It had to be set in the future because cyberspace and other technologies used in CP weren't /aren't invented at the moment of writing. Steampunk tries to avoid that by creating an alternative timeline. Also it is quite unlikely that this setting could take place in the far future. This would mean, t...

Jonas wrote:(..,)as film noir is not so much a genre as a style. .

Exactly. I'd call CP a style of SciFi having it's focus on a (more or less) specific era and having it's pet subjects.

Although the movie "Strange Days" takes place in 1999, I consider it almost CP, just because of it's style.

SciFi is just the generic term, isn't it? Nobody can deny the fact CP has it's origins in classic SciFi novels. Although I have read some essays about CP and heard very different definitions of what CP is, here are some characteristics that come to my mind when thinking about CP: - near future scena...

One main criterion whether I consider something to be CP or not is the grade of realism. I wouldn't consider classical fantasy creatures as likely to show up in the near future, so I'd call Shadow Runner a mixture between CP and Fantasy. Actually I think commercial CP is dead, since the 80's are gon...