Post Cyber Punk/Sandbox

Where Cyberpunk is dystopian and pessimistic, Post Cyber Punk is a bit more realistic and optimistic. Where Cyberpunk is anti-corporate and anti-government, Post Cyber Punk is willing to give both parties their shot to prove that wrong. Where Cyberpunk portrays the future as a Crapsack World, Post Cyber Punk posits society will probably be about the same, just with cooler gadgets. Where Cyberpunk is futuristic, forward thinking and on the cutting edge...so is Post Cyber Punk.

Post Cyber Punk is the logical reaction to the Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy of Cyberpunk. That is to say, Post Cyber Punk is Cyberpunk that isn't so depressing. Aside form this main difference, the two sister-genres share many themes, tropes and story elements to the point that many question the legitimacy of this genre as separate from Cyberpunk, and contend that Post-Cyberpunk is simply Cyberpunk expanded beyond its base and taken further logically. Purists, however, see a definite difference.

What Post Cyber Punk has that separates it from pure-Cyperpunk works, is an emphasis on positive socialization. The term originates with Lawrence Person's Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto. In the article, he describes typical Post-Cyberpunk protagonists as "anchored in their society rather than adrift in it. They have careers, friends, obligations, responsibilities, and all the trappings of an 'ordinary' life." For this reason, character goals also differed characteristically, "Cyberpunk characters frequently seek to topple or exploit corrupt social orders. Postcyberpunk characters tend to seek ways to live in, or even strengthen, an existing social order, or help construct a better one."

The progression of the genre mirrors how society in Real Life viewed technology. In the 1980s, some people argued that the dystopian future of Cyberpunk was probable, that technology was not going to improve life and instead it was going to help 'The Man' institute a Big Brother world. Megacorporations were going to stomp out individual rights and enslave creativity. And Japan was going to take over the world. In the 1990s and 2000s Real Life, the Internet did not just become a corporate tool but fostered a community-centric individuality, allowing ordinary people the freedom and resources to express themselves and share ideas like never before. In the 1990s, giant corporations were still extremely powerful, but they didn't become the big bad guys, and The internet increased corporate and government scrutiny. Additionally, the open-source movement provided a grassroots technological base to ordinary people, who in turn embraced some key open software.

Additionally, the internet fostered the development of small businesses and firms by lowering barriers to market entry. International commerce became a matter of having an Ebay account. Instead of collapsing back to the anti-entrepreneurial centralized model of economic organization, technological change became a decentralizing force that encouraged entrepreneurial, venture-capital-based innovative firms rather than management-based stagnant corporate behemoths.

Meanwhile, the Asian economic crisis turned the highly-regimented code-bound economic steamroller that was Cyberpunk Japan into the cuteness-saturated neophile Anime Japan of Post-Cyberpunk. Further in the economic realm, the advance of technology and continued lowering of manufacturing costs meant that ownership of capital became much more decentralized. For instance, the means of production of music became much cheaper.

Of course, business and government are hard at work to take advantage of these technologies and bring us the centralized, monopolistic telephone-Internet-cable TV that we were promised by the dystopian punks and hippie techno-prophets in the '70s, but that was hardly as scary as predicted.

What the old and new Cyberpunk genres share is a detailed immersion in societies enmeshed with technology. They explore the emergent possibilities of connectivity and technological change. Interestingly, one of the major differences from cyberpunk is the notable absence of 'punk' elements as found in most other Punk Punk genres. And in recent years several works that rely heavily on the post-cyberpunk conventions and tropes and have a strong post-cyberpunk atmosphere managed to drop most of the 'cyber' aspects as well. (see Inception and Mirror's Edge as examples.)

Basically, if you have a Crapsack World modeled on Japanese Zaibatsu where (most critically) technology is a method by which the power elite control the people, and the protagonists are entirely against said society, you have traditional Cyberpunk. If, however, you have a world that has some redeeming features, is not controlled by the State and/or Mega Corp, technology isn't screwing everything up, and the protagonists are trying to fix social problems from within rather than rebelling against society from without, you have Post Cyber Punk. Of course, there is plenty of overlap.

Compare Cyberpunk, Punk Punk and Post Something Ism. See Cyberpunk Tropes for tropes found in Post Cyber Punk works and shared with it's cousin Cyberpunk.