- What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high-tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Read more about it on
Wikipedia.
- How to search the database?
The below examples use the movies database as example, but apply just as well to the games, music and books databases.
- To show all content made in the '80s, enter 198 and select the Year option. You can also use an year range like 1980-1989 and select the Year option, which will give the same result.
- To search for content belonging to a specific year range and title or category or country or starring or director, use first the year range (example: 2000-2002), followed by a comma character and the title, category, country, starring or director name and select the Title, Category, Country, Starring or Director option. For example, "2000-2002,feature film" (no quotes) and selecting the Category option will display all feature film entries within the 2000-2002 year range. Using an year range first is required.
- If you want to search for a single country, enter the country name and select the Country option. For multiple countries, use a comma between the names (no spaces between the comma's) and select the All Columns - FullText option (example: South Korea,USA,Japan). Alternatively, use a comma after the country name followed by a space and the next country name and select the Country option, but this method is currently less reliable as the former method uses the full-text search capability.
- To display content belonging to more than one category, use a comma character and select the Category option.
- When using the wide search (All Columns - FullText) option, you can build relations between the different columns. The relation is built by using a
comma-delimiter between each search word (spaces between words are allowed but yield different results). To search for things like
anime films made by Japan, you can use "japan,anime,film" (no quotes) or "anime,film,japan" (no quotes). Other relational searches like
"usa,japan,anime" will show all anime made together by the USA and Japan. Or "usa,2013" for all films/anime made by the USA in the year 2013
or "japan,2003,anime,series" which will display only Japanese anime series made in the year 2003. Other things you may want to try are
"olivier,gruner,albert,pyun" which will show in which films Olivier Gruner played in that were directed by Albert Pyun.
- When using the wide search (All Columns - FullText) option, instead of the above, you can use search operators like + - * < > " ( ) ~. Say
we want to search for the word nemesis but exclude all content directed by Albert Pyun. The search string for this would be "+nemesis -albert -pyun"
or "+nemesis -pyun" (in both cases without the quotes), and yes, the space is required. A leading plus sign means the word must be present.
A leading minus sign means the word must not be present. Using an asterisk works as a wild card operator and must be appended to the word
to be affected. For example, alber* will match albert, alberto, alberta, etc. For more information on the other operators and on how to use them, consult
the database documentation.
- Can I download stuff from here?
No. This is just an information database. No downloadable content is stored in it or on the server and no external linking is done either.
- I don't agree with some of the content being Cyberpunk.
This database catalogs proto-, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk content. While the cyberpunk genre had its peak between the '80's and mid '90's, it evolved into a more broader and experimental style that includes fantasy, horror, posthumanism, comedy, etc...
The Cyberpunk genre is often highly debated on what exactly defines Cyberpunk. There is a lot of content that looks dystopian and has a noir setting but is
not considered to be Cyberpunk. As an example, the Mad Max movies are such films. The films are just regular dystopian action films. They satisfy only one of the core (the dystopian part) major ingredients of Cyberpunk which are dystopian settings, (lots of) tech involved that often has a negative impact on humanity, some form of man-machine fusion or information technology with a pervasive penetration into society, near-future settings on Earth, though settings on other planets are not excluded (think of the film Screamers) and some form of (major) corporate entity/entities
with lots of influence on politics and control. As Cyberpunk, IMO, is a spectrum, the content does not need to satisfy all criteria before it can be considered Cyberpunk (to some degree). But, the more criteria are satisfied, the closer such content gets to the core of the Cyberpunk genre and the more it answers to the strict definition of Cyberpunk die-hards.