"story ""Cyberpunk,"" which was published in the November 1983 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,"" ""Neuromancer"" was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. ""Count Zero"" (1986) and ""Mona Lisa Overdrive"" (1988) followed after Gibson's popular debut novel. According to the Jargon File, ""Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both"
"""Mail & Guardian"" as ""the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt, Booker and Pulitzer prizes in the same year"". The novel thereby legitimized cyberpunk as a mainstream branch of science fiction literature. It is among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history, and appeared on ""Time"" magazine's list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. The novel was also nominated for a British Science Fiction Award in 1984. ""Neuromancer"" is considered ""the archetypal cyberpunk work"". and outside science fiction, it gained unprecedented critical and popular attention, as an ""evocation of life in the late 1980s"", although"
"""The Observer"" noted that ""it took the ""New York Times"" 10 years"" to mention the novel. By 2007 it had sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide. The novel has had significant linguistic influence, popularizing such terms as cyberspace and ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics). Gibson himself coined the term ""cyberspace"" in his novelette ""Burning Chrome"", published in 1982 by ""Omni"" magazine, but it was through its use in ""Neuromancer"" that it gained recognition to become the ""de facto"" term for the ""World Wide Web"" during the 1990s. The portion of ""Neuromancer"" usually cited in this respect is: The 1999 cyberpunk"
"Awards as the year's best novel and Philip K. Dick Award as the best paperback original— eventually selling more than 6.5 million copies worldwide. Lawrence Person in his ""Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto"" (1998) identified ""Neuromancer"" as ""the archetypal cyberpunk work"", and in 2005, ""Time"" included it in its list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that ""[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [""Neuromancer""] was when it first appeared."" Literary critic Larry McCaffery described the concept of the matrix in ""Neuromancer"" as a place where ""data dance with human consciousness ... human memory is"
"awards, including: Sprawl trilogy The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ""Neuromancer"" (1984), ""Count Zero"" (1986), and ""Mona Lisa Overdrive"" (1988). The novels are all set in the same fictional future, and are subtly interlinked by shared characters and themes (which are not always readily apparent). The Sprawl trilogy shares this setting with Gibson's short stories ""Johnny Mnemonic"", ""New Rose Hotel"", and ""Burning Chrome"", and events and characters from the stories appear in or are mentioned at points in the trilogy. The novels are set in"
"cyberpunk genre itself were also anticipated in John Brunner's 1975 novel ""The Shockwave Rider"". . The idea of a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site was first described in 1962 in a series of memos on the ""Galactic Computer Network"" by J.C.R. Licklider of DARPA. . Gibson wrote the following in the ""Author's Afterword"" of ""Mona Lisa Overdrive"", dated July 16, 1992. ""Neuromancer"" was written on a ""clockwork typewriter,"" the very one you may recall glimpsing in Julie Deane's office in Chiba City. This machine, a Hermes 2000 manual"
"of ""Burning Chrome"" and the character of Molly Millions from ""Johnny Mnemonic"" ultimately culminated in his first novel, ""Neuromancer"". ""Neuromancer"" was commissioned by Terry Carr for the second series of Ace Science Fiction Specials, which was intended to exclusively feature debut novels. Given a year to complete the work, Gibson undertook the actual writing out of ""blind animal terror"" at the obligation to write an entire novel – a feat which he felt he was ""four or five years away from"". After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film ""Blade Runner"" (1982) which was released when Gibson had"
"super consciousness and take control of a virtual reality global network known as ""The Matrix"". Before ""Neuromancer"", Gibson had written several short stories for US science fiction periodicals—mostly noir countercultural narratives concerning low-life protagonists in near-future encounters with cyberspace. The themes he developed in this early short fiction, the Sprawl setting of ""Burning Chrome"" (1982), and the character of Molly Millions from ""Johnny Mnemonic"" (1981) laid the foundations for the novel. John Carpenter's ""Escape from New York"" (1981) influenced the novel; Gibson was ""intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You"
"anticipate the cellular telephone), ""Imagining story, the inner workings of his characters' minds, and the world in which it all takes place are all more important. Lawrence Person in his ""Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto"" (1998) identified ""Neuromancer"" as ""the archetypal cyberpunk work"", and in 2005, ""Time"" included it in their list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that ""[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [""Neuromancer""] was when it first appeared."" Literary critic Larry McCaffery described the concept of the matrix in ""Neuromancer"" as a place where ""data dance with human consciousness... human memory"
"Sprawl trilogy The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ""Neuromancer"" (1984), ""Count Zero"" (1986), and ""Mona Lisa Overdrive"" (1988). The novels are all set in the same fictional future, and are subtly interlinked by shared characters and themes (which are not always readily apparent). The Sprawl trilogy shares this setting with Gibson's short stories ""Johnny Mnemonic"", ""New Rose Hotel"", and ""Burning Chrome"", and events and characters from the stories appear in or are mentioned at points in the trilogy. The novels are set in a near-future"
