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120-512: Altered Carbon is a 2002 British cyberpunk novel by the English writer Richard K. Morgan . Set in a future in which interstellar travel and relative immortality is facilitated by transferring consciousnesses between bodies ("sleeves"), it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs , a former U.N. elite soldier turned private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death. It is followed by the sequels Broken Angels and Woken Furies . The book

240-431: A troubled future is often called the antithesis of the generally utopian visions of the future popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Gibson defined cyberpunk's antipathy towards utopian science fiction in his 1981 short story " The Gernsback Continuum ", which pokes fun at and, to a certain extent, condemns utopian science fiction. In some cyberpunk writing, much of the action takes place online , in cyberspace , blurring

360-523: A 2 hp (1.5 kW) single cylinder Daimler engine and flew 10 km (6 mi) from Canstatt to Kornwestheim . In 1897, an airship with an aluminum envelope was built by the Hungarian - Croatian engineer David Schwarz . It made its first flight at Tempelhof field in Berlin after Schwarz had died. His widow, Melanie Schwarz, was paid 15,000 marks by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin to release

480-647: A boat if the vehicle was forced to land in water. The airship was designed to be driven by three propellers and steered with a sail-like aft rudder. In 1784, Jean-Pierre Blanchard fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the English Channel in a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion and a birdlike tail for steering. The 19th century saw continued attempts to add methods of propulsion to balloons. Rufus Porter built and flew scale models of his "Aerial Locomotive", but never

600-507: A brothel. The Rawlings virus is designed to scramble cortical stacks and prevent re-sleeving, causing permanent death. To prevent it from contaminating his clones, Bancroft committed suicide. Kawahara agrees to procure a copy of the virus for Kovacs. With Kawahara's help, he retrieves Irene Elliot from stack, and hires her to implant the Rawlings virus into a brothel. Kovacs learns that Bancroft went to an airship -turned-brothel named Head in

720-433: A central role in many story lines. The films Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and New Rose Hotel (1998), both based upon short stories by William Gibson, flopped commercially and critically, while The Matrix trilogy (1999–2003) and Judge Dredd (1995) were some of the most successful cyberpunk films. Newer cyberpunk media includes Blade Runner 2049 (2017), a sequel to the original 1982 film; Dredd (2012), which

840-522: A continual basis. Those who have lived for multiple lifespans are called Meths, a reference to the Biblical figure Methuselah . The very rich are also able to keep copies of their minds in remote storage, which they update regularly. This ensures that even if their stack is destroyed, they can be re-sleeved. People who commit serious crimes are imprisoned "on stack". Their consciousness is preserved and stored virtually, sometimes for decades, while their body

960-432: A crucial role in maintaining stability and controlling the airship's attitude. Airships require a source of power to operate their propulsion systems. This includes engines, generators, or batteries, depending on the type of airship and its design. Fuel tanks or batteries are typically located within the envelope or gondola. To navigate safely and communicate with ground control or other aircraft, airships are equipped with

1080-423: A genre, drawing influence from punk subculture and early hacker culture . Frank Miller 's Ronin is an example of a cyberpunk graphic novel. Other influential cyberpunk writers included Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker . The Japanese cyberpunk subgenre began in 1982 with the debut of Katsuhiro Otomo 's manga series Akira , with its 1988 anime film adaptation (also directed by Otomo) later popularizing

1200-438: A grenade to destroy Kawahara's stack, ensuring her permanent death. In the aftermath, Bancroft is cleared by the U.N. for his involvement with Kawahara. The copy of Kovacs that stayed with Miriam is erased, as double sleeving is illegal, but he makes the surviving copy of Kovacs promise to cover up Miriam's involvement. Irene Elliot gets her body back, Elizabeth and Ryker are freed from the stacks, Resolution 653 passes, and Kovacs

1320-500: A heated lifting gas, usually air, in a fashion similar to hot air balloons . The first to do so was flown in 1973 by the British company Cameron Balloons . Small airships carry their engine(s) in their gondola. Where there were multiple engines on larger airships, these were placed in separate nacelles, termed power cars or engine cars . To allow asymmetric thrust to be applied for maneuvering, these power cars were mounted towards

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1440-543: A hybrid genre combining neo-noir and science fiction or cyberpunk. The Japanese cyberpunk subgenre began in 1982 with the debut of Katsuhiro Otomo 's manga series Akira , with its 1988 anime film adaptation , which Otomo directed, later popularizing the subgenre. Akira inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk works, including manga and anime series such as Ghost in the Shell , Battle Angel Alita , and Cowboy Bebop . Other early Japanese cyberpunk works include

1560-402: A long time outweighs the need for speed and manoeuvrability, such as advertising, tourism, camera platforms, geological surveys and aerial observation . During the pioneer years of aeronautics, terms such as "airship", "air-ship", "air ship" and "ship of the air" meant any kind of navigable or dirigible flying machine. In 1919 Frederick Handley Page was reported as referring to "ships of

1680-427: A major influence on Hollywood films such as The Matrix , Chronicle , Looper , Midnight Special , and Inception , as well as cyberpunk-influenced video games such as Hideo Kojima 's Snatcher and Metal Gear Solid , Valve 's Half-Life series and Dontnod Entertainment 's Remember Me . Akira has also influenced the work of musicians such as Kanye West , who paid homage to Akira in

1800-526: A mixture of solar-powered engines and conventional jet engines, would use only an estimated 8 percent of the fuel required by jet aircraft . Furthermore, utilizing the jet stream could allow for a faster and more energy-efficient cargo transport alternative to maritime shipping . This is one of the reasons why China has embraced their use recently. In 1670, the Jesuit Father Francesco Lana de Terzi , sometimes referred to as

