A Hard-Wired Seven?

Meta
Title:	A Hard-Wired Seven?
Creator:	Neil Faulkner
Date(s):	1997
Medium:	print, then online
Fandom:	Blake's 7
Topic:
External Links:	at AO3 at Hermit on Lysator
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

A Hard-Wired Seven? is a 1997 Blake's 7 essay by Neil Faulkner.

It was originally printed in Altazine #4, archived online at Hermit.org, and is now on Archive of Our Own.

"Was B7 cyberpunk? As I'm sure you're all dying to know the answer to this tantalising question, I'll answer it straight away: No, it wasn't. But it might have been, even though it never could have been."

This essay is related to Destroy the Old Order.

Some Topics Discussed

• what is cyberpunk, some history, the first cyberpunk roleplaying game
• the connections between Blake's 7 and punk culture

Excerpts

B7 wasn't cyberpunk for a number of reasons. For a start, when the series went into production, the term didn't exist. The concept of 'cyberpunk' first emerged in the early 1980s to describe the work of a small group of new young SF writers - such as William Gibson and John Shirley - who merged a streetwise punk attitude with the future implications of the dawning Information Age. In the late 80s the term spread to the rolegaming industry (which is how I first got to hear about it), and only in the past few years has it impinged on the wider public consciousness. Gibson, author of the award- winning *Neuromancer*, was apparently the man who coined the term 'cyberspace', with which I'm sure we're all now quite familiar, though the cyberspace he envisaged is a little more exciting than the flood of on-screen e-mail chatter that we currently understand by it

On the surface, cyberpunk is high-tech sleaze, a marriage of style and silicon, or mirror-shaded youth cult where life is cheaper than any number of computerised implants. All you need to do is look cool, act cooler, talk smart and sport the right hardware. That was about as far as the roleplaying games went, which I considered so superficial I soon stopped playing cyberpunk games. The real, underlying, nature of cyberpunk is deeper and darker, and all the more alluring for being so frightening.

Cyberpunk is Hardtech in extremis. Technology has gone beyond being the shaper of society to become society itself. Part of Gibson's second novel, *Count Zero*, concerns a search for a mysterious artist, who turns out to be an abandoned artificial intelligence, drifting in high orbit. Other AIs have transformed themselves into gods, inhabiting the grey and featureless frontiers of cyberspace. The evolution of technology and its integration with living systems is no longer under human control; people are merely the means by which technology achieves its aims.

Then there is the punk element. Punk culture rejected the conformist standards of the 1970s, and the heroes of the cyberpunk share this anti- establishment, anti-intellectual attitude. They inhabit a shadowed, lawless world of concrete and steel, scrounging off the discards of 'respectable' society. They are parasites and thieves, outcasts, junkies, self-centred, selfish, amoral, cynical, emotionally blunted, spiritually gutted. If you think they sound like an unsavoury bunch, wait until you meet the bad guys.

Cyberpunk, then, is an essentially dystopian genre, and is open to the same criticisms that apply to all nightmare visions, namely that they run the risk of celebrating the very things they clam to be condemning. And whilst cyberpunk might be a new high-tech urban outsider folklore, it is still a fantasy vision, in which smart streetkid heroes run rings around the ruthless corporate dictators of society. Stripped of the computer jargon, it is a genre where peasants topple kings and win princesses. Given the kind of social infrastructure it depicts, this level of optimism can seem sorely out of place.

Another essential feature of cyberpunk is the concept of cyberspace (under whatever name) and the ability of people to interact directly with computers. B7 as a broadcast series predates, if only by a few years, the concept of cyberspace, so its absence from the series is no surprise. Direct interaction with computers is hinted at in a few episodes though. Firstly, Gan's limiter might be a putative example. The Alta's ability to interface directly with the System is another (and Jenna did the same thing with Zen, albeit accidentally, in *Cygnus Alpha*). The best example however is probably the sensornet which appeared in *Deathwatch*. This is very close to the 'trode-pads which Gibson's cyberspace cowboys use to enter the Net, and the complete sensory transmission it enables echoes the 'rider-chip' which figures so strongly in *Neuromancer*. We can infer, then, that the technology of direct interfacing with a computer system, and the sigital encoding of sensory and emotional data, is a reality in the B7 universe. It's just not very common, or at least not universally accessible. (*DeathWatch* might also count as an example of virtual reality - the combat grounds might have been computer constructed and transmitted to the duellists - and audience - as sensory input. Again this is a concept that did not have a name when the series was made. Virtual realirt also features prominently in the two good episodes of the Doctor Who story *The Deadly Assassin*). As a further example, consider the visual image structuraliser used on Avon in *Terminal*, which has additional implications for the memory manipulation used on Blake and others in *The Way Back*. The stock hardware of cyberpunk fiction makes such things explicable, even predictable. )

