>[!DANGER] > Work in progress. Some sections less complete than others (which are themselves staggeringly incomplete). "High-Tech, Low-Life" # What is Cyberpunk? ## Themes - High-Tech: technology infiltrating every aspect of life, often even our bodies - Low-Life: downtrodden and dis-empowered characters forced into the shadows, criminality and dirty jobs - Megacorporations and the power they wield - Humanity's relationship to technology itself, often literally and anthropomorphically - How technology impacts and proxies emotional relationships between people - How technology exposes the limitations and flaws of humanity - The nature of humanity and personhood ## The Future is Sooner Than You Think Something that people seem to consistently forget is that science fiction is not really about "predicting" the future. It is a way of addressing contemporary trends and anxieties, often by extrapolating them to their extreme. This is why many people have gravitated to the term "speculative fiction" as it is perhaps a more accurate and overarching description. Sometimes it is optimistic and other times pessimistic. And these attitudes are sometimes calcified into genres. Cyberpunk predicted the future not due to the ineffable prescience of its authors, but because they were describing *then current* existing realities and translating them into a futuristic setting with certain tropes. There's a reason that writers in different countries and in different languages and from different backgrounds all started writing similar stories at the same time. Gibson described [[1970s]] [[Phreaking]] culture as applied to the then-new technology of home computing - which he knew precious little about. But he didn't need to. Because he wasn't predicting the future - he was describing his present. It is not a coincidence that a genre imagining a cynical future began to teethe in the months following the election of Ronald Reagan. > cyberpunk isnt futurism its history \- Brian Bucklew[^25] The confusion that science fiction writers are predicting the future leads people to continually believe that the problems raised in those works did not exist at the time they were written. That is rarely the case.[^26] My favorite example of this is how I've heard people discuss one of my favorite films: [[Network (1976)]]. Aaron Sorkin cited[^7] [[Paddy Chayefsky]] - *Network*'s writer - in his Oscar acceptance speech and reportedly said[^8] to the [[New York Times]]: > no predictor of the future — not even Orwell — has ever been as right as Chayefsky was when he wrote ‘Network.’ I have seen people claim that it predicted "reality TV" and our hyper-capitalist 21st century. But it didn't. It wasn't science fiction. It was a contemporary satire. It was describing the "here and now" of the time when [[Paddy Chayefsky]] was writing it. Here are some of the writer's - [[Paddy Chayefsky]]'s - own manually typed notes on the struggle to find the humor in what he was writing after visiting a number of network TV offices as part of his background research for the screenplay: ``` What's missing here is the satirical clarity of how one network achieves successful programming. The only joke we have going for us is the idea of ANGER - The American people are angry and want angry shows - They don't want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News - So they base their programming on ANGER - At the moment, the successful sitcom shows are those that make political comments, mild, bland, liberal political comments - on racism, Watergate, political corruption, reactionary neighbors, etc. ``` That was written in (or around) [[1974]]. It's not so unfamiliar. Search and replace just a couple of words with their modern equivalents and it could have been written yesterday. With all of our progress, there is a malignant tumor suckling at humanity's vital organs. And it has not gone away in the last half century. And will not, without treatment. In [[1968]] [[Paddy Chayefsky]], as part[^8] of his notes for a project that was never filmed, wrote regarding the companies he was dealing with at the time: > We are not dealing with a human institution. We are dealing with an enormous profit-making machine. Likewise the corporate hellscape described in [[Neuromancer]]. Or as seen in [[Blade Runner]]. Or found in [[Snow Crash]]. Or literally every other cyberpunk media. Similarly the corrupt government of [[Akira]]. These things were happening then and are happening *now*. In a [[2011]] article on the writer, the [[New York Times]] reported: > Dan Chayefsky, the author’s son, wrote in an e-mail that “Network” “was always intended as a metaphor for society at large,” and its subtext “was always about human/corporate accountability, rather than newscasters or any specific industry.” Gibson himself, in an interview[^18] said of a scene in [[Count Zero]] that takes place in Washington DC: > I lived in the Washington area ten years ago. So that bit’s written from memory. I lived near Dupont Circle, where they go to get the subway. In a way, that’s a vision of a 1969 Washington. It’s a sixties Washington. For a writer, the most salient way to predict the future, is to describe the present. And to describe it in such a way that people living in it are not ready to see. ## Rise of the Machines [[Isaac Asimov]] was not the first to write about robots. But his, from the [[1940s]] until the [[1980s]], were probably the most iconic. Asimov's stories in particular used robots as a way to explore questions about personhood and - in some cases - as a proxy for primal forces. One, appropriately titled [[The Last Question (short story)]], considers how entropy might be reversed. This story, unlike most of his others and those of his contemporaries, the subject is not a large bipedal metal robot with human-like speech. "AC" is a computer that responds with staccato error messages right up until the final line. As time wore on, the idea of thinking machines in fiction changed. As robots became more associated with industry and simple tasks, it also became clear that the old writers had perhaps gotten a few things wrong about what the hard problems and easy problems in robotics and machine intelligence really were. My grandpa told me how in the [[1970s]] that he used to have to dial up the central computer for the bank he worked at. The computer was in the city. They would place the phone handset onto a physical block with an embedded speaker. The box was an early modem. They used some kind of other device to send the data they had at their branch, punch cards perhaps. This was early (although not the earliest or only available kind of) networking. From the network came the idea of remote computers. One mainframe powerful enough for a whole city. Static machines like "AC" became the default. What