1920-407: A near-future Earth , rather than in the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov 's Foundation or Frank Herbert 's Dune . The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to feature extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its original inventors ("the street finds its own uses for things"). Much of

2040-617: A novel called Dr. Adder in 1972 that, Dick lamented, might have been more influential in the field had it been able to find a publisher at that time. It was not published until 1984, after which Jeter made it the first book in a trilogy, followed by The Glass Hammer (1985) and Death Arms (1987). Jeter wrote other standalone cyberpunk novels before going on to write three authorized sequels to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , named Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human (1995), Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night (1996), and Blade Runner 4: Eye and Talon . The term "cyberpunk" first appeared as

2160-564: A novel in 1995 called Headcrash , like Snow Crash a satirical attack on the genre's excesses. Fittingly, it won an honor named after cyberpunk's spiritual founder, the Philip K. Dick Award . It satirized the genre in this way: ...full of young guys with no social lives, no sex lives and no hope of ever moving out of their mothers' basements ... They're total wankers and losers who indulge in Messianic fantasies about someday getting even with

2280-492: A now popular cyberpunk trope for human computer interfaces. It also influenced one of the genres most well known cyberpunk novels, William Gibson 's Neuromancer . Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , first published in 1968, shares common dystopian themes with later works by Gibson and Sterling, and is praised for its "realist" exploration of cybernetic and artificial intelligence ideas and ethics. Dick's protege and friend K. W. Jeter wrote

2400-482: A paper entitled " Mémoire sur l'équilibre des machines aérostatiques " (Memorandum on the equilibrium of aerostatic machines) presented to the French Academy on 3 December 1783. The 16 water-color drawings published the following year depict a 260-foot-long (79 m) streamlined envelope with internal ballonets that could be used for regulating lift: this was attached to a long carriage that could be used as

2520-566: A payload of 1.5 tons. Bland believed that the machine could be driven at 80 km/h (50 mph) and could fly from Sydney to London in less than a week. In 1852, Henri Giffard became the first person to make an engine-powered flight when he flew 27 km (17 mi) in a steam-powered airship . Airships would develop considerably over the next two decades. In 1863, Solomon Andrews flew his aereon design, an unpowered, controllable dirigible in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and offered

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2640-540: A positive aerostatic contribution, usually equal to the empty weight of the system, and the variable payload is sustained by propulsion or aerodynamic contribution. Airships are classified according to their method of construction into rigid, semi-rigid and non-rigid types. A rigid airship has a rigid framework covered by an outer skin or envelope. The interior contains one or more gasbags, cells or balloons to provide lift. Rigid airships are typically unpressurised and can be made to virtually any size. Most, but not all, of

2760-497: A public demonstration flight in 1878 of his hand-powered one-man rigid airship, and went on to build and sell five of his aircraft. In 1874, Micajah Clark Dyer filed U.S. Patent 154,654 "Apparatus for Navigating the Air". It is believed successful trial flights were made between 1872 and 1874, but detailed dates are not available. The apparatus used a combination of wings and paddle wheels for navigation and propulsion. In operating

2880-435: A range of instruments, including GPS systems, radios, radar, and navigation lights. Some airships have landing gear that allows them to land on runways or other surfaces. This landing gear may include wheels, skids, or landing pads. The main advantage of airships with respect to any other vehicle is that they require less energy to remain in flight, compared to other air vehicles. The proposed Varialift airship, powered by

3000-434: A sense of rebellion, suggesting that one could describe it as a type of cultural revolution in science fiction. In the words of author and critic David Brin : ...a closer look [at cyberpunk authors] reveals that they nearly always portray future societies in which governments have become wimpy and pathetic ...Popular science fiction tales by Gibson, Williams, Cadigan and others do depict Orwellian accumulations of power in

3120-641: A series of high-profile accidents, including the 1930 crash and burning of the British R101 in France, the 1933 and 1935 storm-related crashes of the twin airborne aircraft carrier U.S. Navy helium-filled rigids, the USS ; Akron and USS Macon respectively, and the 1937 burning of the German hydrogen -filled Hindenburg . From the 1960s, helium airships have been used where the ability to hover for

3240-416: A stagnant formula. In 1986, he edited a volume of cyberpunk stories called Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology , an attempt to establish what cyberpunk was, from Sterling's perspective. In the subsequent decade, the motifs of Gibson's Neuromancer became formulaic, climaxing in the satirical extremes of Neal Stephenson 's Snow Crash in 1992. Bookending the cyberpunk era, Bethke himself published

3360-541: A streamlined shape and stabilising tail fins. Some blimps may be powered dirigibles, as in early versions of the Goodyear Blimp . Later Goodyear dirigibles, though technically semi-rigid airships, have still been called "blimps" by the company. The term zeppelin originally referred to airships manufactured by the German Zeppelin Company , which built and operated the first rigid airships in

3480-518: A successful full-size implementation. The Australian William Bland sent designs for his " Atmotic airship " to the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, where a model was displayed. This was an elongated balloon with a steam engine driving twin propellers suspended underneath. The lift of the balloon was estimated as 5 tons and the car with the fuel as weighing 3.5 tons, giving

3600-402: A term that encompassed both punk attitudes and high technology. He described the idea thus: The kids who trashed my computer; their kids were going to be Holy Terrors, combining the ethical vacuity of teenagers with a technical fluency we adults could only guess at. Further, the parents and other adult authority figures of the early 21st Century were going to be terribly ill-equipped to deal with

3720-556: A term used for a New Wave pop music movement that had just occurred in Britain, but this term did not catch on. Bethke later paraphrased Michael Swanwick 's argument for the term: "the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly imitating Neuromancer ". Sterling was another writer who played a central role, often consciously, in the cyberpunk genre, variously seen as either keeping it on track, or distorting its natural path into