"(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"". 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"
"from the song of the same name by Toronto punk rock band The Viletones. ""Neuromancer"" was commissioned by Terry Carr for the second series of Ace Science Fiction Specials, which was intended to feature debut novels exclusively. Given a year to complete the work, Gibson undertook the actual writing out of ""blind animal panic"" at the obligation to write an entire novel—a feat which he felt he was ""four or five years away from"". After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film ""Blade Runner"" (1982), which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he"
"a cerebral hemorrhage. Thinking he may not be around much longer, this prompted him to write ""Nested Scrolls"", his autobiography. Rucker resided in Highland Park, New Jersey during his graduate studies at Rutgers University. Rudy Rucker Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (; born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (""Software"" and ""Wetware"") both won Philip K. Dick Awards. Until its closure in"
"too many personalities, there was the risk that one of the personas would wrest control of the body from the possessor. In the 1982 novel ""Software"", part of the Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker, one of the main characters, Cobb Anderson, has his mind downloaded and his body replaced with an extremely human-like android body. The robots who persuade Anderson into doing this sell the process to him as a way to become immortal. In William Gibson's award-winning ""Neuromancer"" (1984), which popularized the concept of ""cyberspace"", a hacking tool used by the main character is an artificial infomorph of a"
"since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation ""Neuromancer"""". Sterling was another writer who played a central role, often consciously, in the cyberpunk genre, variously seen as keeping it on track, or distorting its natural path into a stagnant formula. In 1986 he edited a volume of cyberpunk stories called """", an attempt to establish what cyberpunk was, from Sterling's perspective. In the subsequent decade, the motifs of Gibson's ""Neuromancer"" became formulaic, climaxing in the satirical extremes of Neal Stephenson's ""Snow Crash"" in 1992. Bookending the Cyberpunk era, Bethke himself published a novel in 1995 called ""Headcrash"","
"""[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, ""brought it about?"""" (269). Norman Spinrad, in his 1986 essay ""The Neuromantics"" which appears in his non-fiction collection ""Science Fiction in the Real World"", saw the book's title as a triple pun: ""neuro"" referring to the nervous system; ""necromancer""; and ""new romancer"". The cyberpunk genre, the authors of which he suggested be called ""neuromantics"", was ""a fusion of the romantic impulse with science and technology"", according to Spinrad. Writing in ""F&SF"" in 2005, Charles de Lint noted that while Gibson's technological extrapolations had proved imperfect (in particular, his failure to"
"William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a ""combination of lowlife and high tech""—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson notably coined the term ""cyberspace"" in his short story ""Burning Chrome"" (1982) and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed"
"achieved critical recognition with his debut novel, ""Neuromancer"". The novel won three major science fiction awards (the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award), an unprecedented achievement described by the ""Mail & Guardian"" as ""the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt, Booker and Pulitzer prizes in the same year"". ""Neuromancer"" gained unprecedented critical and popular attention outside science fiction, as an ""evocation of life in the late 1980s"", although ""The Observer"" noted that ""it took the ""New York Times"" 10 years"" to mention the novel. Gibson's work has received international attention from an audience that"
"Cyberpunk (novel) Cyberpunk is a science fiction short story and novel written by Bruce Bethke in 1980, published November 1983 in ""Amazing Stories"" magazine, and published in novel form online. It is most famous for coining the ""word"" ""cyberpunk"", which came to be used to describe the media subgenre centered on rebellious use of technology under the science fiction archetype. In the spring of 1980, Bethke was writing a story about children who lived immersed in a truly technological society, with their own culture, disparate from mainstream society as it appeared at that time. He describes the process as: Through"
"Cybernary Cybernary is a comic book series created by comic book artist Nick Manabat with writer Steve Gerber and published by American company Wildstorm Productions in 1995. It tells the story of a cybernetic anti-heroine, ""Katrina Cupertino"", who carries the consciousness of Yamiko Gamorra. ""Cybernary"" began as a backup story to Jim Lee's run on ""Deathblow"", but Manabat's work on the series was cut short with his untimely demise due to a longtime illness. Gerber continued the storyline through a 1995 mini-series with art by Jeff Rebner and Richard Friend. On this post-Manabat series, Gerber remarked, ""The artist, unfortunately, had"
"is literalized and mechanized... multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman."" Gibson later commented on himself as an author circa ""Neuromancer"" that ""I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money,"" and referred to the novel as ""an adolescent's book"". The success of ""Neuromancer"" was to effect the 35-year-old Gibson's emergence from obscurity. In 1989, Epic Comics published a 48-page graphic novel version by Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen. It only covers the first two chapters, ""Chiba City Blues"""
