It’s already here

Right now I’m finishing a collection of short stories called Burning Chrome by probably the most important cyberpunk writer ever — William Gibson. And I hadn’t read cyberpunk in a long time, so I forgot how heavy and depressing the genre really is. Because cyberpunk shows us our own world, but with technology twisted into grotesque and almost unrecognizable forms.

Yesterday my son and I went to a playground. There was a group of teenagers there, maybe 13 to 15 years old. And what I saw honestly looked like a scene from another planet. Instead of talking to each other, five teenagers were sitting separately in different corners of the playground, silently staring into their phones.

And in that moment I realized that cyberpunk had already arrived. I understand that this is the new reality, and that clinging to the past makes no sense, and that this is simply the new normal now.

But it gave me a very strange feeling — for a moment I felt like a complete alien on my own planet.

Which, honestly, is exactly what good cyberpunk is supposed to make its reader feel.