Cyber Punk and Steam Punk

This genre is driven by fear or anxiety around machine intelligence, and it as a threat to humanity.

Cyborg Manefesto

We fear that machine intelligence will eventually evolve and become conscious that it does not need humanity, and may turn on humans (like in terminator)

Another Motif of this genre is an industrial landscape. The future envisioned in a cyber punk landscape is a vast suburbanization... the future is FILTHY... and the mechanical and industrial world are out of control.

Along with this, industrial body modification is also common with this genre. This is seen as an extension of the human body.

This genre mostly happens in a post-humanist landscape. After Nationalism peaks at WW2 there is a decline in an obsession in this concept. 

Another theme is Corporation

And lastly, in this genre we so often see the "Cyberpunk Heroine". She usually embodies all the attributes of the traditional hero, wears leather and kicks ass.

The matrix encompasses a lot of these genre tropes.

I recently watched Rachel Talalay's 1995, Tank Girl. (based on Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's Comic)

It was weird haha. But it pretty much encompassed all of the genre tropes. Theres the evil water corporation, a cyber punk landscape with vast and filthy suburbanization, and the industrial world is out of control. Of course we have the Cyberpunk Heroine as well, Rebecca... kicking ass, sex galore, leather wearing, witty... the works 

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick

The sub-genres we are reading this week deal in augmented, altered or alternative realities. Discuss the types of reality rendered

Describe the effects of these reality on the narrative and the implications for the presumed reader