What insight do these cyberpunk and biopunk works of science fiction provide into the nature of power and domination in the early 21st century, and what might they tell us about the possibilities of emancipation?

In the 1980s, a new sub-genre of science fiction emerged through the work of authors like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson. Known as cyberpunk, this sub-genre offered us dystopian visions of the future in which social and political order has partially collapsed under the weight of unrestrained corporate power. These dystopian futures reflected the anxieties and fears that attended the growth in neoliberal forms of political economy during the 1980s and 90s, and more recent authors, like Paolo Bacigalupi and Cory Doctorow, have continued this tradition of science fiction, incorporating anxieties related to climate change, bioengineering and surveillance technologies into their dystopian visions of the future. What insight do these cyberpunk and biopunk works of science fiction provide into the nature of power and domination in the early 21st century, and what might they tell us about the possibilities of emancipation?