Literature Minnesota writer
Bruce Bethke coined the term in 1983 for his short story "
Cyberpunk", which was published in an issue of
Amazing Science Fiction Stories. The term was quickly appropriated as a label to be applied to the works of
William Gibson,
Bruce Sterling,
Pat Cadigan and others. Of these, Sterling became the movement's chief ideologue, thanks to his
fanzine Cheap Truth. John Shirley wrote articles on Sterling and Rucker's significance.
John Brunner's 1975 novel
The Shockwave Rider is considered by many to be the first cyberpunk novel with many of the
tropes commonly associated with the genre, some five years before the term was popularized by Dozois. William Gibson with his novel
Neuromancer (1984) is arguably the most famous writer connected with the term cyberpunk. He emphasized style, a fascination with surfaces, and atmosphere over traditional science-fiction tropes. Regarded as ground-breaking and sometimes as "the archetypal cyberpunk work", Early on, cyberpunk was hailed as a radical departure from science-fiction standards and a new manifestation of vitality. Shortly thereafter, some critics arose to challenge its status as a revolutionary movement. These critics said that the science fiction
New Wave of the 1960s was much more innovative as far as narrative techniques and styles were concerned. While
Neuromancers narrator may have had an unusual "voice" for science fiction, much older examples can be found: Gibson's narrative voice, for example, resembles that of an updated
Raymond Chandler, as in his novel
The Big Sleep (1939). The influential cyberpunk movie
Blade Runner (1982) is based on his book,
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
Transhumanism and technologically augmented humans are also a main feature of
Roger Zelazny's
Creatures of Light and Darkness (1968). In 1994, scholar
Brian Stonehill suggested that
Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel ''
Gravity's Rainbow'' "not only curses but precurses what we now glibly dub cyberspace." Other important predecessors include
Alfred Bester's two most celebrated novels,
The Demolished Man and
The Stars My Destination, as well as
Vernor Vinge's novella
True Names.
Reception and impact Science-fiction writer
David Brin describes cyberpunk as "the finest free promotion campaign ever waged on behalf of science fiction". It may not have attracted the "real punks", but it did ensnare many new readers, and it provided the sort of movement that postmodern literary critics found alluring. Cyberpunk made science fiction more attractive to academics, argues Brin; in addition, it made science fiction more profitable to
Hollywood and to the visual arts generally. Although the "self-important rhetoric and whines of persecution" on the part of cyberpunk fans were irritating at worst and humorous at best, Brin declares that the "rebels did shake things up. We owe them a debt."
Fredric Jameson considers cyberpunk the "supreme literary expression if not of
postmodernism, then of
late capitalism itself". Cyberpunk further inspired many later writers to incorporate cyberpunk ideas into their own works, such as
George Alec Effinger's
When Gravity Fails.
Wired magazine, created by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, mixes new technology, art, literature, and current topics in order to interest today's cyberpunk fans, which
Paula Yoo claims "proves that hardcore hackers, multimedia junkies, cyberpunks and cellular freaks are poised to take over the world".
Film and television '' (1927) is considered a work of proto-cyberpunk. The film
Blade Runner (1982) is set in 2019 in a dystopian future in which manufactured beings called
replicants are slaves used on space colonies and are legal prey on Earth to various bounty hunters who "retire" (kill) them. Although
Blade Runner was largely unsuccessful in its first theatrical release, it found a viewership in the home video market and became a
cult film. Since the movie omits the religious and mythical elements of Dick's original novel (e.g. empathy boxes and Wilbur Mercer), it falls more strictly within the cyberpunk genre than the novel does. William Gibson later revealed that upon first viewing the film, he was surprised at how the look of this film matched his vision for
Neuromancer, a book he was then working on. The film's tone has since been the staple of many cyberpunk movies, such as
The Matrix trilogy (1999–2003), which uses a wide variety of cyberpunk elements. A sequel to
Blade Runner was released in 2017. The TV series
Max Headroom (1987) is an iconic cyberpunk work, taking place in a futuristic dystopia ruled by an oligarchy of television networks. Computer hacking played a central role in many of the story lines.
