Post-cyberpunk: what you need to know about the latest trends in speculative fiction

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Cyberpunk has become an integral part of our pop culture. Everyone is familiar with at least some works in the genre and their particular flavour of dystopian technologically advanced universes. But science fiction is always evolving. In this piece, we’ll be taking a look at cyberpunk’s successors and the futures they envision — from pan-African empires to shopping culture gone amok.

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From Jonathan Swift to the Wachowski sisters, speculative fiction played an important social and cultural role. These works of art invited us to collectively reassess the choices we were making, look critically at the unstoppable machine of progress. Cyberpunk and its derivatives reigned supreme in the era of computers, raising questions about the ethics of modern technology, the nature of digital reality, and the role of humans in a world run by machines. But now that the Matrix is 20 years old, cyberpunk is on its way out.

Many predictions made by these works now seem improbable or irrelevant. The ‘low life, high tech’ settings make for entertaining content, but it’s just as possible that future humans will never live in digital slums and run-down nuclear shelters. Time is ripe to start asking new questions and exploring new possibilities. Thankfully, there are newer genres that do just that. And some of them are on the verge of going mainstream.

Mythpunk: building the future we deserve

The western world still enjoys a high degree of global cultural influence. But that might not last long. Other cultures are growing in size and importance. People of colour are heard far beyond their local communities, on online platforms and real-life stages alike, and their contribution to our global economy is steadily growing.

Sociologists predict that the so-called ‘European’ civilization might lose its dominance. What will take its place if that happens? Mythpunk and its subgenres, afrofuturism and chaohuan, attempt to answer this question.

Afrofuturism crafts a radically decolonised, pan-African future. It first appeared in the 1950s, when an avant-garde jazz musician by the name of Sun Ra started using African mythological motifs within a Space Age aesthetic framework. Over the past 10 years, though, the genre far outgrew its original audience. Marvel’s “Black Panther” introduced afrofuturistic thought to millions of superhero fans worldwide. Musical artists like Janelle Monae brought afrofuturism to the Grammies.

And, of course, there are dozens of popular afrofuturistic books.

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Chinese culture is also spreading faster than we can imagine. Despite being a late bloomer in terms of economic development, and taking its time to master the instruments of soft power, you can safely say that modern China is a global force. But, of course, rapid development comes at a cost, and the Chinese themselves are shaken by this transformation. They live in a too-strange-to-be-true world of instant skyscrapers and unstoppable progress. This surreal feeling is best described by a genre called Chaohuan (lit. “ultra-unreal”).

It is a local Chinese brand of magical realist science fiction, characterized by unbelievable storylines that might just happen in real life, and a piercing sense of existential dread. The most famous chaohuan work is Liu Cixin’s Hugo-winning “Three Body Problem”, the first Asian novel to be awarded the prestigious prize. It revolves around a woman astrophysicist, who invites aliens to the Earth during the Chinese cultural revolution.

A unique visual identity of its own made chaohuan easily adaptable to visual media. There are multiple installation- and video artists that ventured into the genre. A good starting point in exploring this side of things would be Lawrence Lek’s video essay “Sinofuturism” (video below).