I call a "genius loci". An installation. A ship computer. A house or skyscraper with its own mainframe. But the times kept changing. With the rise of the personal computers, in the early [[1980s]] it made sense for authors to split the difference. Some big mainframes over there and some small personal computers over here. It wasn't a stretch to imagine that they could connect easily or even constantly and that these connections could be metaphorically like a highway or airspace or an entire *matrix* of possibilities. I think the real innovatation that early cyberpunk authors made was to replace the computer monitor not with a hologram but with something the user wears on their body - or even jacks directly into their brain. This drastically changed the dynamic. Incidentally, the english word "matrix" is one of the many old french borrowings. In this case started out something like "matrice". Or possibly borrowed directly from latin. In any case, the root word in latin is "mater" - "mother". It is that which we are formed by and molded in, for good or for ill. >[!FIXME] Asimov did explore humanoid robots too, like in [[Evidence (short story)]] in [[1946]] and this story will feel very familiar to fans of [[Alien (1979)]] and [[Star Trek]]. Cyberpunk stories don't tend to treat robots much like Asimov did. And they are altogether less common. Asimov imagined in many stories that robots would be everywhere doing so many things. The problem that Asimov didn't anticipate is how challenging it has been to solve the power problem. Free-roaming machines are still relatively limited today. Consumer-grade drones can range from 5 minutes of battery life to half an hour. And the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar ones are not much better. This pressure was felt even in the [[1980s]]. Everyone knew at that point that they couldn't run a desktop computer off of a battery for long. And so robots hardly show up in cyberpunk, punctuated only by rare "prototype" androids. But the philosophical questions lingered in the mainframe-bound [[Artificial Intelligence]]s, like those with an "electromagnetic shotgun wired to their forehead" in [[Neuromancer]]. # Timeline I focus on cyberpunk as a *literary* genre, as that is its origin, and it is typically authors that drive new ideas into the genre. There is not a firmly established terminology for the different "waves". But according to this system below, each wave follows significant changes in the genre and emergence of new authors within it. This roughly aligns with decades, but there will always be overlap. I tend to group film/TV adaptations with their contemporary "wave" because they are not made in a vacuum. Despite typically being based on something from an earlier era, they incorporate elements from the current and intervening ones. ## Proto-Cyberpunk [[Phillip K. Dick]] [[Dan O'Bannon]] [[James Tiptree Jr]] [[Moebius]] [[Harlan Ellison]] [[Isaac Asimov]] (Robot stories and Gibson alludes to Foundation) [[Alice Turner]] (editor that approved the inclusion of stories in [[Playboy Book of Science Fiction|Playboy]]) Including direct inspirations and influences cited by influential Cyberpunk authors and filmmakers. ### 1953 - [[Paycheck (novelette)]] by [[Phillip K. Dick]] - [[Second Variety]] by [[Phillip K. Dick]] ### 1956 - [[The Minority Report]] by [[Phillip K. Dick]] - [[The Stars My Destination]] by [[Alfred Bester]] ### 1957 - [[Soldier of Tomorrow]] by [[Harlan Ellison]] ### 1959 - [[Naked Lunch]] by [[William S. Burroughs]] ### 1964 - "*Soldier*" (TV) - adaptation of [[Soldier of Tomorrow]] - episode of [[The Outer Limits]] - directed by Gerd Oswald - [[Demon with a Glass Hand]] (TV) by [[Harlan Ellison]] - episode of [[The Outer Limits]] - directed by Byron Haskin ### 1966 - [[We Can Remember it for You Wholesale]] by [[Phillip K. Dick]] ### 1967 - [[Damnation Alley]] (novella) by [[Roger Zelazny]] #### Damnation Alley [[Damnation Alley]] is a post-apocalyptic wasteland story that predicted [[Mad Max]] and [[Fallout]]. That would not get it a mention on this list. However, [[Walter Jon Williams]] specifically calling it out as an inspiration for [[Hardwired]] does. It was expanded into a full novel in [[1969]], but the novella is more highly praised, and the author stated it was only expanded to get the movie deal, the film was released in [[1977]]. ### 1968 - [[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep]] by [[Phillip K. Dick]] ### 1969 - [[Supertoys Last All Summer Long]] by [[Brian Aldiss]] ### 1970 - [[The Tower of Glass]] by [[Robert Silverberg]] (coining of "jacked in") ### 1973 - [[Crash (novel)]] by [[J.G. Ballard]] ### 1974 - [[Metal Hurlant]] by [[Moebius]] (and others!) ### 1975 - [[The Shockwave Rider]] by [[Jon Brunner]] ### 1976 - [[The Long Tomorrow]] by [[Dan O'Bannon]] (illustrated by [[Moebius]]) ### 1979 - [[Alien (1979)]] (film) - story by [[Dan O'Bannon]] and Ronald Shusett - screenplay by [[Dan O'Bannon]] - directed by [[Ridley C. Scott]] ### 1981 - [[Easy Travel to Other Planets]] by [[Ted Mooney]] #### Easy Travel [[Easy Travel to Other Planets]], despite the name is not about space travel and is not really structured like a science fiction novel. [[William Gibson]] described[^18] it as "very literary". It is perhaps most infamous for its opening scene with a woman having a sex with a dolphin. However, it introduced the term "information sickness" and that concept would find itself resurfacing many times among cyberpunk writers that followed for at least the next two decades. Since then it has become a common topic in the news and online discourse. This same idea is prominently featured in the film adaptation (but not the original short story) of [[Johnny Mnemonic]] (which also had a dolphin) as "Nerve Attenuation Syndrome", "The Black Shakes", and simply "information overload". ### 1983 - [[Videodrome (1983)]] (film) by [[David Cronenberg]] - [[WarGames (1983)]] (film) - written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes - directed by Jon Badham #### Videodrome > The television screen has become the retina of the mind's eye. \- Professor O'Blivion, *Videodrome* [[Videodrome (1983)]] is not cyberpunk, but adjacent to it, and dealing with many of the same themes. These themes would continue in other [[David Cronenberg]] films, through "the reshaping of the human body by modern technology" ([[Crash (1996)]]) and culminating in "the most effective deforming of reality" ([[eXistenZ (1999)]]). Videodrome, in a way, was well behind the times when it released. It alludes to information sickness like [[#Easy Travel]], but is oblivious to 1980s modern technology and the budding computer age. Instead it is preoccupied with television as the vector for infection. In this way the titular "videodrome" could be seen as a metaphor