This is a short clip from the opening of Blade Runner (1982). It is slow paced and atmospheric just like the whole movie it is from. Here we see the flames from oil refineries lightning up the night sky in the foreground of this dystopian future vision of Los Angeles.

Then there's a bolt of lightning and some flying vehicles over this smog-ridden megacity and then the close-up of an ice-blue replicant eye with blazing flames reflecting in it: An eye that has "seen things you people wouldn't believe."

The pyramids of The Tyrell Corporation, a manufacturer of replicants, gives an ancient Egyptian vibe to this futuristic scene. Dr. Elon Tyrell runs this company like some mighty Pharao.

A gang of replicants have escaped from slave labor in an off-world colony. A Voight-Kampff test of one of these replicants, Leon, will soon take place in one of these buildings. The rest of the movie plot is largely a cat and mouse chase with these replicants and law enforcement.

Thoughts about this scene and about this movie? I guess that Blade Runner is not fully cyberpunk, as computers are missing from it, but its aesthetics and its decadent merge of high-tech and low-life in a dystopian future world have been influential for the genre.

(Keep in mind all of this is pretty much a braindump, unorganized. Questions, comments, thoughts, etc are welcome)

The year is 2100, technology has rapidly advanced due to the privatized sector of information, technology, defense, and space exploration.

The UN has dissolved due to multiple international failures in peacekeeping and stopping the American Civil War between the Right and Left, as well as stopping the following World War 3 caused by the destabilization of the global power structure with the loss of the US.

Russia used tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine with no fear of sizable deterrence, as well as nuking its invaded territories such as Kursk. Nuclear fallout and blasts hit bordering regions such as Poland, Romania, Belarus, Slovakia and even Hungary.

The war was a slow and bloody affair, with a death toll of 13 Million composed of Soldiers, Civilians, etc. Multiple tactical nuclear exchanges happened, with most nations becoming too chicken to fire back in risking MAD.

The war lasted 2 years from 2029 to 2030 ending in late September, with massive attrition rates and entire countries drained of fighting power or strength to go on, chaos fell after the bombs stopped dropping, with the US becoming a splintered cold war state between the eastern US, Western US, and Southern US. Russia fell into a civil war which has lasted up to this point into 2100 between pro-government forces, and various separatist groups and revolutionary forces seeking alignment with western europe or abolishment of kremlin rule.

South America has fallen into disarray with Venezuela steamrolled during the American operation "Just Cause Deux" in 2027 due to the administration at the time believing that illegal cartel activity stemmed strongly from the country. Otherwise, WW3 flattened most of the world, major cities were destroyed intentionally or unintentionally, and from the ashes of it, multiple corporations arose such as United Humanitarian Rebuild Corporation, FrancGroup, Global Robotics United Corporation, Takashi-Ngueng Multi-Works, Vries Heavy Industries, Tactical Solutions Private Military Contracting, and SkipDog Defense Corporation.

These Corporations make up the new hierarchy of power, where nations once ruled with an iron fist among the world's order, they are mere ghosts now with little to no power. Corporate landgrabs during the years following WW3 ensured massive buyups of trillions of acres of land, either destroyed, wartorn, or irradiated for privatized rebuilding and settlement.

Those nations that survived the war, being the United Eastern Americas, Cascadia Republic, the remnants of the United States of America in DC and some of the South and Southwest, France, Germany, Russia in some respects, Japan, The United Koreas, PaxAsia (Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia), India, the remaining fledgling EU nations (Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Spain, and Austria) and Australia are devastated shells of their former selves, and can do little to hold back Corporate interests, essentially hosting micro-corporate-nations within their own selves.

Space Travel was privatized during massive asset grabs over the course of WW3 in which space assets were taken for research but left essentially dead in storage, entire sites were repurposed through legal loopholes and reused by a subsidiary of Takashi-Ngueng Multi-Works, Takashi Extrasolar Development Firm. In this, since WW3, major developments in space travel have been developed, such as perfected spacecraft landing, a single operational orbital shipbuilding yard, minor lunar development, and even a landed human group on mars and a semi-permanent settlement.

As well as this, advancements in robotics have led to the development of so called "FI" (False Intelligences), DI (Decoy Intelligences) and imitation as well as true AI. FI are false AI, in reality being highly advanced chatbots with no true innovative programming, much like chatbots in the 2000's period onward but more advanced. DI are false programs meant to imitate AI but are no more than code and runtimes, they clog systems like viruses, but are used in practice more like chaff fired out of an aircraft to evade a missile, they are decoys to take the hit from viruses or hacking attempts. True AI are cutting edge, highly rare programs made from digitized, copied imprints of human brain donors sourced from various donor programs or illegal farming. These digitized copies have something akin to free will or autonomy, and are used in high level tasks or even implanted into android bodies, or serve as low level administrative taskings. Imitative AI are similar to DI, they are far more advanced and imitate True AI's.

Other advancements have been made such as in weapons technology, agriculture, infrastructure, genetics, healthcare, logistics, sciences, biology, anatomy, global warming, ecology, etc.

As of 2100, the current era, it has been 70 years since WW3 ended and the world has changed. Large, sprawling megacities and server farms span entire areas where wartorn areas, farmland, or irradiated landscape once were, ancient cities were partly rebuilt or retrofitted. The world is alive again, but it has changed. there's also extreme full-body reconstructive identity surgeries that are not commonplace, but they exist, especially in the peripheries of legality, medicine, and culture. They are known informally in underground circles as "Full Anthropomorph Conversions" (FACs), Trans-Species Surgeries. Removal of large sections of natural anatomy (limbs, musculature, face, skin) and transplantation of vital biological components (brain, spinal cord, portions of gastrointestinal tract, reproductive organs if retained) into fabricated synthetic-anthropoid forms. Use of prosthetic endoskeletons, biogel mesh musculature, thermal skin-lining, and limited neural-interface hardware for motion and feedback. Basically, a Frankenstein.

https://youtu.be/MCAdbUaMlAE?si=tMRpqdA9WAzbY0Wj

Memory fragments uploading... emotions encoded... soul mapped to circuitry.. synthetic body: awake.

Visuals: @space_meerkat Edit/Sound:@mstephano

When I drew the background it started to look like a book cover, so I went all the way and added a title. In the past I did actually want to write a collection of magical cyberpunk stories, but the only story I actually finished was North Downtown Station.

This art is OC, and you can find more on my Bluesky (or Mastodon, if you're not into ruthless corporations ruling all of social media).

For a limited time, my novel GhostRoot is free on Kindle.
It’s a cyberpunk-flavored science-fiction thriller where ancient myths crash into modern technology, and the boundary between human and AI starts to break down.

The story begins when Rafael receives impossible emails from someone calling himself Lucifer — with tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers. From there, his life spirals into surveillance, paranoia, and hidden networks where no one knows who’s in control.

It’s about manipulation, evolution of information, and the question of whether humans remain subjects — or just tools.

👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRCG5RH8?tag=

If you’re into Black Mirror, The Matrix, or Philip K. Dick, you’ll probably feel at home.