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3840-508: A tethered 1,250 pounds (570 kg) airborne payload to deliver cellular phone service to a 140 miles (230 km) region in Brazil. The European Union 's ABSOLUTE project was also reportedly exploring the use of tethered aerostat stations to provide telecommunications during disaster response. A blimp is a non-rigid aerostat. In British usage it refers to any non-rigid aerostat, including barrage balloons and other kite balloons , having

3960-572: A tethered or moored balloon as opposed to a free-floating balloon. Aerostats today are capable of lifting a payload of 3,000 pounds (1,400 kg) to an altitude of more than 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) above sea level. They can also stay in the air for extended periods of time, particularly when powered by an on-board generator or if the tether contains electrical conductors. Due to this capability, aerostats can be used as platforms for telecommunication services. For instance, Platform Wireless International Corporation announced in 2001 that it would use

4080-496: A vessel is propelled in water. An instrument answering to a rudder is attached for guiding the machine. A balloon is to be used for elevating the flying ship, after which it is to be guided and controlled at the pleasure of its occupants. More details can be found in the book about his life. In 1883, the first electric-powered flight was made by Gaston Tissandier , who fitted a 1.5 hp (1.1 kW) Siemens electric motor to an airship. The first fully controllable free flight

4200-501: Is also denser than the lifting gas, inflating the ballonet reduces the overall lift, while deflating it increases lift. In this way, the ballonet can be used to adjust the lift as required by controlling the buoyancy. By inflating or deflating ballonets strategically, the pilot can control the airship's altitude and attitude. Ballonets may typically be used in non-rigid or semi-rigid airships, commonly with multiple ballonets located both fore and aft to maintain balance and to control

4320-415: Is also featured prominently in anime and manga ( Japanese cyberpunk ), with Akira , Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop being among the most notable. Cyberpunk writers tend to use elements from crime fiction —particularly hardboiled detective fiction and film noir —and postmodernist prose to describe an often nihilistic underground side of an electronic society. The genre's vision of

4440-442: Is an Envoy and they release him. A mysterious woman named Trepp says she will bring Kovacs to Ray, who is behind the clinic's operations. Kovacs escapes, destroys the brothel and clinic, and murders the employees in the process. Kovacs and Ortega are injured in an explosion orchestrated by Kadmin, who has escaped police custody. Trepp brings Kovacs to "Ray", or Reileen Kawahara. Kawahara is a Meth mob boss with whom Kovacs has dealt in

4560-793: Is based on his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? . Humans linked to machines are found in Pohl and Kornbluth's Wolfbane (1959) and Roger Zelazny 's Creatures of Light and Darkness (1968). In 1994, scholar Brian Stonehill suggested that Thomas Pynchon 's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow "not only curses but precurses what we now glibly dub cyberspace." Other important predecessors include Alfred Bester 's two most celebrated novels, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination , as well as Vernor Vinge 's novella True Names . Science-fiction writer David Brin describes cyberpunk as "the finest free promotion campaign ever waged on behalf of science fiction". It may not have attracted

4680-417: Is claimed that, for instance, cyberpunk depicts fantasies that ultimately empower masculinity using fragmentary and decentered aesthetic that culminate in a masculine genre populated by male outlaws. Critics also note the absence of any reference to Africa or black characters in the quintessential cyberpunk film Blade Runner , while other films reinforce stereotypes. Minnesota writer Bruce Bethke coined

4800-499: Is considered by many to be the first cyberpunk novel with many of the tropes commonly associated with the genre, some five years before the term was popularized by Dozois. William Gibson with his novel Neuromancer (1984) is arguably the most famous writer connected with the term cyberpunk. He emphasized style, a fascination with surfaces, and atmosphere over traditional science-fiction tropes. Regarded as ground-breaking and sometimes as "the archetypal cyberpunk work", Neuromancer

4920-410: Is considered have had a profound influence on cyberpunk's development, As evidenced by the term "Ballardian" becoming used to ascribe literary excellence amongst science fiction social circles. Ballard, along with Zelazny and others continued the popular development of "realism" within the genre Delany's 1968 novel Nova , considered a forerunner of cyberpunk literature, includes neural implants,

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5040-419: Is convinced he was murdered. He uses his influence to have Kovacs temporarily released from storage, then hires him to investigate. Kovacs discovers that Bancroft has been involved with numerous prostitutes, including recent murder victim Elizabeth Elliot. Elizabeth's mother Irene was imprisoned for illegally hacking Bancroft's memories. Elizabeth's father is too poor to re-sleeve Elizabeth or to free his wife from

5160-550: Is freed and returned to Harlan's World. Describing the book, Kirkus Reviews said that "The body count is high, the gadgetry pure genius, the sex scenes deliriously overwrought, and the worn cynicism thoroughly distasteful: a welcome return to cyberpunk's badass roots." The book won the Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel in 2003. A television adaptation was announced in 2016. An initial 10-episode season had been ordered by Netflix . The first season premiered on Netflix on 2 February 2018. Extensive and significant changes to

5280-611: Is known as a vacuum airship . In 1709, the Brazilian-Portuguese Jesuit priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão made a hot air balloon, the Passarola, ascend to the skies, before an astonished Portuguese court. It would have been on August 8, 1709, when Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão held, in the courtyard of the Casa da Índia , in the city of Lisbon, the first Passarola demonstration. The balloon caught fire without leaving

5400-474: Is more of forging ahead, looking at the new global culture. It is a culture that does not exist right now, so the Japanese concept of a cyberpunk future, seems just as valid as a Western one, especially as Western cyberpunk often incorporates many Japanese elements." William Gibson is now a frequent visitor to Japan, and he came to see that many of his visions of Japan have become a reality: Modern Japan simply