for propaganda and "man's inhumanity to man" and how being bombarded with these messages constantly threatens to disfigure both our minds and our bodies, robbing us of our humanity and critical thinking. I think [[Paddy Chayefsky]] would have resonated with this theme, if perhaps been appalled by the graphic presentation. This analog - rather than digital - horror seems both quaint and unsettlingly visceral. Stripping away the glitz and glam of fanciful "High-Tech" makes it all too clear that the problem is not the tech, its the systems and people who weaponize it. We don't need [[#Beneath a Steel Sky|Schriebmann Ports]] and [[Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics]] to fry our brains, we're capable of that all on our own. ### 1985 - [[D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)]] (film) - written by David Ambrose, Allan Scott, and Jeffrey Ellis - directed by Simon Wincer #### D.A.R.Y.L. If I hadn't looked it up I'd have sworn this film was from the [[1970s]] at the latest. Perhaps its because, with one notable exception, none of the people who made it had any thing to do with science fiction before or after. It centers its story on the emotional narrative and everything else is secondary. We would see this pop up again, nearly unchanged with [[A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)]], even though the latter was vaguely inspired by an earlier story, I am doubtful that these filmmakers and screenwriters were familiar with [[Supertoys Last All Summer Long]]. Though, undoubtedly Kubrick (who developed the idea until his death in 1999) and Spielberg (who directed it) were familiar with [[D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)]]. ### 1986 - [[Short Circuit (1986)]] (film) - written by John Badham - directed by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock #### Short Circuit One of the few straight-shot comedies on this list. [[Short Circuit (1986)]] comes in pretty late and is reminiscent of robot stories from decades before. [[Isaac Asimov]] was writing comedic robot stories like "*Runaround*" in [[1941]]. It would seem that its only contribution was simply updating those old tropes to the [[1980s]]. However, by making the robot one of the main characters and showing his progression from command following automaton to someone with hopes and fears, it is a unique take on [[Artificial Intelligence]] and personhood that few other works approach. ## First Wave [[Bruce Sterling]] (author and editor of influential cyberpunk compilations) [[William Gibson]] (coiner of the term "cyberspace") [[Pat Cadigan]] [[Bruce Bethke]] (coiner of the term "cyberpunk") [[Tom Maddox]] (coiner of the term [[Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics]][^11] used by many authors, including Gibson with permission) Undoubtedly Cyberpunk as we know it was born from [[William Gibson]]'s work, who despite never having used a computer at the time, was familiar with the [[Phreaking]] culture of the [[1970s]] and extrapolated this into the computer realm. Gibson's short stories and later novels branched Cyberpunk off from the trunk of science fiction into its own subgenre following its own rules and aesthetics. >[!TODO] > Citation needed for Gibson and phreaking. I remember reading about it at one point but it may take a while to dig up the specifics. He obviously knew [[Bruce Sterling]]. ### 1977 - [[Fragments of a Hologram Rose]] by [[William Gibson]] Absolutely wild to think that Gibson wrote this the same year [[Star Wars]] came out. ### 1981 - [[Burning Chrome]] by [[William Gibson]] - [[Johnny Mnemonic]] by [[William Gibson]] - [[True Names (novella)]] by [[Vernor Vinge]] ### 1982 - [[Blade Runner]] (film) - roughly based on [[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep]] - screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples - directed by [[Ridley C. Scott]] - [[Tron]] (film) - story by Bonnie MacBird and Steven Lisberger - screenplay and directed by Steven Lisberger - [[Akira]] (manga series) by [[Katsuhiro Otomo]] - [[Burning Chrome]] (short story) by [[William Gibson]] It is abundantly clear that all of these works are a product of a shared world-wide zeitgeist. #### Blade Runner > After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel. \- [[Phillip K. Dick]] in 1982 interview[^10] with *Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine* [[Phillip K. Dick]] is interesting in that his writing often blurs the line between "low-life" and authoritarian perspectives. [[Blade Runner]] is undoubtedly a police narrative and spends a time humanizing the corporate overlord of Tyrell, on the surface this seems similar to later cop-centered narratives like [[Deux Ex]], but differs in several distinct ways: - Deckard is a cop, but only reluctantly and under duress, not a driven international agent like JC Denton or luxury corporate security guard Adam Jensen - While Deckard has a pretty cool pad, it is small and everything is run down, his place and his clothes all reflect a hard life, not one of luxury or elite training, everything is smeared in grit and smoke rather than gloss and glam - The film takes no efforts to evoke pity for Eldon Tyrell, but rather for Pris and Roy whose lives were cut short by him; while David Sarif is a wealthy biotech CEO with vaguely moderate views is generally lionized, despite using his employment contract with Jensen to replace most of his body without his consent, and he never faces any consequences for this aside from a minor tongue-lashing from Jensen The comparisons go on, but despite the protagonist and several foreground characters having "high-life" backgrounds, the narrative emphasizes the "low-life" characters, even in the role of anti-heros. Famously, the film took its title from a completely unrelated dystopian story (and its subsequent film treatment) about smuggling medical supplies, (such as scalpels) called "The Bladerunner". While nothing notable from this story was incorporated into the film, elements were integrated into other later films based on [[Phillip K. Dick]] stories. #### Akira I think that [[Akira]] has become cyberpunk in retrospect, but it more properly belongs in the [[#Proto-Cyberpunk]] section, as it deals more with the supernatural as a proxy for war than specifically anything to do with humanity's nature to technology's integration into our lives. The Wikipedia article claims: > Otomo uses conventions of the cyberpunk genre to detail a saga of political turmoil, social isolation, corruption, and power. Except there were no conventions of cyberpunk in 1982. It was only just born. And almost nothing that followed it followed any of Akira's conventions, aside from its aesthetics. This is not a criticism of Akira or to imply that it was anything other than a huge influence to