Cyberpunk Is A Bit Stale. Kimberley Unger Has A Solution

The work of Kimberley Unger arguably belongs to cyberpunk, a genre that appears to have had a revival. Cyberpunk 2077 is undoubtedly the current flagship work seeing as it’s one of the most hyped video games of all time. However, the past few years have seen a vast number of near-future, tech-oriented stories released, such as Netflix’s big budget show Altered Carbon, long-gestating The Matrix sequel Resurrection, and an ever longer-awaited follow up to Blade Runner. It might look from the outside that there’s not much room for any more competitors, yet Unger’s stories offer a deeper look at the future than her often superficial stablemates.

It’s a genre notoriously driven by convention. That is part of the reason why Cyberpunk 2077 has received so much attention, as it manages to bring to life so many of the different tropes that have solidified over the past few decades. Japan-inspired cities, prostitution on most corners, killer gangs everywhere, and unrelenting grime: these are the comic-book aesthetics that most major titles bring back. Even the philosophical angle of our relationship with tech has become trite, with a relentlessly uninteresting question of how tech can allow us to keep our humanity. There’s not enough nuance to stop cyberpunk feeling like an ’80s throwback.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the genre has become so familiar, for something that is meant to be ‘punk’, is that it’s dominated by white male creators. There are exceptions, whether it’s The Wachowski Sisters and their anime-inspired visual smorgasbord, or Pat Cadigan’s decades of contributions to literature. However, one of the ways in which it’s clear the genre isn’t very diverse is in its representation of women. Women are usually prostitutes or femme fatales, and the fact that writers can’t imagine better is simply wasted potential. Cyberpunk should be a vision of the future, not just a rehashing of 1980s imagination.

Unger’s novels don’t reject everything that has come before, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer definitely sets the stage for the style of her work. Her two novels are Nucleation and The Extractionist and, whilst the former isn’t strictly cyberpunk, they take major cues from that story on how we relate to tech. Gibson’s protagonist finds himself in a moreish world somewhat like the internet, and his successor’s characters similarly find themselves immersed in virtual lives. Similarly, too, they are addicted to these worlds that exist beyond our mere physical forms. However, a major difference is that Unger drops the jargon that makes Neuromancer a little tricky, and allows readers to be closer to her characters.

Complex ideas are entwined with simple plots, too. The Extractionist is simply about Eliza, a hacker who gets minds back from the virtual world and into their bodies — a heist story with technological complications. Nucleation is an odder story of a remote operator for resource collecting robots, Helen, who find herself in a plot suggesting alien invasion or corporate sabotage. However, neither of these stories are interested in city-wide conspiracies or globe-trotting. The adventures largely happen in rooms with the characters jacked in to some technology, allowing us to focus on characters rather than the tropes of cyberpunk cities.

One of the most notable things about these stories, and perhaps the most challenging to write, is how these virtual experiences are fraught with risk. This comes from the minor of livelihoods being on the line, to the major of these escapades having a real risk of death. Unger keeps us locked into the character’s perspectives and the havoc that their tasks take on them — whether it’s Eliza seeing her personal life ruined or Helen’s health-wrecking, friendship-straining obsession. By making taking us away from the macro of genre to the micro of these character’s experiences, readers feel danger and plausibility that has often been lacking.

Perhaps more bleak is how these stories present stunning technological advancements as fuel for the work-oriented capitalist machine. An early work like Neuromancer shows the digital world as somewhere where rogues operate, and that despite the dangers involved there are thrills worth the trouble. However, in the worlds of Unger technology simply allows new ways for people to become slaves to their work. The dystopia here is a logical progression of the world which we live in today, with our advancement giving new ways for us to give more of ourselves to work.

We’re immersed within the characters’ experiences of a simultaneously tedious and terrific world. There’s plenty of wonder, whether it’s the ability to grab information at will or inhabit robotic forms billions of miles away in the galaxy. The price that the characters pay for these thrills is isolation from their peers, and an exhausting inability to disconnect from the addictive new abilities that their working lives provide.

There is definitely plenty of intelligence within these tales, but they still manage to be thrilling adventures. Messages never feel like they’re being brow beaten into readers, because we learn about the meaning of these near-futures by being embedded within their worlds. It’s rare to read anything that goes into such granular and believable detail about the workings and effects of technology, and its hard to imagine anything that throws in so much excitement alongside. Unger is clearly a writer aware of the genre but also carrying her own unique vision.

Cyberpunk is meant to be a vision of the future, but it too often feels like alternative history in how outdated it is. It’s often cynical, focused on aesthetics, and based on how men imagined the future decades ago. The genre would improved if it learned from Unger’s understanding that the specifics of technologies matter less than their day-to-day impact. Her work brings the genre up to date by tying it to our lives today, and deserves to be an influence on the writers of tomorrow.

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