Cyberpunk couriers
January 19, 2006 9:54 PM Subscribe
Why are couriers featured in most cyberpunk stories?
couriers are innately "urban." cyberpunk is in some ways about hacking and about being "street." Knowing the shortcuts through a city, the quickest paths from A to B within that milieu is sort of like the ultimate street hack.
they're can also be cast as being somewhat tribal which is a cyberpunky motif
also, there's something iconoclastic/punk about transferring data (well it could be goods of another kind, but frequently the mcguffin is data of some sort) on foot in an age of uber broadband holographic broadband.
posted by juv3nal at 10:00 PM on January 19, 2006
they're can also be cast as being somewhat tribal which is a cyberpunky motif
also, there's something iconoclastic/punk about transferring data (well it could be goods of another kind, but frequently the mcguffin is data of some sort) on foot in an age of uber broadband holographic broadband.
posted by juv3nal at 10:00 PM on January 19, 2006
It's a low level job in "biz". It lets you get a character close to the action but still maintain independence.
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:02 PM on January 19, 2006
posted by cosmicbandito at 10:02 PM on January 19, 2006
Douglas Coupland wrote that the ultimate geek high would be teleportation. Anything that resembled the ability to teleport is appealing to geeks -- the internet, travel, etc. Couriers, with their ability to seemingly go anywhere at will, are something akin to that, IMO.
posted by frogan at 10:13 PM on January 19, 2006
posted by frogan at 10:13 PM on January 19, 2006
Cyberpunk started in the 80s, when, for whatever reason, bike couriers were hip. I have no idea if cyberpunk continues to use couriers as characters, but it wouldn't be a surprising example of cultural inertia.
posted by raaka at 10:28 PM on January 19, 2006
posted by raaka at 10:28 PM on January 19, 2006
If you list examples, "we" might be more informative.
I'd side with juv3nal re: bike couriers had some "indie" "cachet" during the time when cyberpunk was big, as raaka mentions.. I like cosmicbandito's apology for why couriers were used as main characters/viewpoints. Whereas, frogan makes good points on where the author sits.
Personally - perhaps the cyberpunk authors that you've read had experience as (or with) bike couriers...
I have a feeling that Gibson bought drugs off street people, but I doubt that Gibson ever dealt (off the street) or had intimate relationship with street-level drug dealers (although his background, reportedly, involved beiung a street kid... perhaps the times have changed).
Fiction, successful fiction, has to do with impressing something as believable.
I have friends who were bike couriers in Chicago - they weren't SciFi/Cyberpunk fans, but after I shoved Gibson and Stephenson in their face, they've noted that some of what's about bike couriering is believable, other parts... not so much.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:48 PM on January 19, 2006
I'd side with juv3nal re: bike couriers had some "indie" "cachet" during the time when cyberpunk was big, as raaka mentions.. I like cosmicbandito's apology for why couriers were used as main characters/viewpoints. Whereas, frogan makes good points on where the author sits.
Personally - perhaps the cyberpunk authors that you've read had experience as (or with) bike couriers...
I have a feeling that Gibson bought drugs off street people, but I doubt that Gibson ever dealt (off the street) or had intimate relationship with street-level drug dealers (although his background, reportedly, involved beiung a street kid... perhaps the times have changed).
Fiction, successful fiction, has to do with impressing something as believable.
I have friends who were bike couriers in Chicago - they weren't SciFi/Cyberpunk fans, but after I shoved Gibson and Stephenson in their face, they've noted that some of what's about bike couriering is believable, other parts... not so much.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:48 PM on January 19, 2006
Maybe they're appealing to people with Asperger's, who frequently have an inordinate fascination with both sci-fi and methods of transportation.
posted by trevyn at 11:13 PM on January 19, 2006
posted by trevyn at 11:13 PM on January 19, 2006
Cyberpunk novels are often written as the story of a character who stumbles onto Something Big. Hell, a lot of novels are like that. Having the main character be a courier makes it easy.