Max Headroom has been called "the first cyberpunk television series". (1995) and
New Rose Hotel (1998), both based on short stories by William Gibson, flopped commercially and critically. Other cyberpunk films include
RoboCop (1987),
Total Recall (1990),
Hardware (1990),
The Lawnmower Man (1992),
12 Monkeys (1995),
Hackers (1995), and
Strange Days (1995). Some cyberpunk films have been described as
tech-noir, a hybrid genre combining
neo-noir and science fiction or cyberpunk.
Anime and manga The
Japanese cyberpunk subgenre began in 1982 with the debut of
Katsuhiro Otomo's
manga series
Akira, with its
1988 anime film adaptation, which Otomo directed, later popularizing the subgenre.
Akira inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk works, including manga and
anime series such as
Ghost in the Shell,
Battle Angel Alita, and
Cowboy Bebop. Other early Japanese cyberpunk works include the 1982 film
Burst City, and the 1989 film
Tetsuo: The Iron Man. According to
Paul Gravett, when
Akira began to be published, cyberpunk literature had not yet been translated into Japanese. Otomo has distinct inspirations, such as
Mitsuteru Yokoyama's manga series
Tetsujin 28-go (1956–1966) and
Moebius. In contrast to Western cyberpunk which has roots in New Wave science fiction literature, Japanese cyberpunk has roots in
underground music culture, specifically the Japanese
punk subculture that arose from the
Japanese punk music scene in the 1970s. The filmmaker
Sogo Ishii introduced this subculture to
Japanese cinema with the
punk film Panic High School (1978) and the punk
biker film Crazy Thunder Road (1980), both portraying the rebellion and anarchy associated with punk, and the latter featuring a punk
biker gang aesthetic. Ishii's punk films paved the way for Otomo's seminal cyberpunk work
Akira. Cyberpunk themes are widely visible in anime and manga. In
Japan, where
cosplay is popular and not only teenagers display such fashion styles, cyberpunk has been accepted and its influence is widespread. William Gibson's
Neuromancer, whose influence dominated the early cyberpunk movement, was also set in
Chiba, one of Japan's largest industrial areas, although at the time of writing the novel Gibson did not know the location of Chiba and had no idea how perfectly it fit his vision in some ways. The exposure to cyberpunk ideas and fiction in the 1980s has allowed it to seep into the Japanese culture. Cyberpunk anime and manga draw upon a futuristic vision which has elements in common with Western science fiction and therefore have received wide international acceptance outside Japan. "The conceptualization involved in cyberpunk is more of forging ahead, looking at the new global culture. It is a culture that does not exist right now, so the Japanese concept of a cyberpunk future, seems just as valid as a Western one, especially as Western cyberpunk often incorporates many Japanese elements." William Gibson is now a frequent visitor to Japan, and he came to see that many of his visions of Japan have become a reality: Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The
Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of
Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, "You see? You see? It is
Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was.
Akira has been cited as a major influence on
Hollywood films such as
The Matrix,
Chronicle,
Looper,
Midnight Special, and
Inception, and
Metal Gear Solid, and
Dontnod Entertainment's
Remember Me.
Akira has also influenced the work of musicians such as
Kanye West, who paid homage to
Akira in the "
Stronger" music video, The popular bike from the film, Kaneda's Motorbike, appears in
Steven Spielberg's film
Ready Player One, and
CD Projekt's video game
Cyberpunk 2077.
and later in The Matrix''
Ghost in the Shell (1995) influenced a number of prominent filmmakers, most notably
the Wachowskis in
The Matrix (1999) and its sequels.
