.

As is often the case when I contribute to forum threads, I'm not quite sure what my point is anymore ;-) I suppose my opinion is I don't really care. Pattern Recognition is an excellent book. I don't know whether Gibson's next book will be set in the future or not but I bet it's going to be good regardless. :-)

as far as i read it, it is good, and it is set in the present days

About to finish spook country, probly the first Gibson's book aiming to build an 'effective' climax (in formulaic terms). I find it terrific and amazingly now. Set in the present mmmh yes... still gps tech is not advanced as Gibson exerts it, so it's a bit of science fiction still... Amazing. Really.

@Anatole: cool. I'm about to start Spook Country now. Really looking forward to it!

I'm not quite sure whether it makes sense to write about a future that has became reality. gibson wrote neuromancer on a typewriter, snow crash was created before the whole second-life hype. a lot of what they wrote about is already there to be seen.

cyberpunk now can be amusing, but rarely is it visionary let alone socialy insightful. gibson in my opinion is not only a storyteller but also a hell of an analist. it's good that instead of copying the same ideas over and over again he went for pattern recognition.

The funny thing about Gibson's last two "non science fiction" books is that I still read them... as science fiction. I think what it shows is that we now live in a world where technology is getting to a stage where it is becoming increasingly esoteric (if this is the right word). People use incredibly advanced technology everyday without knowing how it actually works. And isn't this one of the main themes in cyberpunk?

today my lecturer somehow ended up wandering whether the whole harry potter fan phenomenon isn't just kids missing the taste of spirituality. Then I thought that the guy never had hp in his hands, and it's just kids exchanging obscure electrons and semiconductors for brandishing wands. in other words: exchanging magic for magic.

synchronicity

Thanks for your words makrauchenia and Martin Laine. The sum of your different positions is reflecting exactly what i think myself.

Classical cyberpunk had a sense of wonder typical of Sci-Fi that now has been lost, because nearly all the themes became "common" in the present world. To recover this "magic" effect we probably need something new and different.

But Gibson is really a "seer" for what imply social analysis and future use of technology. So even now we can perceive his new books like "cyberpunk" even if set in present days. They always transmit a sense of anticipation, a look to something that already exists, but that will be "common" only in a few years.

I find really interesting the thinking of makrauchenia in the Dec 18, 2007 post. There will be a lot of suggestions that could originate from that words. Maybe i have to open a new discussion starting from here.

Actually I think ciberpunk will have room in the fiction area until some real A.I. comes up, which doesn't seem close nowadays. Also, if you look at books like Egan's Permutation City or Vinge's Rainbows End, they depict "ciberpunk" scenarios different from that of Gibson, but equally believable (Vinge's more so than Egan's, though). The point is, I think, that science fiction will always have a further future to look to, and the same happens with ciberpunk, I think.

there is also the question whether ai is actually achieveable

may be as well as not, but i think there will always be the possibility to think about it.

Anyway i don't feel like cyberpunk is so focused on AI itself, so, get it or not, there will always be some distopy available for cyberpunk to exploit.