In that story setup, the main character's profession should get them easily involved in possibly critical parts of other people's business. There are a few jobs like this: hit-man, private investigator, (semi-retired) cop, bounty hunter, journalist, courier.. What makes the courier job easy to write is that it's so simple and needs less background work, especially in a genre where you have to create a lot of your own setting. The retired cop going after the case he could never solve is instantly understood in a contemporary setting, but in a cyberpunk setting you have to ask what are police like in the year X? What are their methods and technologies and command structures? If the main character is a cop his mind will be filled with Cop Stuff and entanglements into the big ugly dystopian social structure. Couriers are outside and above that by virtue of having a simple job.
They needn't have any special technical or social knowledge; when they need to know more about the McGuffin, they track down the expert who figures it out without having to clutter up the narrative with technical thoughts that are hard to write and probably boring.
posted by fleacircus at 11:43 PM on January 19, 2006
In that story setup, the main character's profession should get them easily involved in possibly critical parts of other people's business. There are a few jobs like this: hit-man, private investigator, (semi-retired) cop, bounty hunter, journalist, courier.. What makes the courier job easy to write is that it's so simple and needs less background work, especially in a genre where you have to create a lot of your own setting. The retired cop going after the case he could never solve is instantly understood in a contemporary setting, but in a cyberpunk setting you have to ask what are police like in the year X? What are their methods and technologies and command structures? If the main character is a cop his mind will be filled with Cop Stuff and entanglements into the big ugly dystopian social structure. Couriers are outside and above that by virtue of having a simple job.
They needn't have any special technical or social knowledge; when they need to know more about the McGuffin, they track down the expert who figures it out without having to clutter up the narrative with technical thoughts that are hard to write and probably boring.
posted by fleacircus at 11:43 PM on January 19, 2006
It's also a way to introduce tiny future shocks into a seemingly low-tech profession - my mountain-biking brother went nuts when he read about the bike made of paper in Gibson's 'Virtual Light'. And I think there's the obvious addition that being a courier makes for a reasonable assumption they're going to spend the first couple of chapters at least riding around, meaning the author gets to take you on a tour of their world without making it too obvious.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:50 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by Happy Dave at 1:50 AM on January 20, 2006
I wrote a long post, but then I read juv3nals again and I realized I was just repeating it with slightly different words. Good Job stealing my thunder ;).
posted by marc1919 at 4:57 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by marc1919 at 4:57 AM on January 20, 2006
Bikes are a cool lo-tech/hi-tech hybrid - the basic idea hasn't changed much in over a hundred years, but the refinements in terms of composite materials and electric shock anti-theft devices etc. can be futuristic.
Also bike couriers get lots of exercise and are therefore buff and hot, whereas hackers live in the basement and so are pudgy and sallow. Bike couriers about their business are risking their lives and making split-second, instinctive decisions all day every day. Therefore they are trained to be perfect action heroes. Perhaps a short order cook leaping into action is less believable.
posted by nowonmai at 5:47 AM on January 20, 2006
Also bike couriers get lots of exercise and are therefore buff and hot, whereas hackers live in the basement and so are pudgy and sallow. Bike couriers about their business are risking their lives and making split-second, instinctive decisions all day every day. Therefore they are trained to be perfect action heroes. Perhaps a short order cook leaping into action is less believable.
posted by nowonmai at 5:47 AM on January 20, 2006
Perhaps a short order cook leaping into action is less believable.
Oh I beg to differ.
Jordan Tate: So who are you? Are you, you, like, some special forces guy or something?
Casey Ryback: Nah. I'm just a cook.
Jordan Tate: A cook?
Casey Ryback: [Whispering] Just a lowly, lowly cook.
Jordan Tate: Oh, my God, we're gonna die.
posted by meehawl at 6:32 AM on January 20, 2006
Oh I beg to differ.
Jordan Tate: So who are you? Are you, you, like, some special forces guy or something?
Casey Ryback: Nah. I'm just a cook.
Jordan Tate: A cook?
Casey Ryback: [Whispering] Just a lowly, lowly cook.
