Cyberpunk And The "New Magic Realism"

Cyberpunk was a subset of New Wave Science Fiction that came about during the 1980s when corporate dominance and Japan taking over the technological side of things was a rampant fear. It spawned various novels by well known writers.

My personal favorite is William Gibson, though the term itself was originally created in 1980.

In my subset of Magic Realism, I seek to blend the surrealistic elements of the Cyberpunk genre, and using some elements of "street hacking" in the same setting where elements of theology and mythology blend into an otherwise realistic and "contemporary" setting.

Rather than calling it "Magic Realism Punk" or whatever Punk shit you kids seem to be pumping out like a machine these days, I prefer to think of it as a subset without a specific marketing label.

You have various Magic Realism writers in the Literary Fiction community on Wattpad that write Dystopian settings with elements of Magic Realism. While these books don't contain "street hacking" or "the street finds its own uses for things", it contains many of the elements of a darkly futuristic world with elements of Magic Realism.

An example of "Street Hacking": An individual discovering that tobacco is extremely expensive in pre rolled cigarettes. They find that the established alternate can be just as expensive in some places, maybe a dollar less. So they instead buy roll your own papers, and dismantle cigarillos and roll the loose tobacco.

Such innovative uses by the individual are used to subvert Totalitarian establishments in a world where elements of theology and mythology are simply taken for granted.

I call this "New Youth Song."

Up next: Links to my old novellas, and how I seek to plan to re brand myself as a Literary Fiction writer.