Including any movie, TV show, video game, book, anime, whatever. What’s your favorite depiction of cyberspace?
Maybe Hackers?
Or Lawnmower Man?
Maybe Ready Player One?
Or the video game Rez?
Or, I don’t know, Tron?
Or maybe you prefer the “consensual hallucination” of Neuromancer? Or the Metaverse from Snow Crash?
Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you’re ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you’ve just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these.
When I say “cyberspace” I’m thinking any computer-driven virtual world you can navigate through in the first person. And personally, I’m excluding any virtual worlds that look identical to the real world. So I’d exclude things like The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor.
What do you think? Which cyberpunk work created the best cyberspace world?
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Johnny Mnemonic
When you need the best hacker, you just need to find a cybernetic dolphin. 👍
It worked for SeaQuest
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Dennou Coil
I thought Dennou Coil only had augmented reality, do they also have cyberspace? I’ve never watched it.
It does a little bit of both.
I like the book Hyperion’s description. Kinda reminds me of how that Hackers depiction looks, except more massive and there are AIs (and other intelligences and processes) roaming around, enforcing rules, running algorithms.
The Netsphere in BLAME!
More Tron and Ralph Breaks the Internet style. I know I’ve seen more cyberpunk things that have used a more realistic “avatar world” driven aesthetic, which is what actually exists in certain ways (mostly avatar chat systems like Second Life, VRchat, and, yes, Meta Horizons) but I’m having trouble recalling specifics. Even back when I would see these things as a kid, I thought that’s how it would turn out more than the silly abstract bullshit things like Johnny Mnemonic made it out to be (although the scene where he builds a machine to go online is still one of my favorites).
The best depiction by far was Ready Player One. The book, though, not the movie. Though it being written within the modern age doesn’t make it prophetic as much as just knowing what the Internet and VR are actually like.
Yeah, I think Ready Player One’s Oasis is the one that’d be the most fun to actually use. And I agree that’s probably because it was written after the internet, VR, and multiplayer games showed that “going online” isn’t enough, you’d actually want something to do online.
really like recent Pantheon’s series take
everyone and everything is super weird and vibrant
also, moving at dramatically different speed due to difference in their budget
Man that series is undrated as hell
2 books by Tony Daniels…for some reason the 3rd was never written.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Daniel_(science_fiction_writer)
Metaplanetary & Superluminal.
To me, the way the “virtual” people were treated, the way the world building & how the connectivity of everything comes together is absolutely amazing.
It has left me with literary blue balls since i found these books in a used bookshop, since he hasn’t completed the series.
I’ve never heard of those! Cool!
I always liked System Shock’s cyberspace, but that’s probably just nostalgia lol. I just loved the idea of having full and pretty intuitive control over all 3 axis when flying, I had never seen that done in a videogame before at the time.
The remake’s cyberspace is pretty cool too, and the music slaps.
You’re right, the remake did a fantastic job of updating the visuals.
I read Tad Williams Otherland series in the 90s and I still think back to its depiction of cyberspace regularly. Probably time for a reread as an adult to see if it holds up.