So, B7 was not cyberpunk. It was made too early for one thing. Even if it had been made several years later, it still wouldn't have qualified. Television is too conservative a medium, and has enough trouble with science fiction as a basic concept. The cutting edge of the genre hasn't a hope of making the small screen.

But that doesn't mean that B7 can't be cyberpunk. I would say that in fan fiction, it can be. Of course, it doesn't have to be, but the option is there. Cyberpunk B7 is a very real possibility that deserves to be explored further than it has been (which is hardly at all). The technology is certainly there in the series, though it seems to be rare and restricted. There is a sound rationale for this.

The silicon revolution and the Internet have ushered in the so-called Information Age. Concerns about this unprecedented level of public access to information are voiced daily. We might suppose that the Federation would try very hard to restrict this level of access; if there is a pan-galactic internet in B7, it is for the privileged few, within the Federation at least (elsewhere things might be different). Prosthetic augmentation might be seen as being reflected in mutoids, with their 'high bionic rebuild'. As for the low-life, street level dimension of cyberpunk, its absence in the series merely reflects the places the crew visited in the episodes. The mean streets of the Delta zones in Federation cities might be very cyberpunky indeed; urban space rats tripped out on shadow, kingpins under contract to the Terra Nostra, freelance cyberspace jocks illegally penetrating the Net, rider-chipped Central Security agents on their tail - the possibilities are there for any fan writer who wants to take them up.

Obviously I'm biased. I happen to like cyberpunk, its dystopian vision, its density of style and illusion of realism, its social awareness and sleazy high- tech glitter. Most fan writers and fanfic readers would seem to be somewhat less interested in the concept. Fair enough, but cyberpunk, like hardtech, is as much an attitude and approach to writing as it is a genre in its own right. Blakes 7, the series, is now looking very dated and technologically backward; an injection of cyberpunk can bring it up to date without compromising the basic vision of the series or distorting the central characters. The Star Trek movies updated Trek without adulterating it; cyberpunk can do the same for B7.

Besides, wouldn't Avon look really cool in mirror shades?

Fan Comments

Just a couple of random thoughts on cyberseven. I don't think it's true to say that B7 came too early to be cyberpunk: there are various proto-cyberpunk novels by authors such as Bester and Dick which could have served as inspiration. Indeed, if you want an idea of what a cyberpunk B7 might look like, I can recommend Bester's "Tiger Tiger" (published in the US as "The Stars My Destination" for some reason). This has a whole lot of elements that would later be identfied as cyberpunk (bodily enhancements through technology, corporate intrigue, etc), but is still a fast-moving, grand interplanetary tale with spaceships and big explosions. A damn good book, actually.

Furthermore, I don't agree that this would really be updating B7. Cyberpunk is starting to look pretty dated these days, as 80s as legwarmers and thrash metal. Moving the show on by less than ten years doesn't really seem like that great an advancement.

Finally, cyberpunk seems too cynical a genre for B7. That might sound a bit daft - doesn't B7 have a cynical streak a mile wide? - but bear with me. Idealism plays a big part in B7, if only to be attacked or subverted. In cyberpunk universal cynicism is pretty much taken for granted, so there's nothing for it to contrast with.

Of course, all this could simply be a manifestation of my own tastes and prejudices. I for one would like to see B7 as Philip K Dick might write it. Blake falls hopelessly in love with a cruel dark-haired woman, Avon and Cally are married but Avon throws it all away for a futile relationship with a manipulative sixteen-year-old with leukemia, Vila is the only character to survive psychologically unscathed and Orac turns out to be God.