The Matrix series took several concepts from the film, including the
Matrix digital rain, which was inspired by the opening credits of
Ghost in the Shell and a sushi magazine the wife of the senior designer of the animation, Simon Witheley, had in the kitchen at the time, and the way characters access the Matrix through holes in the back of their necks. Other parallels have been drawn to
James Cameron's
Avatar,
Steven Spielberg's
A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and
Jonathan Mostow's
Surrogates. citing it as an influence on
Avatar. The
original video animation Megazone 23 (1985) has a number of similarities to
The Matrix.
Battle Angel Alita (1990) has had a notable influence on filmmaker James Cameron, who was planning to adapt it into a film since 2000. It was an influence on his TV series
Dark Angel, and he is the producer of the 2019 film adaptation
Alita: Battle Angel.
Comics In 1975, artist
Moebius collaborated with writer
Dan O'Bannon on a story called
The Long Tomorrow, published in the French magazine
Métal Hurlant. One of the first works featuring elements now seen as exemplifying cyberpunk, it combined influences from
film noir and
hardboiled crime fiction with a distant sci-fi environment. Author
William Gibson stated that Moebius' artwork for the series, along with other visuals from
Métal Hurlant, strongly influenced his 1984 novel
Neuromancer. The series had a far-reaching impact in the cyberpunk genre, being cited as an influence on
Ridley Scott's
Alien (1979) and
Blade Runner. Moebius expanded upon
The Long Tomorrow's aesthetic with
The Incal, a graphic novel collaboration with
Alejandro Jodorowsky published from 1980 to 1988. The story centers around the exploits of a
detective named John Difool in various science fiction settings, and while not confined to the tropes of cyberpunk, it features many elements of the genre. Moebius was one of the designers of
Tron (1982), a movie that shows a world inside a computer. Concurrently with many other foundational cyberpunk works,
DC Comics published
Frank Miller's six-issue miniseries
Rōnin from 1983 to 1984. The series, incorporating aspects of
Samurai culture, martial arts films and manga, is set in a dystopian near-future
New York. It explores the link between an ancient Japanese warrior and the apocalyptic, crumbling cityscape he finds himself in. The comic also bears several similarities to
Akira, with highly powerful
telepaths playing central roles, as well as sharing many key visuals.
Rōnin would go on to influence many later works, including
Samurai Jack and the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as video games such as
Cyberpunk 2077. Two years later, Miller himself would incorporate several toned-down elements of
Rōnin into his acclaimed 1986 miniseries
The Dark Knight Returns, in which a retired Bruce Wayne once again takes up the mantle of
Batman in a Gotham that is increasingly becoming more dystopian.
Paul Pope's
Batman: Year 100, published in 2006, also exhibits several traits typical of cyberpunk fiction, such as a rebel protagonist opposing a future authoritarian state, and a distinct
retrofuturist aesthetic that makes callbacks to both
The Dark Knight Returns and Batman's original appearances in the 1940s.
Games There are
many cyberpunk
video games. Popular series include the
Megami Tensei series, Kojima's
Snatcher and
Metal Gear series,
Deus Ex series,
Syndicate series, and
System Shock and its
sequel. Other games, like
Blade Runner,
Ghost in the Shell, and the
Matrix series, are based upon genre movies, or
role-playing games (for instance the various
Shadowrun games). Several
RPGs called
Cyberpunk exist:
Cyberpunk (later known as
Cyberpunk 2013),
Cyberpunk 2020,
Cyberpunk v3.0 and
Cyberpunk Red written by
Mike Pondsmith and published by
R. Talsorian Games, and
GURPS Cyberpunk, published by
Steve Jackson Games as a module of the
GURPS family of RPGs.
Cyberpunk 2020 was designed with the settings of William Gibson's writings in mind, and to some extent with his approval, unlike the approach taken by
FASA in producing the transgenre
Shadowrun game and its various sequels, which mixes cyberpunk with
fantasy elements such as magic and
fantasy races such as
orcs and
elves. Both are set in the near future, in a world where
cybernetics are prominent.
