Postmodernism and science fiction

The superhero and the cyberpunk: transforming genres inSpider-Man 2099

“…Any attempt to draw existing research together in order to construct a working overview of the genre's fundamental qualities, then, must acknowledge the flexibility and subjectivity of the exercise. Cyberpunk is widely regarded as a (if not the) postmodern movement in science fiction (McCaffrey 1991;McHale 1991;Booker and Thomas 2009), and is seen as a rearrangement of previous science fiction concepts, moving the genre forward while reconfiguring its most enduring ideas in new ways (Butler 2003).…”

“…The phrase 'high tech, low life' is often used to capture the narratives and characters most common to cyberpunk: these are stories of criminal underworlds, street-level violence and disenfranchised citizens. Multinational commercial conglomerates dominate, if not govern, creating vast social stratification, dividing society between a super-rich elite and a huge number of the desperately poor (Senior 1996;Schaub 2001;Butler 2003). Advanced technology, however, is within reach of everyone and anyone; machines, gadgets, holograms and even robots are ubiquitous at every level of society, regardless of class or wealth.…”