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Warframe is a free-to-play game where you're a space ninja fighting on various planets and spaceships. They just announced a new expansion pack Warframe: 1999 which takes place in 1999 and may be cyberpunk? It's hard to tell from just this announcement but I figured I'd share.

I read a lot of random cyberpunk novels from the kindle store and I'm always on the lookout for more. Cyberpunk novels are annoyingly difficult to find since the "cyberpunk" category on amazon is nothing but LitRPG, but that's a different rant altogether.

Anyway, I don't actively try to find trans characters in literature (I'm not trans) but I don't avoid books that have trans characters. I figure trans characters actually fit pretty well into cyberpunk universes. So for anyone who is interested in reading cyberpunk stories with trans characters, here are the ones I've read:

Escapology by Ren Warom - The main character is trans but is post-transition so the fact that he's trans isn't even mentioned until ~80% into the book. And it's really only revealed so the villain can make trans-based insults about the main character just to get him riled up. Given that the character is post-transition, I liked the fact that being trans didn't define who he was, it was just something from his past that he didn't really think about anymore. Of course, this also means the reveal of being trans almost felt tacked-on and an after-thought. But in the sequel, Virology, everyone's cyberspace avatars are visible in the real world and the main character has a theory that being trans affected how his avatar behaves. So being trans does eventually have an effect and doesn't feel tacked-on anymore.

The Chimera Code by Wayne Santos - This novel is about a mercenary crew where each person has their role (the leader, the hacker, the muscle, etc.). Their hacker dies so they need to recruit a new one (they even load up the old hacker's consciousness like Dixie Flatline to train the new hacker, so that's fun). Anyway, the new hacker they find is non-binary. This is handled pretty well where every time a new character meets this hacker they ask for the hacker's pronouns. The hacker tells them, and they move on with the story. So the hacker being non-binary is handled throughout the book but it's never a main theme of the story. The plot continues to drive forward regardless of the hacker's gender.

Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood - This novel is about two characters trying to solve a murder mystery. One acts like he's a hard-boiled detective in a film noir while the other is trans and mid-transition. Now, given that the trans character is mid-transition I'm sure this makes sense, but being trans is a constant topic of discussion. It's like having a character who's vegan constantly telling you they're vegan. Again, I'm not trans, so I don't doubt that someone who is mid-transition constantly has it on their mind. But as a reader, yeah, I get it, she's trans. She's also pansexual and in a polyamorous relationship. I feel like this is more of the focus of the story than the murder mystery. I do like that the author changes writing styles depending on which character is the POV of the chapter, so the detective character always has short, terse sentences while the trans character has more free-flowing sentences. But this is the only novel in the list where I went "ok, this novel isn't meant for me." It feels more like a novel for trans people than just including trans people.

And that's it. Those are the cyberpunk novels I've read with trans characters. I find it interesting how it spans from "almost feels like an after-thought" to "handled, and not a factor" to "ok, I get it, stop talking about it". Honestly, I'm not sure what the "right" way is to handle trans characters so I figure it's good to cover this whole spectrum.

The world-building doesn't quite make sense, the plot doesn't quite make sense, but they are all-in on the visuals.

I've recently made a couple "themes over visuals" recommendations so I figured I'd throw in a "visuals over themes" type of movie to see if anyone cares. This is me getting a feel for what type of posts people want to see here. Also, I'm trying to make movie recommendations that are actually available for streaming. There are other movies I want to recommend, but if you can't watch them anywhere I figure it doesn't really help anyone.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIvqkRy5KCQ
You can watch it on RedBox

This is the original short story that coined the word 'cyberpunk', free to read online.

I tried finding a pdf of the story rather than embedded in some old static webpage (most of the links on this page are dead now) but everything I find just points me back to this webpage. It's even linked directly in the wikipedia article. So I guess this is the best place to read it.

While the show does have a lot of human augmentation and corporations with too much power, there aren't any glowing neon lights here. So from a visual standpoint this is more of a "low cyberpunk" since it doesn't have many of the visuals you expect when you hear the phrase "cyberpunk anime". Aside from the human augmentation, the world just looks like the industrial part of a modern city. This isn't a bad thing, I'm just saying it leans more on the cyberpunk themes than cyberpunk visuals.

My only real complaint about the show is that the character is a stoic, gruff, serious person yet there will be these occasional moments where something completely surprises him and it'll jump to this weird chibi-style animation for a reaction shot:

They only do it once or twice per episode and it really is just a half-second reaction shot, but it's pretty jarring since the rest of the show is so serious.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQyWoG43kRI
It's streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll

About a month ago, I made a post about the Amazon series Upload. It turns out a surprising number of you had actually watched the show. So for those people, I want to let you know season 3 will start on October 20.

That's right, they cancelled The Peripheral but we're getting more Upload.

On paper, Freejack sounds like the perfect cyberpunk movie. The rich have their consciousness uploaded onto a server when they die. They then pull someone's body from the past into the future so they can download their consciousness into that body and continue living. The corporations are in control, there's a massive rich/poor divide, etc.

Yet in execution, I just find the movie boring. It might be due to Emilio Estevez always looking bored throughout the movie. Or maybe it's the costume design that's so bland. The poor areas have people with sufficiently dirty clothing but in the rich area, people are just wearing... clothes. For most of the movie, Emilio just wears a tan jacket. It's weird how the cars are crazy futuristic in the rich part of town yet everyone dresses like it's the early 90s (when the movie was made).

The movie almost could've been another Johnny Mnemonic given the plot. And yet, by losing the wacky over-the-top acting and designs of Johnny Mnemonic, Freejack just feels bland to me.

But maybe I'm being too harsh on it. It's streaming everywhere, so go see for yourself if you haven't watched it. Tubi, Freevee, Roku, Kanopy, Shout-TV

I know this isn't your typical cyberpunk artwork, but I personally think it depicts a failed attempt to achieve divinity via cybernetics. And since so many cyberpunk works ask the question "can an android have a soul?", I consider this artwork to be cyberpunk. Do you disagree?

Larger version here.

Not too surprising given the writers and actors strikes. Still, that sucks.

I've been hesitant to recommend this movie because while the first half is all-in on the cyberpunk visuals, the second half of the movie takes place in the desert/wasteland. But, the theme of "what does it mean to be human" is prevalent throughout the entire movie so I'd say the story remains cyberpunk even when the visuals aren't.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyacm2FNSO4
You can stream it on Hulu, Freevee, Kanopy, Plex, Roku, Peacock. Wherever.

I'm not going to claim this show has aged well, or that it was even all that great during its peak, but it was cyberpunk.

Created by James Cameron, the show was was about a genetically engineered super soldier (Jessica Alba) who escaped from a secret government facility to hide in the cyberpunk city of Seattle. She works as a bike courier with a bunch of other low-lifes and can barely afford rent. She meets up with an underground activist who's trying to expose the lies and cover-ups of governments and corporations. Society has totally broken down and the corrupt police force has checkpoints setup between neighborhoods.

So a totally cyberpunk premise, but the show was basically a CW show before the CW existed. It's all beautiful 20-somethings and cheesy writing. And then season 2 came along and the show was now about all the half-human/half-animal hybrids Jessica Alba helped escape from the secret government facility in the season 1 finale. It got weird.

Here's a clip from early season 2 where Jessica Alba's character returns to work after almost dying in the season 1 finale:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKClsvQ4QQ
Yes, her friend's name is Original Cindy and her boss's name is Normal.

I'm not sure if I'd call this post a recommendation since I can't find many good things to say about it. But I've seen the entire show and I'm curious if anyone else remembers it and has more fond memories of it than I do.

Intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcFt-c_dBx0