Jordan Tate: Oh, my God, we're gonna die.
posted by meehawl at 6:32 AM on January 20, 2006
bike couriers are actually a cyberpunk thing cos they were hip back then (i never read a non-cp book that featured a bike courier), but couriers in general (as a low level job in gangs, drug businesses, trading businesses, the mob, newspaper offices) always make good protagonists (simple writing, easy to start a story with a nice guy stumbling into something)
posted by suni at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by suni at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2006
Having been a chicago bike courier, I have no idea what cyberpunk is. But doing it (and doing it well) brings one closer to insanity. It was nothing short of exilerating. Think of the game TRON.
posted by _zed_ at 6:55 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by _zed_ at 6:55 AM on January 20, 2006
Not all the couriers in cyberpunk are bike couriers. Note Johnny Mnemonic (never mind the movie). And of course, pizza-delivery guy is just one step away from being a courier.
Another reason couriers are favored is because they cross boundaries as part of their jobs (social, political, whatever). But I think the "moving data" part is central.
Aside: I still can't believe Gibson and his editor and proofreader let "braising" pass for "brazing."
posted by adamrice at 6:56 AM on January 20, 2006
Another reason couriers are favored is because they cross boundaries as part of their jobs (social, political, whatever). But I think the "moving data" part is central.
Aside: I still can't believe Gibson and his editor and proofreader let "braising" pass for "brazing."
posted by adamrice at 6:56 AM on January 20, 2006
It's a low level job in "biz". It lets you get a character close to the action but still maintain independence.
I think it's also important that it's a relatively innocent low-level job in the biz. So that the protagonist, while he's a good scruffy Bad Boy, is only that. A book where the protagonist was an amoral sociopathic monster might have less appeal than one where the protagonist is rough-and-ready and a little bit dangerous but still comes down on the side of right or freedom when the chips are down.
Not all the couriers in cyberpunk are bike couriers. ... And of course, pizza-delivery guy is just one step away from being a courier.
Yeah, but.
The Deliverator in Snow Crash and Bud in The Diamond Age are deliberate parodies of stock cyberpunk characters or themes.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:05 AM on January 20, 2006
I think it's also important that it's a relatively innocent low-level job in the biz. So that the protagonist, while he's a good scruffy Bad Boy, is only that. A book where the protagonist was an amoral sociopathic monster might have less appeal than one where the protagonist is rough-and-ready and a little bit dangerous but still comes down on the side of right or freedom when the chips are down.
Not all the couriers in cyberpunk are bike couriers. ... And of course, pizza-delivery guy is just one step away from being a courier.
Yeah, but.
The Deliverator in Snow Crash and Bud in The Diamond Age are deliberate parodies of stock cyberpunk characters or themes.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:05 AM on January 20, 2006
Also, I find it interesting the protaganists in many of these books (or sci-fi in general) are rarely foreigners, latinos, or blacks. I don't expect it would be easy for white geeky authors to write about black characters in a believable fashion so they're usually white boys with super-cool jobs with the potential for trouble.
It's been a while since I read Snow Crash, but wasn't one of the two main characters asian?
posted by dial-tone at 9:46 AM on January 20, 2006
It's been a while since I read Snow Crash, but wasn't one of the two main characters asian?
posted by dial-tone at 9:46 AM on January 20, 2006
Perhaps a short order cook leaping into action is less believable.
No, *I* beg to differ.
posted by raster at 9:49 AM on January 20, 2006
No, *I* beg to differ.
posted by raster at 9:49 AM on January 20, 2006
Hiro Protagonist in Snowcrash was, indeed, not a white dude. I think he was asian or part asian. I remember Stephenson describing him with cappuccino skin.
posted by Mid at 11:26 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by Mid at 11:26 AM on January 20, 2006
Hiro's father was a black American soldier; his mother was, IIRC, Japanese.
posted by alumshubby at 11:46 AM on January 20, 2006
posted by alumshubby at 11:46 AM on January 20, 2006
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posted by jimmy at 9:55 PM on January 19, 2006