5520-483: Is no longer a member of Corps. The makers of the show have also chosen to expand the roles of many characters, particularly female characters. In the book, the hotel in which Kovacs stays while investigating Bancroft's murder is themed after Jimi Hendrix . Since the Hendrix estate does not approve of licensing his image for anything they consider violent, the show instead chose the figure of Edgar Allan Poe and named

5640-654: Is sold to the highest bidder to be used for re-sleeving another person. Numerous colony planets exist apart from Earth ; many were previously inhabited by an extinct alien civilization referred to as the Elders. In order to deal with the challenges of interspace warfare, the U.N. created the Envoys. They are an elite military group with extensive training in re-sleeving and psychological modification, as well as combat. Envoys are so successful and dangerous that they are generally prohibited from holding elected office on any world. On

5760-399: Is strictly prohibited by U.N. law. While most people can afford to get resleeved at the end of their lives, they are unable to update their bodies and must go through the full aging process each time, which discourages most from re-sleeving more than once or twice. Thus, while people can live indefinitely in theory, most choose not to. Only the wealthy are able to acquire replacement bodies on

5880-601: The British rule of Hong Kong , it was an area neglected by both the British and Qing administrations, embodying elements of liberalism in a dystopian context. Portrayals of East Asia and Asians in Western cyberpunk have been criticized as Orientalist and promoting racist tropes playing on American and European fears of East Asian dominance; this has been referred to as "techno-Orientalism". Cyberpunk can be intended to disquiet readers and call them to action. It often expresses

6000-490: The Franco-Prussian war and was intended as an improvement to the balloons used for communications between Paris and the countryside during the siege of Paris , but was completed only after the end of the war. In 1872, Paul Haenlein flew an airship with an internal combustion engine running on the coal gas used to inflate the envelope, the first use of such an engine to power an aircraft. Charles F. Ritchel made

6120-672: The Parc Saint Cloud to and around the Eiffel Tower and back in under thirty minutes. This feat earned him the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs . Many inventors were inspired by Santos-Dumont's small airships. Many airship pioneers, such as the American Thomas Scott Baldwin , financed their activities through passenger flights and public demonstration flights. Stanley Spencer built

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6240-441: The pitch of the airship. Lifting gas is generally hydrogen, helium or hot air. Hydrogen gives the highest lift 1.1 kg/m (0.069 lb/cu ft) and is inexpensive and easily obtained, but is highly flammable and can detonate if mixed with air. Helium is completely non flammable, but gives lower performance-1.02 kg/m (0.064 lb/cu ft) and is a rare element and much more expensive. Thermal airships use

6360-494: The title of a short story by Bruce Bethke , written in 1980 and published in Amazing Stories in 1983. The name was picked up by Gardner Dozois , editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine , and popularized in his editorials. Bethke says he made two lists of words, one for technology, one for troublemakers, and experimented with combining them variously into compound words, consciously attempting to coin

6480-657: The " Stronger " music video, and Lupe Fiasco , whose album Tetsuo & Youth is named after Tetsuo Shima. The popular bike from the film, Kaneda's Motorbike, appears in Steven Spielberg ' s film Ready Player One , and CD Projekt 's video game Cyberpunk 2077 . Ghost in the Shell (1995) influenced a number of prominent filmmakers, most notably the Wachowskis in The Matrix (1999) and its sequels. The Matrix series took several concepts from

6600-443: The "Father of Aeronautics ", published a description of an "Aerial Ship" supported by four copper spheres from which the air was evacuated. Although the basic principle is sound, such a craft was unrealizable then and remains so to the present day, since external air pressure would cause the spheres to collapse unless their thickness was such as to make them too heavy to be buoyant. A hypothetical craft constructed using this principle

6720-477: The "real punks", but it did ensnare many new readers, and it provided the sort of movement that postmodern literary critics found alluring. Cyberpunk made science fiction more attractive to academics, argues Brin; in addition, it made science fiction more profitable to Hollywood and to the visual arts generally. Although the "self-important rhetoric and whines of persecution" on the part of cyberpunk fans were irritating at worst and humorous at best, Brin declares that

6840-646: The "rebels did shake things up. We owe them a debt." Fredric Jameson considers cyberpunk the "supreme literary expression if not of postmodernism , then of late capitalism itself". Cyberpunk further inspired many later writers to incorporate cyberpunk ideas into their own works, such as George Alec Effinger 's When Gravity Fails . Wired magazine, created by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, mixes new technology, art, literature, and current topics in order to interest today's cyberpunk fans, which Paula Yoo claims "proves that hardcore hackers, multimedia junkies, cyberpunks and cellular freaks are poised to take over

6960-510: The 1960s and 1970s, where New Worlds , under the editorship of Michael Moorcock , began inviting and encouraging stories that examined new writing styles, techniques, and archetypes . Reacting to conventional storytelling, New Wave authors attempted to present a world where society coped with a constant upheaval of new technology and culture, generally with dystopian outcomes. Writers like Roger Zelazny , J. G. Ballard , Philip José Farmer , Samuel R. Delany , and Harlan Ellison often examined

7080-481: The 1960s have used helium, though some have used hot air . The envelope of an airship may form the gasbag, or it may contain a number of gas-filled cells. An airship also has engines, crew, and optionally also payload accommodation, typically housed in one or more gondolas suspended below the envelope. The main types of airship are non-rigid , semi-rigid and rigid airships . Non-rigid airships, often called "blimps", rely solely on internal gas pressure to maintain

7200-548: The 1982 film Burst City , and the 1989 film Tetsuo: The Iron Man . According to Paul Gravett , when Akira began to be published, cyberpunk literature had not yet been translated into Japanese, Otomo has distinct inspirations such as Mitsuteru Yokoyama 's manga series Tetsujin 28-go (1956–1966) and Moebius . In contrast to Western cyberpunk which has roots in New Wave science fiction literature, Japanese cyberpunk has roots in underground music culture, specifically

