All posts tagged: cyberpunk

Move Over, Matrix. This Is the Ultimate ’90s Cyberpunk Movie

Move Over, Matrix. This Is the Ultimate ’90s Cyberpunk Movie

Fans of the cyberpunk genre have much to look forward to, with Blade Runner 2099 and Apple TV’s Neuromancer adaptation on the way. But if you’re hungry for a great “high tech, low life” film right now, you might consider looking to the not-so-distant past. Strange Days flew under my radar for years, but now it’s one of my favorite science-fiction movies. Though it was released back in 1995, Strange Days looks and feels like it could’ve come out yesterday. It’s one of those rare old movies that imagined the technology of virtual reality without turning it into a gimmick.  Strange Days takes place in 1999 Los Angeles during the last 48 hours of the millennium. Lenny Nero, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a former cop who now peddles an illegal virtual reality experience called Playback.  Nero’s friend and bodyguard, Mace (Angela Bassett), tries to keep him rooted in reality and away from trouble. Together, they work to track down a brutal rapist and murderer — a man who uses VR Playback discs to record his crimes from his …

Grimly Cyberpunk Video Shows Ukrainian Soldiers Leaning Out of Propeller Plane to Obliterate Drones With Rifles

Grimly Cyberpunk Video Shows Ukrainian Soldiers Leaning Out of Propeller Plane to Obliterate Drones With Rifles

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech A video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting down Russian drones with rifles — while leaning out of Soviet-era propeller planes like World War 1 combatants — went viral last week. The footage shows soldiers taking aim at the drones and pulling the trigger, causing them to plummet towards the ground and erupt in giant fireballs, drawing comparisons to war-based video games. Because disinformation surrounding the war in Ukraine has run rampant on social media, you might question the video’s authenticity. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, it’s a very real phenomenon, highlighting the latest developments in drone warfare — and how 21st-century tech is now clashing with decidedly old school close-range combat. According to the newspaper’s sources in the Ukrainian forces, the country’s 11th Army Aviation Brigade has eliminated dozens of Russian drones by having soldiers lean out of prop planes — decades-old Yak-52 aircraft, originally intended for aerobatics training — with rifles and shotguns. The planes are far …

Replaced review – nostalgic cyberpunk tribute has few ideas of its own | Games

Replaced review – nostalgic cyberpunk tribute has few ideas of its own | Games

For all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist folly, it is the genre’s arresting imagery that looms largest in the pop culture imagination. Petroleum flares light up the perpetually rainy Los Angeles of Blade Runner; in the novel Neuromancer, the sky is the “colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”. Replaced, a new 2D action-platformer from Belarus-based outfit Sad Cat Studios, leans into the steel and sprawl that the genre is famed for. The game also offers a wrinkle to cyberpunk’s longstanding, somewhat overfamiliar visual palette: it floods the screen with softly diffusing sepia and warm primary colours, particularly in the densely populated residential areas you’re able to explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, cosy rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi has been touched by an unlikely hand – that of cottagecore godfather Thomas Kinkade. These soft, nostalgic visuals breathe life into a simple, sentimental story. You control a lanky, athletic scientist named Warren working on a powerful AI for the Phoenix Corporation. But something goes amiss …

The cyberpunk classic that shaped modern sci-fi is finally coming to TV — everything we know

The cyberpunk classic that shaped modern sci-fi is finally coming to TV — everything we know

Between Severance, Pluribus, For All Mankind, Foundation, Silo, Dark Matter, and more, Apple TV+ has absolutely marked itself as the premiere streaming service for science fiction TV. They’re now taking on their biggest challenge yet: a TV adaptation of Neuromancer, William Gibson’s 1984 novel about a hacker who gets caught up in a globe-trotting conspiracy. Neuromancer is a hugely influential book, but despite numerous attempts has never been adapted for the screen. If anyone can do it, it’s the sci-fi nerds at Apple TV. What is Neuromancer about? The seminal cyberpunk story Credit: Ace Neuromancer is about Case, a hacker who takes a job working for a shady ex-military officer named Armitage. Along with the cybernetically enhanced Molly, who’s also working for Armitage, Case looks into his employer, and ends up going down a rabbit hole that leads to the Tessier-Ashpool family, who have created a pair of artificial intelligences that want to merge into a super-intelligence. Along the way, Case will meet a sociopathic thief named Peter Riviera, the enigmatic Lady 3Jane, and her ninja …