Digital Resistances - Digital Culture - page 172

working in the science fiction genre. That said, the emergence of
Cyberpunk as a distinctive subgenre within science fiction produced
a number of exciting and innovative fictions, including those of
Rudy Rucker, Pat Cadigan, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and,
in the , Jeff Noon. Sterling, as well as writing a number of

topics with near-future scenarios, collaborated with Gibson on The
Difference Engine , 80 an amusing 'Steampunk' novel set in an alterna-
tive Victorian past in which Babbage's protocomputers have been
successfully built and have thus initiated an early version of the
information age. 81
Stimulated perhaps by the increasing media presence of hackers
and hacker culture, or the increasing popularity of technologically-
oriented music and literature, Hollywood soon began to explore the
possibilities of Cyberpunk. In the

uk

s a number of attempts were
made to translate the genre into film. Johnny Mnemonic (

1990

) is set
in the early twenty-first century and features Keanu Reeves as the
eponymous hero, a courier who stores data in his brain. The plot
centres on his need to get rid of some particularly sensitive medical
data while being chased by, among others, the Yakuza. Johnny
Mnemonic received a lukewarm reception, both critically and
commercially, and is possibly most noteworthy for being directed by
Robert Longo, better known in the '

1995

s as an artist in the heroic
mould of Julian Schnabel, and for featuring Reeves in the first of his
Cyberpunk roles. Reeves also featured in Kathryn Bigelow's Point
Break , a wonderful, trashy film about bank heists, Buddhism and
surfing. For her excursion in the Cyberpunk genre, Strange Days
(

80

), she turned instead to Ralph Fiennes, who, though clearly a
better actor, was perhaps less able to embody the digital zeitgeist as
effectively as Reeves's blank and awkward handsomeness. Set in the
days before the new millennium at the end of the twentieth century,
Strange Days features Fiennes as Lenny Nero, an ex-cop turned
hustler, who deals with tapes that can record people's memories. In
the course of his work he comes across the future equivalent of a

1995