7320-499: The American Goodyear airships have been blimps. A non-rigid airship relies entirely on internal gas pressure to retain its shape during flight. Unlike the rigid design, the non-rigid airship's gas envelope has no compartments. However, it still typically has smaller internal bags containing air ( ballonets ). As altitude is increased, the lifting gas expands and air from the ballonets is expelled through valves to maintain

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7440-561: The CG animation, and MONACA composed the music. The Japanese cast includes Tatsuhisa Suzuki as Takeshi Kovacs, Rina Satou as Gina, Ayaka Asai as Holly Togram, Jouji Nakata as Ogai, Kenji Yamauchi as Hideki Tanaseda, Kanehira Yamamoto as Shinji, and Kōji Ishii as Genzo. Cyberpunk Comics exploring cyberpunk themes began appearing as early as Judge Dredd , first published in 1977. Released in 1984, William Gibson 's influential debut novel Neuromancer helped solidify cyberpunk as

7560-607: The Clouds on the night he died. This establishment is run by Kawahara. Kadmin kidnaps Ortega and threatens to kill her unless Kovacs trades himself for her. Ortega is released, and Kovacs is forced to fight in a duel against Kadmin. Trepp and the police arrive, killing Kadmin. Kovacs destroys Kadmin's stack. Kovacs double-sleeves, controlling both Ryker and a second body simultaneously. The copy in Ryker's sleeve leaves with Miriam to draw away surveillance. Ortega and Kovacs infiltrate Head in

7680-445: The Clouds. Irene spikes Kawahara's personality backup with the Rawlings virus, destroying all of her clones. Kovacs forces a confession from Kawahara. After a Catholic prostitute was murdered at Head in the Clouds, her resurrection would have revealed Kawahara's illegal activity. As part of her cover-up, Kawahara framed Ryker for corruption, since he was investigating the murder. She asked Bancroft to help her kill Resolution 653 to prevent

7800-570: The German Zeppelin airships have been of this type. A semi-rigid airship has some kind of supporting structure but the main envelope is held in shape by the internal pressure of the lifting gas. Typically the airship has an extended, usually articulated keel running along the bottom of the envelope to stop it kinking in the middle by distributing suspension loads into the envelope, while also allowing lower envelope pressures. Non-rigid airships are often called "blimps". Most, but not all, of

7920-474: The Japanese punk subculture that arose from the Japanese punk music scene in the 1970s. The filmmaker Sogo Ishii introduced this subculture to Japanese cinema with the punk film Panic High School (1978) and the punk biker film Crazy Thunder Road (1980), both portraying the rebellion and anarchy associated with punk, and the latter featuring a punk biker gang aesthetic. Ishii's punk films paved

8040-749: The Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1 made its first flight. This led to the most successful airships of all time: the Zeppelins, named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who began working on rigid airship designs in the 1890s, leading to the flawed LZ1 in 1900 and the more successful LZ2 in 1906. The Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders covered with fabric that contained separate gas cells. At first multiplane tail surfaces were used for control and stability: later designs had simpler cruciform tail surfaces. The engines and crew were accommodated in "gondolas" hung beneath

8160-435: The Shell as a source of inspiration, citing it as an influence on Avatar . Airship An airship , dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat ( lighter-than-air ) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying under its own power . Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air to achieve the lift needed to stay airborne. In early dirigibles,

8280-415: The air", with smaller passenger types as "air yachts". In the 1930s, large intercontinental flying boats were also sometimes referred to as "ships of the air" or "flying-ships". Nowadays the term "airship" is used only for powered, dirigible balloons, with sub-types being classified as rigid, semi-rigid or non-rigid. Semi-rigid architecture is the more recent, following advances in deformable structures and

8400-631: The colony planet of Harlan's World, Takeshi Kovacs and his partner Sarah Sachilowski, former Envoys who had returned to a life of crime, are killed by a U.N. colonial commando unit. Kovacs is sentenced to a long term in stack storage. On Earth, a Meth named Laurens Bancroft has died in mysterious circumstances in Bay City (formerly San Francisco ). The re-sleeved Bancroft has no memories of the previous two days, including his own death. Though police officer Kristin Ortega believes he committed suicide, Bancroft

8520-489: The content and ethos of the cyberpunk literary movement stating: Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body. Cyberpunk plots often involve conflict between artificial intelligence , hackers , and megacorporations , and tend to be set in

8640-601: The design of the Campbell Air Ship, designed by Professor Peter C. Campbell, was built by the Novelty Air Ship Company. It was lost at sea in 1889 while being flown by Professor Hogan during an exhibition flight. From 1888 to 1897, Friedrich Wölfert built three airships powered by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft -built petrol engines, the last of which, Deutschland , caught fire in flight and killed both occupants in 1897. The 1888 version used

8760-518: The device to the U.S. Military during the Civil War. He flew a later design in 1866 around New York City and as far as Oyster Bay, New York. This concept used changes in lift to provide propulsive force, and did not need a powerplant. In 1872, the French naval architect Dupuy de Lome launched a large navigable balloon, which was driven by a large propeller turned by eight men. It was developed during

8880-492: The early years of the twentieth century. The initials LZ, for Luftschiff Zeppelin (German for "Zeppelin airship"), usually prefixed their craft's serial identifiers. Streamlined rigid (or semi-rigid) airships are often referred to as "Zeppelins", because of the fame that this company acquired due to the number of airships it produced, although its early rival was the Parseval semi-rigid design. Hybrid airships fly with

9000-412: The engine controls, throttle etc., mounted directly on the engine. Instructions were relayed to them from the pilot's station by a telegraph system , as on a ship. If fuel is burnt for propulsion, then progressive reduction in the airship's overall weight occurs. In hydrogen airships, this is usually dealt with by simply venting cheap hydrogen lifting gas. In helium airships water is often condensed from

