Cyberpunk, Space Travel, and Setting Design

Arith Winterfell · 09-05-2022, 06:44 PM

So I've been trying to work on creating a sci-fi setting, but could use suggestions and help.

One thing I'm really interested in is Cyberpunk, not necessarily the 70's aesthetic, but rather the whole what makes us human, identity issues, augmented reality, cybernetics, advanced genetic engineering, and so forth. I'm interested in exploring issues of self in the cyberpunk landscape like in the 1995 movie Ghost in the Shell. However, like that movie, I don't want it to be a simple setup of transferring your mind to a brain tape and uploading it to just another body. In other words I don't want to go full fledge Transhuman Space either (I think).

Thing is I get the feel that much of Cyberpunk tends to be tied down to the cityscape in some form and often Earth. I'm much more interested in star travel in the sense of going to strange new worlds like in Star Trek (though not necessarily warp drive and all that).

So part of my trouble is figuring out how to capture the flavor of cyberpunk and it's questions of humanity, while still voyaging out into the universe and exploring new worlds.

I think I want to avoid simply having the transmission of post human consciousness directly sent via laser communication across the stars sorta thing. Instead I know I want starships and so forth with people aboard them, etc.

One option I've been toying with has been replacing the cityscapes of traditional Cyberpunk, with massive interstellar starship/colony ships. Or alternatively worlds that have advanced so much after colonization so as to be new worlds filled with trillions of people. But to do that option you would think tech and science would have advanced way beyond cyberpunk for there to be civilizations with countless super-cities on them. Yet another options is the super-city O'Neil cylinder space station type thing, again this feels like it would lock the game into being centered in a single solar system rather than world-hopping.

Anyway, suggestions welcome. I think my major struggle at this juncture is wanting to have a world-hopping setting, but struggling to figure out how to move cyberpunk from its traditional city-centered Earth-side setting.

09-05-2022, 06:44 PM	#1
Arith Winterfell Join Date: May 2014 Location: Indiana, United States	Cyberpunk, Space Travel, and Setting Design So I've been trying to work on creating a sci-fi setting, but could use suggestions and help. One thing I'm really interested in is Cyberpunk, not necessarily the 70's aesthetic, but rather the whole what makes us human, identity issues, augmented reality, cybernetics, advanced genetic engineering, and so forth. I'm interested in exploring issues of self in the cyberpunk landscape like in the 1995 movie Ghost in the Shell. However, like that movie, I don't want it to be a simple setup of transferring your mind to a brain tape and uploading it to just another body. In other words I don't want to go full fledge Transhuman Space either (I think). Thing is I get the feel that much of Cyberpunk tends to be tied down to the cityscape in some form and often Earth. I'm much more interested in star travel in the sense of going to strange new worlds like in Star Trek (though not necessarily warp drive and all that). So part of my trouble is figuring out how to capture the flavor of cyberpunk and it's questions of humanity, while still voyaging out into the universe and exploring new worlds. I think I want to avoid simply having the transmission of post human consciousness directly sent via laser communication across the stars sorta thing. Instead I know I want starships and so forth with people aboard them, etc. One option I've been toying with has been replacing the cityscapes of traditional Cyberpunk, with massive interstellar starship/colony ships. Or alternatively worlds that have advanced so much after colonization so as to be new worlds filled with trillions of people. But to do that option you would think tech and science would have advanced way beyond cyberpunk for there to be civilizations with countless super-cities on them. Yet another options is the super-city O'Neil cylinder space station type thing, again this feels like it would lock the game into being centered in a single solar system rather than world-hopping. Anyway, suggestions welcome. I think my major struggle at this juncture is wanting to have a world-hopping setting, but struggling to figure out how to move cyberpunk from its traditional city-centered Earth-side setting.