later work. It could even be argued that Akira deals with many of the same underlying issues, but does so through a different path. It could be compared to [[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'s relationship to the [[Real Robot Genre]]. #### Tron Similar to Akira, Tron does not entirely fit into the genre either, despite being a cultural touchstone from the same era. It *does* deal with technology and humanity's relationship with it in a limited sense (surprisingly [[Tron Legacy]] does this more with the "ISOs"), it deals specifically with corporate malfeasance (unlike Akira), but it is not "low-life" and seems to studiously avoid introspection or confronting these questions. It is particularly interesting as one of the relatively few film works that is wholly original rather than an adaptation. ### 1983 - [[Cyberpunk (short story)]] by [[Bruce Bethke]] - [[Software (novel)]] by [[Rudy Rucker]] - [[Blood Music]] (short story) by [[Greg Bear]] #### Cyberpunk Coined > The invention of the c-word was a conscious and deliberate act of creation on my part. I wrote the story in the early spring of 1980, and from the very first draft, it was titled "Cyberpunk." In calling it that, I was actively _trying_ to invent a new term that grokked the juxtaposition of punk attitudes and high technology. My reasons for doing so were purely selfish and market-driven: I wanted to give my story a snappy, one-word title that editors would remember. > > Offhand, I'd say I succeeded. > ... > I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk *fiction*! That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, *Neuromancer*, was the real defining work of "The Movement." (At the time, Norman Spinrad argued that the movement writers should properly be termed *neuromantics*, since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.) \- [[Bruce Bethke]] in a foreword to the short story of the same name, written in [[1997]] See [[The Etymology of Cyberpunk]] for a much longer and revised version also by [[Bruce Bethke]]. ### 1984 - [[Neuromancer]] by [[William Gibson]] - first issue of [[2600 - The Hacker Quarterly]] #### Neuromancer > The book \[Neuromancer] was half done before Blade Runner came out. When I went to see Blade Runner, I panicked and fled from the theater. I still haven’t seen the whole thing. \- [[William Gibson]] interview[^18] with Takayuki Tatsumi in [[1986]] When anyone talks seriously about cyberpunk, they point to [[Neuromancer]]'s publication as the moment it became a real genre. Of course, Gibson had already been writing in this world for at least three years by this point, but the breadth and depth afforded by the format of a novel - as opposed to short stories - is what brought it to life. Neuromancer is less directly philosophical than many of the works that follow it. It's all there, certainly. From the human automaton Amitage to the empathetic machine Neuromancer itself. Only permitting itself to pause near the end, in the Villa Straylight with Molly, to begin to ponder the connections between the people who had made the journey and the machines that surely lay on the other side of it. The rest is embedded in the narrative fabric. I think that's powerful too. Gibson's later work, like his contemporary thriller [[Pattern Recognition (novel)]], would be more textual. This novel coined the term [[Cyberspace]] and may have been the first to describe it as "The Matrix". ### 1985 - [[Blood Music]] (novel) by [[Greg Bear]] - first issue of [[Phrack]] ### 1986 - [[Hardwired]] by [[Walter Jon Williams]] - [[Pretty Boy Crossover]] by [[Pat Cadigan]] - [[Burning Chrome]] (collection) by [[William Gibson]] "Johnny Mnemonic" "The Gernsback Continuum" "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" "The Belonging Kind" with [[John Shirley]] "Hinterlands" "Red Star, Winter Orbit" with [[Bruce Sterling]] "New Rose Hotel" "The Winter Market" "Dogfight" with [[Michael Swawick]] "Burning Chrome" - [[Mirrorshades]]: The Cyberpunk Anthology edited by [[Bruce Sterling]] "The Gernsback Continuum" by [[William Gibson]] "Snake-Eyes" by [[Tom Maddox]] "Rock On" by [[Pat Cadigan]] "Tales of Houdini" by [[Rudy Rucker]] "400 Boys" by [[Marc Laidlaw]] "Solstice" by [[James Patrick Kelly]] "Petra" by [[Greg Bear]] "Till Human Voices Wake Us" by [[Lewis Shiner]] "Freezone" by [[John Shirley]] "Stone Lives" by [[Paul Di Filippo]] "Red Star, Winter Orbit" by [[Bruce Sterling]] and [[William Gibson]] "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by [[Bruce Sterling]] and [[Lewis Shiner]] #### Hardwired > And special thanks to Roger Zelazny, who let me play in his Alley. \- [[Walter Jon Williams]], acknowledgements page in [[Hardwired]] > The one chance I thought I was taking was with Hardwired, which I figured would find an audience of about twelve people in a sweaty-walled underground jazz club in Prague or someplace. But then, before I finished the novel, Neuromancer appeared, and was a huge artistic and commercial success, some of which rubbed off on my work, and I was off and away. \- [[Walter Jon Williams]] in a [[2008]] interview[^14] with McNally Robinson > Hardwired was delayed at Tor a year or more after I delivered it, due to a number of those accidents that happens all too often to those of us involved in publishing. \- [[Walter Jon Williams]] in a [[1996]] interview[^15] with Lawrence Person, first published[^16] in **Nova Express** VOL 4 (#2) "*An Interview with Walter Jon Williams*" (1996) [[Hardwired]] was inspired by [[Roger Zelazny]]'s [[Damnation Alley]] and likewise takes place in a dystopian southern California. It began development before [[Walter Jon Williams]] read [[Neuromancer]], but was completed afterward and subsequently published over a year after completion. Some credit it as the initiator of the "corpo war" trope often seen in subsequent works, particularly games. Williams, for having authored it, is sometimes referred to as the co-creator of cyberpunk. ### 1987 - [[Vacuum Flowers]] by [[Michael Swawick]] - [[Bubbledrum Crisis]] (OVA series) created by [[Toshimichi Suzuki]] ### 1988 - [[Akira]] (anime film) - adaptation of [[Akira]] - screenplay by [[Katsuhiro Otomo]] and Izo Hashimoto - directed by [[Katsuhiro Otomo]] - [[Cyberpunk (TTRPG)]] by [[Mike Pondsmith]] - [[Mindplayers]] by [[Pat Cadigan]] - [[Dreams of Flesh and Sand]] by [[W.T. Quick]] #### Akira [[Akira]] is a really interesting case. It is definitely "High-Tech Low-Life", there are certainly aesthetic and thematic allusions to something we might call "cyberpunk", and it deals very much with the nature of "humanity" but in the film technology is a background topic. I might even say that Akira has more in common with [[#Proto-Cyberpunk]] than the visual media that immediately preceded it. Which makes sense, as the source