Cyberpunk 101

Jamie Says

Cyborgs and robots and mutants, oh my!

Technology, like fiction, evolves at a rather rapid pace. And when you have a group of authors with a curiosity about the future, it is inevitable that you are going to get something at the very least entertaining, and, at most, philosophically special.

The term “Cyberpunk” was coined in a short story of the same name by Bruce Bethke published in 1983, about a group of teenage software hackers. This was really the first example of people using their new-found computer skills to subvert the system.

Cybernetic Punks, “Cyberpunks”, were those outsiders who lived in a kind of moral blind spot, using their talents for either the good of the world, or just for their own benefit.

Before Cyberpunk was published, however, a movie by Ridley Scott hit the cinemas.

Showing the world a bleak future, where man had already settled on distant worlds and the rise of technology had given birth to robots that were identical to man in almost every way, Blade Runner was one of the first (and still finest) examples of future life where technology rules above all else. It also asked the question “What does being human mean?”. This question has become fundamental to a genre where people upgrade themselves with bionic body parts, artificial brains and the ability to plug themselves into the net.

Not long after, an author by the name of William Gibson set in motion what would become a great movement in speculative fiction by publishing Neuromancer; a tale of a “console jockey” whose lifelong career as a hacker has been all but destroyed by the company he stole from.

This is where the Punk from Cyberpunk really became recognised. It was seen for a long time, and still is by many people, that for the fiction to be CP it has to have not only advanced technology but also an oppressive atmosphere.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, published in 1992, became what was hailed as the end of Cyberpunk and the beginning of the Post-Cyberpunk genre. There was seen to be some kind of emotional evolution between what had come before and what was new. It may have been because Stephenson had used the technology of the day to predict a different kind of future than the earlier writers had envisaged; it may have been because his main character was not only a hacker and the world’s best sword fighter, but also a pizza-man.

The protagonists of Cyberpunk fiction are usually outsiders: people who don’t fit in, hackers, couriers, revolutionaries, loners. They become anti-heroes: people you would never picture saving the world, but who become monumentally important for a brief moment.

Now, I have left out many, many of the important works of CP fiction that have helped build this genre. This is not because I don’t recognise them as part of CP, nor because I have a grudge against them or think them unimportant; but, this is a Cyberpunk 101 article, and if I were to cover this topic properly, I would be typing for hours. That’s not what I’m here for.

I’m here to get you reading Cyberpunk… to make you love Cyberpunk. Even  if I’ve made you hate Cyberpunk, I’ve done my job, because then you will tell other people about it, and maybe one of them will become curious enough about it to read one of these great books.

And the future is not only written by Americans and Europeans. Australia  has its own Cyberpunk authors. Marianne de Pierres is a Queensland-based author who has dreamed up one heck of a future for this great land.

Movies like The Matrix, Japanese anime including Ghost in the Shell and games like Mirrors Edge have brought Cyberpunk to the attention of audiences that Sci-Fi books can’t get to.

It is an all-encompassing kind of fiction.

Visit The Cyberpunk Project site for more info.