Iron Crown Enterprises released an RPG named
Cyberspace, which was out of print for several years until recently being re-released in online PDF form.
CD Projekt Red released
Cyberpunk 2077, a cyberpunk
open world first-person shooter/
role-playing video game (RPG) based on the
tabletop RPG Cyberpunk, on December 10, 2020. In 1990, in a convergence of cyberpunk art and reality, the
United States Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games's headquarters and confiscated all their computers. Officials denied that the target had been the
GURPS Cyberpunk sourcebook, but Jackson later wrote that he and his colleagues "were never able to secure the return of the complete manuscript; [...] The Secret Service at first flatly refused to return anything – then agreed to let us copy files, but when we got to their office, restricted us to one set of out-of-date files – then agreed to make copies for us, but said "tomorrow" every day from March 4 to March 26. On March 26 we received a set of disks which purported to be our files, but the material was late, incomplete and well-nigh useless." Steve Jackson Games won a lawsuit against the Secret Service, aided by the new
Electronic Frontier Foundation. This event has achieved a sort of notoriety, which has extended to the book itself as well. All published editions of
GURPS Cyberpunk have a tagline on the front cover, which reads "The book that was seized by the U.S. Secret Service!" Inside, the book provides a summary of the raid and its aftermath. Cyberpunk has also inspired several
tabletop,
miniature and
board games such as
Necromunda by
Games Workshop.
Netrunner is a
collectible card game introduced in 1996, based on the
Cyberpunk role-playing game.
Tokyo NOVA, debuting in 1993, is a cyberpunk role-playing game that uses
playing cards instead of dice.
Music The first overtly-themed cyberpunk song is "2000 AD" by
The Rezillos on their 1978 album ''
Can't Stand the Rezillos. Inevitably the popularisation of cyberpunk music lies in the synthesizer-heavy scores of cyberpunk films such as Escape from New York (1981) and Blade Runner'' (1982). Some musicians and acts have been classified as cyberpunk due to their aesthetic style and musical content. Often dealing with dystopian visions of the future or
biomechanical themes, some fit more squarely in the category than others. Bands whose music has been classified as cyberpunk include
Psydoll,
Front Line Assembly,
Clock DVA,
Angelspit and
Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Some musicians not normally associated with cyberpunk have at times been inspired to create concept albums exploring such themes. Albums such as the British musician and songwriter
Gary Numan's
Tubeway Army,
Replicas,
The Pleasure Principle and
Telekon were heavily inspired by the works of Philip K. Dick.
Kraftwerk's
The Man-Machine and
Computer World albums both explored the theme of humanity becoming dependent on technology.
Nine Inch Nails' concept album
Year Zero also fits into this category.
Fear Factory concept albums are heavily based upon future dystopia, cybernetics, clash between man and machines, virtual worlds.
Billy Idol's
Cyberpunk drew heavily from cyberpunk literature and the
cyberdelic counter culture in its creation.
1. Outside, a cyberpunk narrative fueled concept album by
David Bowie, was warmly met by critics upon its release in 1995. Many musicians have also taken inspiration from specific cyberpunk works or authors, including
Sonic Youth, whose albums
Sister and
Daydream Nation take influence from the works of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson respectively.
Madonna's 2001
Drowned World Tour opened with a cyberpunk section, where costumes, aesthetics and stage props were used to accentuate the dystopian nature of the theatrical concert.
Lady Gaga used a cyberpunk-persona and visual style for her sixth studio album
Chromatica (2020).
Vaporwave and
synthwave are also influenced by cyberpunk. The former has been inspired by one of the messages of cyberpunk and is interpreted as a dystopian critique of
capitalism in the vein of cyberpunk and the latter is more surface-level, inspired only by the aesthetic of cyberpunk as a nostalgic
retrofuturistic revival of aspects of cyberpunk's origins. == Social impact ==