material was first published in [[#1982]] and while the film diverges somewhat from the manga, it retains its core themes. For a comparison, [[Chronicle (2012)]] follows a lot of the same beats of [[Akira]] (and is explicitly listed as an influence by writer Josh Trank) yet without the aesthetic it is immediately clear that it is not cyberpunk. Either way, [[Akira]] is a beautiful film and heavily influenced the visual style of all cyberpunk media that came after it, as well as visual media in general. #### Cyberpunk TTRPG > People often ask me how much of an influence author William Gibson was on the Cyberpunk RPG. Yet, the funny thing is, when I started writing CP, I hadn’t actually READ any Gibson– my primary influences were Blade Runner and Walter Jon Williams’ Hardwired (as a matter of fact, Walter was an early play tester on _Cyberpunk_). But as soon as Walter Jon told me I _had_ to read Gibson, I went right out and grabbed _Neuromancer_. And I remember telling my wife later that night, “This guy is so good, he makes my teeth hurt.” \- [[Mike Pondsmith]] in a [[Talsorian Games]] blog post[^17] titled "*Standing in the Shadow of Gibson*" in [[2013]] This first edition of [[Cyberpunk (TTRPG)]] took place in [[2013]].[^13] [[Mike Pondsmith]] based the setting largely off of [[Hardwired]] and [[Walter Jon Williams]] was one of the playtesters. After release an official [[Hardwired]] supplement was licensed for the game. ## Second Wave [[Neal Stephenson]] Second wave pushed cyberpunk's themes towards its more absurd extremes, sometimes bluring the line from absurdity into parody. It has been described as "less pessimistic", but that is only in comparison, and is often only due to the over-the-top delivery rather the content. It focused more specifically on social problems[^5] and structures then just on the people afflicted by them as passive victims. This resulted in two opposite poles of cyberpunk media in this era: one that was concerned with serious social issues and the other farcical. With different entries typically somewhere on the spectrum between them. ### 1987 - [[Robocop]] (film) - written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner - directed by [[Paul Verhoeven]] #### Robocop > Corporate America specifically went after Detroit and punished it because of its liberal views on unions. You can see the legacy of corporate power. They went specifically at Detroit and destroyed that city. \- Michael Miner in a [[2014]] interview[^22] with Silas Lesnick for ComingSoon Despite being from the 80s, Robocop straddles the border between first and second wave cyberpunk. It pushes the violence and corporate pettiness to extremes. The corporatization of Detroit foreshadows the burbclaves and The Fed of [[Snow Crash]]'s corporate dystopia. > I watched Ridley Scott direct four nights of Blade Runner, and it was astounding to be able to do. I made garbage for the street with the art department. > ... > After four nights—and maybe not enough sleep, because I was doing double shifts—I had this astounding idea: RoboCop came into my head as a title, and I saw the character in this kind of bluish armored thing. He was a policeman who was also a robot, and he was looking at this strange human race. It was an A.I. idea, like, “Why are people the way they are?” \- Ed Neumeier in a [[2014]] interview[^21] with Scott Tobias for The Dissolve Similar to [[#Blade Runner]], Robocop is a police narrative. Again like Blade Runner, it follows a low-level cop with no particular power or influence in his world. Even when Murphy is reborn as Robocop, he does not gain any additional control over his situation, instead he is brainwashed and made physically incapable of fighting back against Omni Consumer Product's corrupt corporate leadership. This enforced servitude and his subsequent dereliction of duty allows Robocop to avoid falling into the "High-Life" category of other police narratives like [[Deus Ex]]. ### 1989 - [[Ghost in the Shell]] (manga series) by [[Masamune Shirow]] - [[Shadowrun]] (TTRPG) - designers: Robert N. Charrette, Paul Hume, and Tom Dowd #### Shadowrun [[Shadowrun]] is a mishmash of everything from cyberpunk to high fantasy thrown into a blender. The setting finds ways to blend all of the essential elements of cyberpunk with other genres and it somehow works. I kind of don't want to like it, but I can't help but respect it. And even though it seems like it should be goofy, it's mostly not. Despite this silly mess and its complicated ruleset it somehow has produced a solid set of stories and spinoffs and is well beloved even decades later. ### 1990 - [[Total Recall]] (film) - roughly based on [[We Can Remember it for You Wholesale]] - directed by [[Paul Verhoeven]] - [[Battle Angel Alita]] (manga) by [[Yukito Kishiro]] ### 1991 - [[Terminator 2 (1991)]] (film) - "Acknowledgment to the Works of Harlan Ellison" - written by [[James Cameron]] and [[William Wisher]] - directed by [[James Cameron]] #### Terminator 2 The original [[Terminator (1984)]] is pretty much a straight slasher film that just so happens to have a science-fiction explanation. And it is a good film in its own right! As to whether or not it was actually inspired by [[Demon with a Glass Hand]] or [[Soldier of Tomorrow]] both by [[Harlan Ellison]] (who won the lawsuit) is disputed by [[James Cameron]]. Either way, it doesn't interact with the themes of cyberpunk except in the most abstract way. However, its sequel certainly does. [[Terminator 2 (1991)]] manages to be a shockingly well rounded cyberpunk film, despite being set only 4 years after its actual release date. This is only partially due to time travel, and has more to do with the themes and style of the film. John and Sarah Conner are "low-life", hacking ATMs, victims of the system; and the philosophical consequences of [[Artificial Intelligence]] and the emotional relationship with technology are explored. It also implies the rise of the high-tech megacorps with Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, setting it up as a kind of prequel for the more mainstream cyberpunk world that would never be born as a result of the sub-titular "Judgement Day". ### 1992 - [[Snow Crash]] by [[Neal Stephenson]] - [[The Lawnmower Man (1992)]] (film) - story *unrelated* to the [[Stephen King]] story of the same name - screenplay by Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett - directed by Brett Leonard - [[Sneakers (1992)]] (film) - written by Phil Alden Robinson, Lawrence Lasker, Walter Parkes - directed by Phil Alden Robinson #### Snow Crash While there are many entries I have placed earlier in the time, it was with [[Snow Crash]] that the second wave really gelled. It is smart and irreverent and overly self-aware (except where it is self-oblivious) and is so very [[1990s]]. It