The Blind Spot is about a city where no one has any privacy. Everything they say and do is recorded. But there's one district in this city, called The Blind Spot, which offers full anonymity and privacy. Everyone even puts on masks when they enter this district. There's a delicate truce between the residents of the city and The Blind Spot.

The book centers around two main characters, one who lives in The Blind Spot, and one who is a resident of the city. The resident's storyline is really where data privacy and the anonymity of The Blind Spot are on display. The residents of the city have an app on their phone which notifies them anytime someone (anywhere in the city) says something nice about them. The main character is desperate for approval so he intentionally says lots of nice things about his co-workers out loud as he walks to work just so they'll be notified that he said something nice. But there's a rumor that you could jailbreak the app and actually hear everything someone says about you, not just the nice things...

Unfortunately, the other main character, the one who lives in The Blind Spot, has basically every cybernetic enhancement possible. It makes her character boring in my opinion. Her storyline and the conflict she's trying to resolve is fine, but I think the author made her so overpowered that a lot of the tension goes away.

The novel is full of your standard cyberpunk tropes with low-lifes, crime bosses, hackers, cybernetic enhancements, giant corporations trying to keep the populace subdued, etc. But it's rare to find a cyberpunk novel that also touches on privacy and anonymity. That's really where I thought this book stood out. Unfortunately, aside from some fun ideas with the resident's storyline, the author doesn't really have anything to say about privacy in general. I read the second book in the series and it's about Ms. Plot Armor going on an adventure in a different city and data privacy is no longer a theme at all. So yeah, this is a soft recommendation. It's a fun pulp cyberpunk read but nothing more.

https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spot-Science-Fiction-Thriller-ebook/dp/B07SGFYF3W/

I know if I really wanted data privacy handled in a cyberpunk novel I could read Little Brother, but that isn't cyberpunk enough for me. It's a great YA novel but it's more "near future" than cyberpunk.

A crew of low-lifes working with an android in a dirty old spaceship for a faceless corporation that treats them as expendable.

Obviously the movie is really scifi horror, but it does hit a lot of cyberpunk themes. So do you consider Alien to be cyberpunk? If you don't, what would need to change to make it cyberpunk?

I usually include a trailer for the movies I reference but come on, it's Alien. You already know about this movie.
It's streaming on Hulu if you haven't watched it recently.

I'd be interested in seeing a movie based on Stray, but I'm not a fan of this statement:

Annapurna Animation head Robert Baird told Entertainment Weekly that the film is in active development and that it’ll be the “greatest hopepunk movie that's ever been made.”

"Hopepunk"? I'm so tired of the "-punk" suffix just meaning "genre" these days.

I think you could probably call Nirvana a hidden gem. It made $10 million at the box office in Italy at the time... but I have no idea if that's a lot for an Italian movie.

It hits all the cyberpunk themes and cyberpunk visuals, but it's hard to say how big of a budget it had since this isn't a Hollywood movie. What I'm trying to say is it doesn't feel like a low-budget indie film but it also doesn't feel like a big-budget American film either. It just falls into this weird 90's mid-budget category. They have lots of interesting sets and locations but it's still with 90s effects.

The story is about a video game designer whose current game he's working on gets attacked by a computer virus which somehow gives the main video game character sentience (happens all the time, right?). The video game character hates living in a video game world and begs the designer to delete him. So the game designer hires a hacker to help him hack into his company's servers and delete the game before it releases.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO4Q_6hr5II
This is a small Italian movie from almost 30 years ago, so it isn't streaming anywhere... except maybe the internet archive.

Both seasons of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 are on Netflix. They already released a recap/compilation movie of season 1 called Sustainable War, now a season 2 recap/compilation movie is coming for those too impatient to watch all the episodes.

Like the poster says, it'll be in japanese cinemas in November. No word on when this movie will be added to Netflix, but I assume it will at some point.

SAC_2045 uses CGI animation so it's been pretty divisive among GitS fans. The story is solid though if you can get past the animation style.

If you aren't up to date on Ghost in the Shell, there's also a 5-episode OVA called Ghost in the Shell: Arise which came out in 2013. Those five 1-hour episodes were recut into ten 30-min episodes, called Ghost in the Shell: Arise: Alternative Architecture. Those ten 30-min episodes were then recut into a single movie, called Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie. All iterations of that show are streaming on Crunchyroll, so you can watch it however you want!

Serial Experiments Lain is definitely a classic cyberpunk anime. But it's also incredibly slow. This isn't an action anime, it's a psychological anime. And I wonder just how dated it feels. Aside from the CRT monitors everywhere, are the themes still applicable today? I think the anime was enamored with the idea of what The Internet could become. But now, in 2023, does that message still hold up?

What do you think? For those who have already watched Lain, would you recommend it today to someone who has never heard of it?

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5y4nQ5Y1V8
It's streaming on Funimation. For some reason it isn't on Crunchyroll yet, even though Crunchyroll and Funimation were supposed to merge libraries over a year ago.

