/cyber/ - Cyberpunk & Science Fiction

They're set in japan because japan is well known for both being behind in technology and being really far ahead. They produce sophisticated robots there and some of the best metal constructed things made in japan can be considered the best in the world (along with Germany), but at the same time they still use fax machines, they still use flip phones, they still reek of the 80s. It was a noir feeling about it being both high and low tech, and also considering the economic turmoil in Japan (men are still the breadwinners and the females are the petite fragile housewifes, and not providing for the family or making a woman work means you failed as a man), there's lots of men who are in debt over in japan. It's filled with low-life people. Combine this with Japan being a relatively tiny country with this many people, it's already being overcrowded with lots of people living very low life. My best guess: people like Gibson just picked it randomly. From then on, people just went with the flow because when one thing starts a genre you follow its 'guidelines'. I mean, it's like having a mystery novel that has no mystery in it. Like you know who the killer is from the get-go. You can do it. It'll suck though because you're not following the guideline.

>>37812

This is completely off the mark. Japan was undergoing an economic boom in the 1980s. Japanese exports in culture, consumer electronics, and automobiles were dominant. Some people were practically convinced Japan was going to take over the world economically. Gibson and co. chose Japan because it was a key part of the Zeitgeist of the early 80s.

Of course, this all changed in the 90s with the "Lost Decade" and now the Japanese aesthetics are a retrofuturist artifact of the genre.

>>37835

yep, that and they went out of their way to look cyberpunk/futuristic, and really seemed to revel in the fact that they were what the future was supposed to look like

>>37835

>completely off the mark

Not really.

>>37849

>not really

Yes really.

>>37849

> people like Gibson just picked it randomly

Yes, it's totally wrong.

>>37835

This.

Japan had cellphones and GPS navigators years before they came to the west.

>>37941

Being Brazilian, I can say that a favela is more of a place for orwellian style literature. Usually the "donos do morro"(mob bosses) the favelas may make a lot of brouzouf with their drug and weapon trafficking, but still act like low-life criminals.

In comparison, our politics have the most advanced technology for brouzouf laundering and other illict activities.

In other words, Brazil would make a better detective story with cyberpunk setting than a Gibson style novel.