manages to be utterly ridiculous and still hold onto stakes. The absurdity of the main character being named "Hiro Protagonist" becomes something the reader must accept to make any headway at all - the world is absurd, yet it is no less dangerous. In a way Snow Crash also predicts Dan Brown's novels. It combines history, technology, and authoritative-seeming descriptions with religion and woo-woo pseudoscience. Unlike Brown, Stephenson mostly went on to avoid repeating this in future novels (at least the ones I read), if maybe not entirely outside of writing. In the decades since its release Snow Crash has been cited by *all* of the worst people on the planet with ambitions to create the corporate / techno-feudal dystopia described within it. #### Sneakers [[Sneakers]] is fundamentally a traditional heist movie where all of the usual roles have been swapped out for their closest computer equivalents. It is another "contemporary" film, like we'll see more of in the coming years. But it seems to directly reference existing cyberpunk tropes. Lasker worked on [[WarGames (1983)]] with Parkes, and Parkes would go on to produce for films like [[#Minority Report]] and [[The Island (2005)]]. So this isn't entirely surprising. Similar to [[#D.A.R.Y.L.]], it feels older than it is. Perhaps partially owing to the use of actual vintage supercomputers as set pieces. ### 1994 - [[Beneath a Steel Sky]] (video game) - collaboration between Charles Cecil and Dave Gibbons - written by Dave Cummins (dialogue) - [[System Shock]] (video game) - collaboration between Doug Church and [[Warren Spector]] - designer Austin Grossman (wrote the found records) - director Dough Church Wild to think that these two games came out the same year, looking and feeling so different as they do. #### Beneath a Steel Sky Continuing with the farcical fork of cyberpunk, [[Beneath a Steel Sky]] is a point-and-click adventure game that takes place in a very depressing vaguely defined post-apocalypse but pairs it with constant quips and cartoonish voice acting. It's great fun and there is a lot going on here. It is interesting that it bears a lot of similarities to [[Fallout]] (which came later), yet is firmly in a different genre. #### System Shock [[System Shock]]'s primary antagonist has her own extensive Wikipedia article. That's how big of a deal this game is. It is quintessentially cyberpunk: main character is a criminal cyberspace hacker CHECK, gets coerced into a terrible job with both threats and promises of surgery CHECK, the AI's crazed right-hand-man gets jettisoned into space CHECK, the climax takes place in cyberspace CHECK... oh hey wait that's just the plot of [[Neuromancer]]. I never noticed that before. I'm slightly overplaying the similarities here. But System Shock blends cyberpunk and horror well. The only real divergence from common tropes of the genre is the prominence of biological weapons and zombies, but also that the TriOptimum corporation has a very nuanced presentation. Sure, TriOptimum are developing viruses and overpowered AI, and one of their executives is such an avaricious madman that he wants to steal the virus and it sell it on the black market. But most of the game has TriOptimum supporting you and they are even willing to destroy their own work including the virus, the AI, and the entire space station to protect humanity - and even offer the hacker a job in the end (which they valiantly decline). Something that corporations in the 2020s could learn from. You might think the biological zombies corporation sounds familiar, but *Resident Evil* wouldn't be released for another **two years**. System Shock did have a [[Japanese]] release[^24]. Maybe the people who made *Resident Evil* never heard of it and the thematic and mechanical similarities are just more zeitgeist telepathy. ### 1995 - [[Johnny Mnemonic]] (film adaptation) - written by [[William Gibson]] - directed by [[Robert Longo]] - [[Ghost in the Shell]] (anime film adaptation) - based on [[Ghost in the Shell]] - screenplay by Kazunori Itō - directed by Mamoru Oshii - [[Strange Days]] (film) - story by James Cameron - screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks - directed by Kathryn Bigelow - [[Hackers (1995)]] (film) - written by Rafael Moreu - directed by Iain Softley - The birth of the **World Wide Web** #### Johnny Mnemonic The [[Johnny Mnemonic]] film adaptation was unable to secure the rights to [[Molly Millions]], whose film rights were sold separately (as part of [[Neuromancer]]) and so Molly's character was replaced with Jane. As a result Johnny became the main character instead of Molly and unfortunately it did not hold up as well. Conflicts with the studio (who re-cut the film without the director) produced an unintentionally campy and goofy film that was critically panned at release and is at best viewed as a cheesy bit of nostalgia in the decades sense. > The extent to which the studio fucked us over was utter, but Robert was the one whose career suffered hideously, unjustly. I would be invited to write more screenplays, which I did, my heart aching for him. \- [[William Gibson]] in [[2025]] via Bluesky[^9] #### Hackers [[Hackers (1995)]] is almost cyberpunk by accident. There is no real relationship between its creators and cyberpunk as a literary genre, they were writing a contemporary thriller using contemporary technology, told through a sensationalized lens to make it more accessible on screen. While it is absolutely "high-tech low-life", it doesn't engage with the philosophy of cyberpunk head on, but it does allude to contemporary (and foreshadow future) cyberpunk analysis of systems of racial, sexual, and gender dynamics. And while it is relatively subtle, no other cyberpunk-related film from this decade can make a claim to have done more. Hell, maybe any decade. ### 1997 - [[Transmetropolitan]] by [[Warren Ellis]] ### 1998 - [[Killswitch (X-Files episode)|Killswitch]][^2] (TV) by [[William Gibson]] and [[Tom Maddox]] - episode of the [[X-Files]] - directed by Rob Bowman ### 1999 - [[The Matrix]] by [[The Wachowskis]] - [[eXistenZ (1999)]] by [[David Cronenberg]] - [[The 13th Floor]] - [[Batman Beyond]] (TV series) - created by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and Alan Burnett - [[System Shock 2]] - designed and written by Ken Levine #### The Matrix > Originality cannot be economically modelled. \- [[The Wachowskis|Lana Wachowski]] in a [[2012]] interview with [[The New Yorker]] [[The Matrix]] was directly influenced by [[Johnny Mnemonic]] and its [[1995]] film adaptation also starring [[Keanu Reeves]].