9120-421: The envelope shape. Semi-rigid airships maintain their shape by internal pressure, but have some form of supporting structure, such as a fixed keel, attached to it. Rigid airships have an outer structural framework that maintains the shape and carries all structural loads, while the lifting gas is contained in one or more internal gasbags or cells. Rigid airships were first flown by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and

9240-455: The exhaust and stored as ballast. To control the airship's direction and stability, it is equipped with fins and rudders. Fins are typically located on the tail section and provide stability and resistance to rolling. Rudders are movable surfaces on the tail that allow the pilot to steer the airship left or right. The empennage refers to the tail section of the airship, which includes the fins, rudders, and other aerodynamic surfaces. It plays

9360-403: The exigency of reducing weight and volume of the airships. They have a minimal structure that keeps the shape jointly with overpressure of the gas envelope. An aerostat is an aircraft that remains aloft using buoyancy or static lift, as opposed to the aerodyne , which obtains lift by moving through the air. Airships are a type of aerostat. The term aerostat has also been used to indicate

9480-483: The film Blade Runner was adapted) is also seen by some as prefiguring the movement. Blade Runner can be seen as a quintessential example of the cyberpunk style and theme. Video games , board games , and tabletop role-playing games , such as Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun , often feature storylines that are heavily influenced by cyberpunk writing and movies. Beginning in the early 1990s, some trends in fashion and music were also labeled as cyberpunk. Cyberpunk

9600-613: The film, including the Matrix digital rain , which was inspired by the opening credits of Ghost in the Shell and a sushi magazine the wife of the senior designer of the animation, Simon Witheley, had in the kitchen at the time., and the way characters access the Matrix through holes in the back of their necks. Other parallels have been drawn to James Cameron 's Avatar , Steven Spielberg 's A.I. Artificial Intelligence , and Jonathan Mostow 's Surrogates . James Cameron cited Ghost in

9720-478: The first generation of teenagers who grew up truly "speaking computer". Afterward, Dozois began using this term in his own writing, most notably in a 1984 Washington Post article where he said "About the closest thing here to a self-willed esthetic 'school' would be the purveyors of bizarre hard-edged, high-tech stuff, who have on occasion been referred to as 'cyberpunks' — Sterling, Gibson, Shiner, Cadigan, Bear." Also in 1984, William Gibson's novel Neuromancer

9840-534: The genre has grown steadily since Blade Runner . Several of Philip K. Dick's works have been adapted to the silver screen. The films Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and New Rose Hotel (1998), both based on short stories by William Gibson, flopped commercially and critically. Other cyberpunk films include RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Hardware (1990), The Lawnmower Man (1992), 12 Monkeys (1995), Hackers (1995), and Strange Days (1995). Some cyberpunk films have been described as tech-noir ,

9960-469: The genre's atmosphere echoes film noir , and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction . There are sources who view that cyberpunk has shifted from a literary movement to a mode of science fiction due to the limited number of writers and its transition to a more generalized cultural formation. The origins of cyberpunk are rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of

10080-436: The ground, but, in a second demonstration, it rose to 95 meters in height. It was a small balloon of thick brown paper, filled with hot air, produced by the "fire of material contained in a clay bowl embedded in the base of a waxed wooden tray". The event was witnessed by King John V of Portugal and the future Pope Innocent XIII . A more practical dirigible airship was described by Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in

10200-432: The hotel The Raven . On 8 November 2018, Netflix announced an animated companion film, Altered Carbon: Resleeved , set in the same universe and exploring new elements of the story mythology. On 10 February 2020, it was unveiled that the exclusive Netflix "anime featured" spin-off would debut on 19 March 2020. The film was directed by Jo Nakajima at Anima ; Yoshiyuki Okada designed the characters, Ren Kikuchi supervised

10320-476: The hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally, there was a passenger compartment (later a bomb bay ) located halfway between the two engine compartments. Alberto Santos-Dumont was a wealthy young Brazilian who lived in France and had a passion for flying. He designed 18 balloons and dirigibles before turning his attention to fixed-winged aircraft. On 19 October 1901 he flew his airship Number 6 , from

10440-422: The hull's shape. To return to sea level, the process is reversed: air is forced back into the ballonets by scooping air from the engine exhaust and using auxiliary blowers. The envelope itself is the structure, including textiles that contain the buoyant gas. Internally two ballonets are generally placed in the front part and in the rear part of the hull and contains air. The problem of the exact determination of

10560-421: The impact of drug culture, technology, and the ongoing sexual revolution, drawing themes and influence from experimental literature of Beat Generation authors such as William S. Burroughs , and art movements like Dadaism . Ballard, a notable critic of literary archetypes in science fiction, instead employs metaphysical and psychological concepts, seeking greater relevance to readers of the day. Ballard's work

10680-524: The industrialist Carl Berg from his exclusive contract to supply Schwartz with aluminium . From 1897 to 1899, Konstantin Danilewsky, medical doctor and inventor from Kharkiv (now Ukraine , then Russian Empire ), built four muscle-powered airships, of gas volume 150–180 m (5,300–6,400 cu ft). About 200 ascents were made within a framework of experimental flight program, at two locations, with no significant incidents. In July 1900,

10800-642: The landscape of cyberpunk Los Angeles in Blade Runner to be "Hong Kong on a very bad day". The streetscapes of the Ghost in the Shell film were based on Hong Kong. Its director Mamoru Oshii felt that Hong Kong's strange and chaotic streets where "old and new exist in confusing relationships" fit the theme of the film well. Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City is particularly notable for its disorganized hyper-urbanization and breakdown in traditional urban planning to be an inspiration to cyberpunk landscapes. During