Cyberpunk 2077 is getting an update to version 2.0 on the same day the Phantom Liberty DLC releases (September 26). Here's the list of what's included in 2.0 vs the items you'll have to pay $30 to get with the DLC.

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-update-2-0-free-patch-1850797911

Ok, clickbait title aside, it isn't quite a lovecraftian horror. But this is the closest to a lovecraftian cyberpunk novel I've ever come across.

The novel is about a hacker named Debian who joins up with a crew of organ harvesters. The organ harvesters start noticing that their victims have something... odd in their biology. And then it gets a little "Shadow Over Innsmouth" in my opinion after that.

I'll admit I initially bought the book because there was a character named Debian but I ended up really enjoying it.

https://www.amazon.com/Xenoform-Mike-Berry-ebook/dp/B005GXLKGO/

Big budget, A-list actors, lots of marketing, great movie. Is anyone here not aware of Dredd?

I keep trying to come up with recommendations for cyberpunk movies that people might not have seen. Yet most obscure movies are obscure for a reason. It's usually "this movie is good but ____" or "it's a fun movie if you can ignore ____" So for most of these recommendations, I hesitate to say "this movie is awesome and you need to see it!" because I don't want to mislead anyone. Of course, this means all the movies that I truly do think are awesome I assume everyone has already seen and I don't need to suggest them.

But maybe enough time has passed that some people here haven't seen Dredd? Well, if you haven't, you should. It's awesome. Just don't watch the 1995 Judge Dredd movie with Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider because that one is not good.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqqgrUna28w

Of course, I say everyone should watch Dredd but it isn't streaming anywhere... except DirecTV I guess, if that counts. But I made a post earlier where I mentioned I've been avoiding recommending movies that you can't watch online and some people said I should recommend them anyway. So here we are.

I've been debating whether or not to recommend Akudama Drive. The anime definitely starts out in your standard cyberpunk city with giant billboards and bright neon lights, but then the majority of the series actually takes place on a train and in the wasteland. That wouldn't immediately disqualify it from being cyberpunk of course, but the show also focuses more on the characters and their interactions than your standard cyberpunk themes.

I wouldn't say this is a "style over substance" anime, even though there is a lot of style, it's just that the substance here is something other than cyberpunk themes in my opinion. The core theme of the anime is really "what does it mean to be a criminal?"

So the anime is well-made, has great animation, and great characters. And it takes place in a cyberpunk city for part of it but in my opinion it doesn't have many cyberpunk themes. For those who've seen it, am I being too harsh? Is it obviously a cyberpunk anime and I'm just being too nit-picky?

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47QY-u0CXMo
It's streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll

I'm not saying Zone 414 is a bad movie, I'm saying it's a bad cyberpunk movie.

Here's the premise: rich old guy hires a retired detective to enter a zone inhabited by androids to retrieve his lost daughter. Sounds like the perfect setup for a cyberpunk movie. And yet, if you watched this movie with the sound off, I'm not sure you could even tell it's supposed to be scifi. For most of the characters, we only know they're androids because someone said they were.

I think there are a total of 2 scenes early in the movie which show these characters are indeed androids. Yet for the rest of the movie, there is no hint of anything scifi/futuristic in the sets or the characters. I'm guessing the budget they could've spent on VFX was spent on hiring Guy Pearce instead. The image attached to this post never happens in the movie. There are no building-sized advertisements; those are just images of the female lead superimposed on buildings for marketing purposes.

Now, I'm not someone who needs neon lights and cybernetic limbs to call something cyberpunk, but this movie is really just "rich old guy hires a retired detective to enter the red-light district of a city to retrieve his lost daughter." When I say there's no hint of anything scifi/futuristic, I mean the characters use rotary phones, listen to record players, and drive in standard yellow taxis.

Can something set in the present day (or even in the past, given the rotary phones) be considered cyberpunk? I don't mean retro-futurism, I mean nothing scifi at all. Are there cyberpunk themes in this movie? Somewhat. A rich person hires a detective to avoid staining his giant corporation's image. Are the themes strong enough to stand on their own without the accompanying visuals? That's where I say no.

To reiterate, I'm not saying this is a bad movie. If you want to watch a movie about a retired cop tracking down a lost rich girl, I don't think it's a poor execution. But the android aspect of this movie is really down-played in my opinion and that's all there was to make this a scifi.

Have any of you watched this movie? Do you disagree?

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7GYp9VLcow
The movie is streaming on Netflix

The movie is about low-lifes and there's a strong (overwhelming?) anti-consumerism theme, but it's really an alien invasion movie and the only high-tech comes from the aliens. Otherwise, it's a "modern day" scifi.

So what do you think? Do you consider They Live to be cyberpunk?

Here's a clip if you haven't seen the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z9hMartaFc
As far as I can tell, it's only streaming on Starz right now.