August 27, 2025 • 122 mins
Welcome to Mona Lisa Overpod, the show that asks the question "What is cyberpunk?" On each episode, hosts Ka1iban and author Lyda Morehouse dive into the genre that helped define sci-fi fiction in the '80s and break down the themes which remain relevant to our lives in the 21st century. Pull on your mirrorshades, jack into the matrix, and start your run with us today!
Dense cityscapes, exotic fashions, humans sharing the streets with robots and cyborgs...the visual aspects of cyberpunk worlds are readily detectable and typically anticipated by the average sci-fi consumer. But the Blade Runners and Neuromancers and tech noir tales of science fiction owe their most anticipated signifiers to a seldom discussed comic story created by two titans of genre fiction and published in a broadly influential magazine that created from whole cloth the genre we think of as "Cyberpunk".
In this episode, we discuss The Long Tomorrow and the story of its creators' collaboration, the powerful influence of Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal on 1970s science fiction, the heady combination of the bandes dessinées art style and American noir, Moebius's arresting creations and Dan O'Bannon's fertile imagination, and whether or not cyberpunk is a matured genre. We also talk about the "cyberpunk purity test", bromine poisoning, hi-tech Furbies, #RIPAOL, "older brother magazines", the Shinders backroom right of passage, Moebius FM, Jodorowsky's Dune, cultural dandelions, sex panels, the first cyberpunk POC main character, tempered edgelordiness, the leveling effect of streaming on culture, and The Bonfire of the Vanities gets a beatdown!
Le pied?
NEWS UPDATE: Anthropic settles!
https://www.theverge.com/news/766311/anthropic-class-action-ai-piracy-authors-settlement
Check out the totally real(?) Long Tomorrow TV pitch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvKj_kYTMuk
The new edition of Lyda's book, Ressurection Code, is out now!
https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-lyda-morehouse/resurrection-code/
Join Kaliban on Twitch weekdays at 12pm for the Cyber Lunch Hour!
http://twitch.tv/justenoughtrope
Put Just Enough Trope merch on your body!
http://justenoughtrope.threadless.com
MLOP is a part of the Just Enough Trope podcast network. Check out our other shows about your favorite pop culture topics and join our Discord!
http://www.twitter.com/monalisaoverpod
http://www.justenoughtrope.com
http://www.instagram.com/monalisaoverpod
https://discord.gg/7E6wUayq
Buy us a coffee on Ko-Fi!
https://ko-fi.com/justenoughtrope
Dense cityscapes, exotic fashions, humans sharing the streets with robots and cyborgs...the visual aspects of cyberpunk worlds are readily detectable and typically anticipated by the average sci-fi consumer. But the Blade Runners and Neuromancers and tech noir tales of science fiction owe their most anticipated signifiers to a seldom discussed comic story created by two titans of genre fiction and published in a broadly influential magazine that created from whole cloth the genre we think of as "Cyberpunk".
In this episode, we discuss The Long Tomorrow and the story of its creators' collaboration, the powerful influence of Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal on 1970s science fiction, the heady combination of the bandes dessinées art style and American noir, Moebius's arresting creations and Dan O'Bannon's fertile imagination, and whether or not cyberpunk is a matured genre. We also talk about the "cyberpunk purity test", bromine poisoning, hi-tech Furbies, #RIPAOL, "older brother magazines", the Shinders backroom right of passage, Moebius FM, Jodorowsky's Dune, cultural dandelions, sex panels, the first cyberpunk POC main character, tempered edgelordiness, the leveling effect of streaming on culture, and The Bonfire of the Vanities gets a beatdown!
Le pied?
NEWS UPDATE: Anthropic settles!
https://www.theverge.com/news/766311/anthropic-class-action-ai-piracy-authors-settlement
Check out the totally real(?) Long Tomorrow TV pitch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvKj_kYTMuk
The new edition of Lyda's book, Ressurection Code, is out now!
https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-lyda-morehouse/resurrection-code/
Join Kaliban on Twitch weekdays at 12pm for the Cyber Lunch Hour!
http://twitch.tv/justenoughtrope
Put Just Enough Trope merch on your body!
http://justenoughtrope.threadless.com
MLOP is a part of the Just Enough Trope podcast network. Check out our other shows about your favorite pop culture topics and join our Discord!
http://www.twitter.com/monalisaoverpod
http://www.justenoughtrope.com
http://www.instagram.com/monalisaoverpod
https://discord.gg/7E6wUayq
Buy us a coffee on Ko-Fi!
https://ko-fi.com/justenoughtrope
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