10920-592: The lifting gas used was hydrogen , due to its high lifting capacity and ready availability, but the inherent flammability led to several fatal accidents that rendered hydrogen airships obsolete. The alternative lifting gas, helium gas is not flammable, but is rare and relatively expensive. Significant amounts were first discovered in the United States and for a while helium was only available for airship usage in North America . Most airships built since

11040-421: The line between actual and virtual reality . A typical trope in such work is a direct connection between the human brain and computer systems. Cyberpunk settings are dystopias with corruption, computers, and computer networks. The economic and technological state of Japan is a regular theme in the cyberpunk literature of the 1980s. Of Japan's influence on the genre, William Gibson said, "Modern Japan simply

11160-413: The machinery the wings receive an upward and downward motion, in the manner of the wings of a bird, the outer ends yielding as they are raised, but opening out and then remaining rigid while being depressed. The wings, if desired, may be set at an angle so as to propel forward as well as to raise the machine in the air. The paddle-wheels are intended to be used for propelling the machine, in the same way that

11280-401: The movie omits the religious and mythical elements of Dick's original novel (e.g. empathy boxes and Wilbur Mercer), it falls more strictly within the cyberpunk genre than the novel does. William Gibson would later reveal that upon first viewing the film, he was surprised at how the look of this film matched his vision for Neuromancer , a book he was then working on. The film's tone has since been

11400-753: The next century, but nearly always clutched in the secretive hands of a wealthy or corporate elite . Cyberpunk stories have also been seen as fictional forecasts of the evolution of the Internet . The earliest descriptions of a global communications network came long before the World Wide Web entered popular awareness, though not before traditional science-fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke and some social commentators such as James Burke began predicting that such networks would eventually form. Some observers cite that cyberpunk tends to marginalize sectors of society such as women and people of colour. It

11520-439: The nonrigid ZMC-2 built for the U.S. Navy flew from 1929 to 1941 when it was scrapped as too small for operational use on anti-submarine patrols; while the 1929 nonrigid Slate Aircraft Corporation City of Glendale collapsed on its first flight attempt. A ballonet is an air bag inside the outer envelope of an airship which, when inflated, reduces the volume available for the lifting gas, making it more dense. Because air

11640-529: The only survivor, is presented as the last Envoy. In the books, Envoys were and are the elite forces of the Protectorate (which would have been fighting against the revolution); Falconer did lead a revolution but died long before Kovacs was born; Kovacs trained as an Envoy under a different woman; and the Envoy Corps is still very much in use by the Protectorate and remains widely feared, although Kovacs

11760-418: The past. He had rejected her offers of partnership, believing her to be cruel and manipulative. Kawahara orders Kovacs to end his investigation, or she will torture Sarah, who is currently in virtual storage. Kovacs and Ortega begin sleeping together and form a partnership. Kovacs agrees to convince Bancroft he committed suicide. His version of the story is as follows. Bancroft contracted the Rawlings virus from

11880-472: The pressure on an airship envelope is still problematic and has fascinated major scientists such as Theodor Von Karman . A few airships have been metal-clad , with rigid and nonrigid examples made. Each kind used a thin gastight metal envelope, rather than the usual rubber-coated fabric envelope. Only four metal-clad ships are known to have been built, and only two actually flew: Schwarz 's first aluminum rigid airship of 1893 collapsed, while his second flew;

12000-401: The prostitute from testifying, but he refused. Kawahara and Miriam had Bancroft drugged; out of his mind, he killed a prostitute and then killed himself in order to erase the memory out of guilt and self-preservation. With his memories gone, Kawahara's involvement could not be traced. Assisted by Trepp, Kovacs blows out the side of the airship. As he and Kawahara fall to the ocean below, he uses

12120-434: The sides of the envelope, away from the centre line gondola. This also raised them above the ground, reducing the risk of a propeller strike when landing. Widely spaced power cars were also termed wing cars , from the use of "wing" to mean being on the side of something, as in a theater, rather than the aerodynamic device . These engine cars carried a crew during flight who maintained the engines as needed, but who also worked

12240-465: The soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics easy targets for murder, since killers know their victim may not be re-sleeved to testify. At the start of the novel, UN Resolution 653 is being debated. This proposition reverses precedent and would allow authorities to temporarily re-sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial. Dual-sleeving, or controlling two bodies with one personality,

12360-548: The source material were made in the adaptation. In the series Envoys are presented as having been trained, deployed and led by Quellcrist Falconer as part of a revolution (called "the Uprising") that she leads on Harlan's World (Kovacs' home planet). Kovacs is shown as having been trained as an Envoy by, and serving as a revolutionary under, Falconer. The Quellist Revolution is crushed by the Protectorate (the established, inter-planetary government) in an apocalyptic assault. Kovacs,

12480-527: The stacks. Laurens' wife, Miriam, seduces Kovacs and bribes him to end the investigation. A high-level Russian operative named Kadmin tries to assassinate Kovacs, but fails and is captured. Kovacs investigates the brothel where Elizabeth worked. He learns he is wearing the sleeve of Elias Ryker, a corrupt police officer and Ortega's lover. He is tortured by physicians from the Wei Clinic, who deal in black market sleeve theft. He tells his interrogators that he

12600-496: The staple of many cyberpunk movies, such as The Matrix trilogy (1999–2003), which uses a wide variety of cyberpunk elements. A sequel to Blade Runner was released in 2017. The TV series Max Headroom (1987) is an iconic cyberpunk work, taking place in a futuristic dystopia ruled by an oligarchy of television networks. Computer hacking played a central role in many of the story lines. Max Headroom has been called "the first cyberpunk television series". The number of films in