[^3] [[The Wachowskis]] used it as part of their pitch for the film to give prospective studios an idea of what they were working towards. > What is the Matrix? Control. > > The Matrix is a computer-generated dreamworld. Built to keep us under control. In order to change a human being... into this. \- Morpheus, *The Matrix* *The Matrix* is solidly on the social issues side of 2nd wave's spectrum. Primarily with a focus on hierarchy and systems of control. Particularly in connection with law enforcement and corporations. > You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken. > ... > The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Anderson. Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Do I make myself clear? \- Mr. Rhineheart, *The Matrix* While I put the film squarely in the second wave and it bears all of the hallmarks of such, some categorize it as the beginning of its own wave based purely on its cultural impact. And as much as I love the film, I really don't find that the cyberpunk aspects of the film were much explored or expanded in subsequent media. Instead it spawned a variety of action movies. To me, this indicates that while it was influential in general, it was perhaps not particularly impactful on the genre itself. Speaking of which, the not-accidental surface similarity to The Matrix has caused some to list [[Equilibrium (2002)]] in the genre, yet it is a classic dystopia story that could well have been written decades earlier, and is often seen as derivative of [[Fahrenheit 451]] and [[Nineteen-Eighty Four]], among others, and barely grazes any of the core cyberpunk themes. #### eXistenZ [[eXistenZ (1999)]] specifically deals with virtual reality and the relationship of humanity and technology in a personal and emotional way, there is a "low-life" element to it as well with terrorists and grime, it is as philosophical as it is revolting. But, perhaps it is the style of vignettes and slice of (horrific) life that [[David Cronenberg]] is so well known for. The vignettes are fantastic at creating atmospheric experiences, like walking from dream to nightmare, but struggles to build a world beyond the horizon. Most of its runtime presents the virtual reality devices and the technology within it as fleshy organic things, and I think this aesthetic choice distances it from the types of smoke-filled discotheques and glossy zaibatsu spires that tend to clutter the skylines of other works. Yet, despite all of this, it feels strangely contemporary and grounded rather than futuristic. Apparently some people don't like this film, but they are wrong. #### System Shock 2 Despite being made by almost entirely different people than the first game, and having been spawned from an unrelated pitch, [[System Shock 2]] ended up garnering nearly as much retrospective acclaim as the first. Both being highly influential and both often said to be among the best games ever made. Continuing the theme of corporations not being quite as evil and powerful as in other cyberpunk media, TriOptimum tries to cover up the events of the first game fails *and goes bankrupt*. There's even a dedicated multi-national organization called the UNN which works to combat corporations! Hey wait a minute this isn't a dystopia at all! I wanna live here! And I'll fight a mad AI to do it! Anyway, nearly half a century after the events of the first game, apparently TriOptimum is kind of resurrected and starts getting up to its old tricks again. But like, the prick in charge of it is killed by his own hubris before the game even really starts and the entire game takes place isolated from the rest of the universe. Through most of the game, the player character is working directly for the antagonist from the first game (or a version of her anyway). Which is quite similar to the uneasy dynamic in [[#Neuromancer]]. This game spawned a flurry of "spiritual successors", including [[Dead Space]], [[BioShock]], [[Prey (2017)]], and others in development even in [[2025]]. Of these, only [[Prey (2017)]] really interfaces with cyberpunk themes directly, but they all have their moments. The wider impact of the System Shock games, however, was less to do with their themes and writing and more to do with their blending of FPS and RPG mechanics and their particular brand of body horror. This trend of broadly influential cyberpunk visual media having relatively little impact on cyberpunk specifically as a genre going forward is difficult to ignore. ### 2000 - [[Deus Ex]] (video game) - written by Sheldon Pacotti, Chris Todd, and Austin Grossman - designed by Harvey Smith - directed by [[Warren Spector]] - [[First Person Shooter (X-Files episode)|First Person Shooter]][^1] (TV) by [[William Gibson]] and [[Tom Maddox]] - episode of the [[X-Files]] - directed by [[Chris Carter]] #### Deus Ex Austin Grossman, Harvey Smith, and [[Warren Spector]] all previously worked on [[System Shock]], Grossman as designer, Smith as QA, and Spector as producer. Despite that, the themes and atmosphere of [[Deux Ex]] are quite different from [[System Shock]]. They are both ostensibly cyberpunk, but despite being more horror-aligned System Shock is the less dystopian of the two, while Deus Ex is a police narrative rather than a story following "low-life" characters. As the series would progress they trend towards "high-life" stories more similar in structure to James Bond where the main characters would fall from grace and attempt to reclaim their reputation and former glory. ### 2002 - [[The Minority Report]] (film) - roughly based on [[The Minority Report]] - screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen - directed Steven Spielberg #### Minority Report Minority Report is a strange one. It is often prominently described as a cyberpunk film. And in some ways it is *more* cyberpunk than the original [[Phillip K. Dick]] story, likely due to the influence of [[The Bladerunner]] written by physician Alan E. Nourse. It even features something like a "ripperdoc" of sort (a term I believe was introduced by [[Mike Pondsmith]], though it seems to have been adopted by at least some[^12] people for [[Shadowrun]]) that performs underground surgery to replace the main character's eyes - eyes which are used by automated systems to track everyone. ## Third Wave ### 2003 - [[Altered Carbon]] by [[Richard K. Morgan]] [[Altered Carbon]] showed a distinct new direction in the genre.