I forget where I read it, but I was reading an essay that was talking about how Gibson-esque cyberpunk was very much "Future dystopia, omnipresent technology will gradually erode humanity's bodies and soul, corporations will dominate everything."


But then you have something like Snow Crash which, while it's still a little "off," was remarkably prescient about some things. The 'Net has not destroyed us. Constant access to information hasn't turned us into drones. Technology can be kind of cool! And so on.

Snow Crash is still cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk after we've all bought iPods and Droids, looked around, and gone "Huh. World didn't end." It's a bit more optimistic.


Older cyberpunk feels dated because it warns us about the possible horrors of future tech. Now we HAVE some of that future tech, and while it's not all daisies, it's just a different worldview than the ones that read Neuromancer all those years ago.



That said, I don't think cyberpunk is dead, by a long shot-. Its themes and ideas are definitely still relevant- Corporations are still getting bigger and more powerful, the integration of our lives with the Internet is nowhere near finished, and as cool as Snow Crash was, I would prefer NOT having the US subdivided into suburban franchise nations.


I think all the different 'punks I listed in my above TVTropes post might just be a reaction to that datedness. "Punk" is an attitude: "The heroes of these stories were marginalized, seedy, and rebellious, in other words "punks."" I wouldn't be surprised if authors who grew up loving cyberpunk were simply interested to try the 'punk aesthetic in new settings.