12720-474: The subgenre. Early films in the genre include Ridley Scott 's 1982 film Blade Runner , one of several of Philip K. Dick's works that have been adapted into films (in this case, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ). The "first cyberpunk television series" was the TV series Max Headroom from 1987, playing in a futuristic dystopia ruled by an oligarchy of television networks, and where computer hacking played

12840-478: The term in 1983 for his short story " Cyberpunk ", which was published in an issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories . The term was quickly appropriated as a label to be applied to the works of William Gibson , Bruce Sterling , Pat Cadigan and others. Of these, Sterling became the movement's chief ideologue, thanks to his fanzine Cheap Truth . John Shirley wrote articles on Sterling and Rucker's significance. John Brunner 's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider

12960-474: The time of writing the novel Gibson did not know the location of Chiba and had no idea how perfectly it fit his vision in some ways. The exposure to cyberpunk ideas and fiction in the 1980s has allowed it to seep into the Japanese culture. Cyberpunk anime and manga draw upon a futuristic vision which has elements in common with Western science fiction and therefore have received wide international acceptance outside Japan. "The conceptualization involved in cyberpunk

13080-401: The vast majority of rigid airships built were manufactured by the firm he founded, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin . As a result, rigid airships are often called zeppelins . Airships were the first aircraft capable of controlled powered flight, and were most commonly used before the 1940s; their use decreased as their capabilities were surpassed by those of aeroplanes. Their decline was accelerated by

13200-481: The way for Otomo's seminal cyberpunk work Akira . Cyberpunk themes are widely visible in anime and manga. In Japan , where cosplay is popular and not only teenagers display such fashion styles, cyberpunk has been accepted and its influence is widespread. William Gibson's Neuromancer, whose influence dominated the early cyberpunk movement, was also set in Chiba , one of Japan's largest industrial areas, although at

13320-481: The world through almost-magical computer skills, but whose actual use of the Net amounts to dialing up the scatophilia forum and downloading a few disgusting pictures. You know, cyberpunks. Primary figures in the cyberpunk movement include William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Bruce Bethke, Pat Cadigan , Rudy Rucker , and John Shirley . Philip K. Dick (author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , from which

13440-407: The world". The film Blade Runner (1982) is set in 2019 in a dystopian future in which manufactured beings called replicants are slaves used on space colonies and are legal prey on Earth to various bounty hunters who "retire" (kill) them. Although Blade Runner was largely unsuccessful in its first theatrical release, it found a viewership in the home video market and became a cult film . Since

13560-524: Was adapted as a Netflix television series, also titled Altered Carbon , in 2018. In 2019 a graphic novel was created with Dynamite Comics . In the future, humans have achieved virtual immortality. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their consciousness. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Their stacks can be downloaded into new bodies, or "sleeves", after death. Roman Catholics do not allow their stacks to be re-sleeved after death, as they believe that

13680-574: Was awarded the Hugo , Nebula , and Philip K. Dick Awards. Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) followed after Gibson's popular debut novel. According to the Jargon File , "Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly naïve and tremendously stimulating." Early on, cyberpunk

13800-563: Was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya , when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, "You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was. Akira (1982 manga) and its 1988 anime film adaptation have influenced numerous works in animation, comics, film, music, television and video games. Akira has been cited as

13920-400: Was cyberpunk." Cyberpunk is often set in urbanized, artificial landscapes, and "city lights, receding" was used by Gibson as one of the genre's first metaphors for cyberspace and virtual reality. The cityscapes of Hong Kong has had major influences in the urban backgrounds, ambiance and settings in many cyberpunk works such as Blade Runner and Shadowrun . Ridley Scott envisioned

14040-1108: Was hailed as a radical departure from science-fiction standards and a new manifestation of vitality. Shortly thereafter, however, some critics arose to challenge its status as a revolutionary movement. These critics said that the science fiction New Wave of the 1960s was much more innovative as far as narrative techniques and styles were concerned. Furthermore, while Neuromancer ' s narrator may have had an unusual "voice" for science fiction, much older examples can be found: Gibson's narrative voice, for example, resembles that of an updated Raymond Chandler , as in his novel The Big Sleep (1939). Others noted that almost all traits claimed to be uniquely cyberpunk could in fact be found in older writers' works—often citing J. G. Ballard , Philip K. Dick , Harlan Ellison , Stanisław Lem , Samuel R. Delany , and even William S. Burroughs . For example, Philip K. Dick's works contain recurring themes of social decay, artificial intelligence, paranoia, and blurred lines between objective and subjective realities. The influential cyberpunk movie Blade Runner (1982)

14160-580: Was made in 1884 by Charles Renard and Arthur Constantin Krebs in the French Army airship La France . La France made the first flight of an airship that landed where it took off; the 170 ft (52 m) long, 66,000 cu ft (1,900 m ) airship covered 8 km (5.0 mi) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8.5 hp (6.3 kW) electric motor, and a 435 kg (959 lb) battery. It made seven flights in 1884 and 1885. In 1888,

14280-575: Was not a sequel to the original movie; Ghost in the Shell (2017), a live-action adaptation of the original manga ; Alita: Battle Angel (2019), based on the 1990s Japanese manga Battle Angel Alita ; the 2018 Netflix TV series Altered Carbon , based on Richard K. Morgan 's 2002 novel of the same name ; and the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) and original net animation (ONA) miniseries Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022), both based on R. Talsorian Games 's 1988 tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk . Lawrence Person has attempted to define

14400-416: Was published, delivering a glimpse of a future encompassed by what became an archetype of cyberpunk "virtual reality", with the human mind being fed light-based worldscapes through a computer interface. Some, perhaps ironically including Bethke himself, argued at the time that the writers whose style Gibson's books epitomized should be called "Neuromantics", a pun on the name of the novel plus " New Romantics ",

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