[^4] Although, I would argue that it was primarily hearkening back to earlier military science fiction, the concepts it used of body swapping and effective immortality became popular themes in works that came after it. It also addressed the ubiquity of the internet, in its own futuristic forms. ## Fourth Wave This could be termed a "Silver Age" in the way that it followed the collapse of the genre's time as blockbuster films and was an attempt to reclaim that former glory by studios. This era was mostly dominated - at least in theaters - with uninspired retreads[^6] of existing media. I won't bother to list most of them here. However, there are notable exceptions, even among the detritus. ### 2013 - [[Shadowrun Returns]] (video game) - uses [[Shadowrun]] TTRPG setting - creative director: Jordan Weisman #### Shadowrun Returns This game, its expansions and sequel are incredible. They represent some of the best multi-faceted storytelling ever seen in interactive media. If not among top-ten, then very close. ### 2017 - [[Blade Runner 2049]] (film) - sequel to [[Blade Runner]] - story by Hampton Fancher - screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green - directed by Denis Villeneuve ### 2018 - [[Altered Carbon]] (TV) adaptation of the novels [[Altered Carbon]]'s adaptation had significant re-characterizations, changes, additions, and omissions compared to the novels. I would argue that nearly all of the additions were brilliant, and the change of the hotel's personality to [[Edgar Allen Poe]] was incredibly well done. The results of the changes to the book's protagonist and sequence breaking on the other hand were terrible. Not that I would mind such changes in general, although the same kinds of changes also are part of what made the [[#1995]] [[Johnny Mnemonic]] adaptation land poorly. ## Fifth Wave ### Pending - [[Neuromancer]] (TV) - (mini?) series I've read most of Gibson's screenplays (both those filmed and those not). With apologies to Gibson, I'm not often a fan of the changes he decided to make to [[Neuromancer]] when he adapted it to a screenplay. His original screenplays, like [[#1998]]'s "[[Killswitch (X-Files episode)]]" and even his un-filmed treatment for [[Alien 3]], of course invite no such comparisons. I don't know how the [[Neuromancer]] series will turn out or what ending it will forge. But I expect that it will be modified and updated with the times. # Resources ## Unused Sources - https://keikiieatsbooks.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/subgenre-highlight-cyberpunk/ - This article has significant errors, but it does contain a wealth of references to other blog posts and articles. - https://web.archive.org/web/20190718120832/https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-politics-philosophy/technology-as-a-tool-for-alienation-an-analysis-of-cyberpunks-core/ - Unreviewed yet. - https://reactormag.com/machine-sex-jeff-goldblum-and-other-overlooked-cyberpunk-classics/ - Recommendations worth checking out. - https://static.anarchivism.org/cyberpunkreview-archive/www.cyberpunkreview.com/wiki-old/tiki-index.php%3Fpage=Timeline.html - A history of cyberpunk going back to 1888 (the founding of IBM). - http://cyberpunk2021.free.fr/cp_timeline.php - Mostly the same as the above, in French. - http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/timeline.html - Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20090531090841/http://cyberpunk.omou.net/timeline.php - Apparently a source for the above lists. - https://efanzines.com/PC-Cyber/A%20Cyberpunk%20Timeline.pdf - A history of cyberpunk going back to 1926 (Fritz Lang's *Metropolis*). - https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/542003/ - Forum members dumping information about cyberpunk and their sources. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyberpunk_works - A hundred-ish entries collected by the *goode* editors of Wikipedia. - https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson - Interview with [[William Gibson]]. - https://web.archive.org/web/20200713191348/https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/feature/cyberpunk-red-rpg-almost-killed-us-mike-pondsmith-interview - Interview with [[Mike Pondsmith]]. - https://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/5140 - Interview with [[William Gibson]]. - https://fanac.org/fanzines//Paperback_Inferno/paperback_inferno_65_sawyer_1987-04_bsfa.pdf - Paperback Inferno fanzine from 1987. # References [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_Shooter_(The_X-Files) [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Switch_(The_X-Files) [^3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20141008042209/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/10/beyond-the-matrix [^4]: https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2018/03/28/level-one-wonk-cyberpunk/ Note: This author breaks the cyberpunk into "post-cyberpunk" and "second wave" instead of second and third wave as I do here. [^5]: https://reactormag.com/machine-sex-jeff-goldblum-and-other-overlooked-cyberpunk-classics/ [^6]: https://www.cyberpunks.com/a-crash-course-in-cyberpunk/ Note: This author is very visual media focused and has significantly different opinions on what suffices as quality than I do. [^7]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VP5mFHl_lY [^8]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/movies/paddy-chayefskys-notes-for-network-film.html [^9]: https://bsky.app/profile/greatdismal.bsky.social/post/3lws3572ehk2b [^10]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130528112644/http://www.philipkdick.com/media_twilightzone.html [^11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_Countermeasures_Electronics [^12]: https://shadowhelix.de/Slang-W%C3%B6rterbuch [^13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game) [^14]: https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/editorial-735/Interview---Walter-Jon-Williams [^15]: https://www.walterjonwilliams.net/interviews.html [^16]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130429131849/http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/novaish.html [^17]: https://rtalsoriangames.com/2013/07/24/standing-in-the-shadow-of-gibson/ [^18]: Takayuki Tatsumi, Tom Maddox, et al "*Eye to Eye*" (1986). In **Science Fiction Eye**[^19] 1.1 p6-17,23 (Winter 1987). As reprinted in Patrick A. Smith (editor) **Conversations with William Gibson** (2014). Also in **Hayakawa's SFM**[^20] (translated into Japanese; October 1986). [^19]: https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/science_fiction_eye [^20]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-F_Magazine https://uminnpressblog.com/2012/06/13/another-long-and-winding-road-translating-japanese-speculative-fiction/ https://dokumen.pub/full-metal-apache-transactions-between-cyberpunk-japan-and-avant-pop-america-9780822388012-0822388014.html [^21]: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112043452/http://thedissolve.com/features/interview/415-robocop-writer-ed-neumeier-discusses-the-films-ori/ [^22]: https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/114702-interview-the-screenwriters-of-the-original-robocop-take-on-the-new-film [^23]: [^24]: https://bcc.hatenablog.com/entry/20130113/p1 [^25]: https://bsky.app/profile/unormal.bsky.social/post/3man2drkhzs2n [^26]: https://bsky.app/profile/recombobulating.bsky.social/post/3mca4l7h53s2b