"science fiction film ""The Matrix"" particularly draws from ""Neuromancer"" both eponym and usage of the term ""matrix"". ""After watching The Matrix, Gibson commented that the way that the film's creators had drawn from existing cyberpunk works was 'exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis"" he had relied upon in his own writing."" In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of ""Neuromancer"", fellow author Jack Womack goes as far as to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet developed (particularly the World Wide Web), after the publication of ""Neuromancer"" in 1984. He asks"
"foundations for the explosive real-world growth of virtual environments in video games and the Web"". In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of ""Neuromancer"", fellow author Jack Womack suggests that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet (and the Web particularly) developed, following the publication of ""Neuromancer"" in 1984, asking ""what if the act of writing it down, in fact, ""brought it about""?"" Gibson scholar Tatiani G. Rapatzikou has commented, in ""Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson"", on the origin of the notion of cyberspace: In his Sprawl and Bridge trilogies, Gibson"
"inspiration by many writers, directors and artists, including T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, Ian Rankin, William Gibson, Ben Greenman, Elfriede Jelinek, Rick Moody, Alan Moore, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Richard Powers, Salman Rushdie, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Jan Wildt, Laurie Anderson, Zak Smith, David Cronenberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jonathan Blow, James Murphy, and Adam Rapp. Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction; a 1987 essay in ""Spin"" magazine by Timothy Leary explicitly named ""Gravity's Rainbow"" as the ""Old Testament"" of cyberpunk, with Gibson's ""Neuromancer"" and its sequels"
"the implications of what he termed ""phantomatics"" in his nonfictional 1964 treatise ""Summa Technologiae"". A number of other popular fictional works use the concept of virtual reality. These include William Gibson's 1984 ""Neuromancer"", which defined the concept of cyberspace, and his 1994 ""Virtual Light"", where a presentation viewable in VR-like goggles was the MacGuffin. Other examples are Neal Stephenson's ""Snow Crash"", in which he made extensive reference to the term avatar to describe one's representation in a virtual world, and Rudy Rucker's ""The Hacker and the Ants"", in which a programmer uses VR for robot design and testing. The ""Otherland"""
"by science fiction. John Brunner's 1975 novel ""The Shockwave Rider"" is notable for coining the word ""worm"" to describe a computer program that propagates itself through a computer network, used as a weapon in the novel. William Gibson's ""Neuromancer"" coined the phrase cyberspace, a virtual battleground in which battles are fought using software weapons and counterweapons. The ""Star Trek"" episode A Taste of Armageddon is another notable example. Certain Dale Brown novels place cyberweapons in different roles. The first is the ""netrusion"" technology used by the U.S. Air Force. It sends corrupt data to oncoming missiles to shut them down,"
"laid its philosophical foundation. This novel was made into the seminal movie ""Blade Runner"", released in 1982. This was one year after another story, ""Johnny Mnemonic"" helped move proto-cyberpunk concepts into the mainstream. This story, which also became a film years later, involves another dystopian future, where human couriers deliver computer data, stored cybernetically in their own minds. In 1983 a short story written by Bruce Bethke, called ""Cyberpunk"", was published in ""Amazing Stories"". The term was picked up by Gardner Dozois, editor of ""Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine"" and popularized in his editorials. Bethke says he made two lists"
"debut novel ""Neuromancer"" (1984). These early works have been credited with ""renovating"" science fiction literature. After expanding on ""Neuromancer"" with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson collaborated with Bruce Sterling on the alternate history novel ""The Difference Engine"" (1990), which became an important work of the science fiction subgenre steampunk. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored the sociological developments of near-future urban environments, postindustrial society, and late capitalism. Following the turn of the century and the events of 9/11, Gibson emerged with a string of increasingly realist novels—""Pattern Recognition"" (2003),"
"Through his novels, such terms as ""cyberspace"", ""netsurfing"", ""ICE"", ""jacking in"", and ""neural implants"" entered popular usage, as did concepts such as net consciousness, virtual interaction and ""the matrix"". In ""Burning Chrome"" (1982), he coined the term ""cyberspace"", referring to the ""mass consensual hallucination"" of computer networks. Through its use in ""Neuromancer"", the term gained such recognition that it became the ""de facto"" term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s. Artist Dike Blair has commented that Gibson's ""terse descriptive phrases capture the moods which surround technologies, rather than their engineering."" Gibson's work has influenced several popular musicians: references"
"science fiction literature published before 1990 (2nd edition, 1990), providing a short review and commentary on each piece. In Lois McMaster Bujold's ""Ethan of Athos"" (1986), the titular ""unlikely hero"" is gay obstetrician Dr. Ethan Urquhart of the single-gender world Athos, whose dangerous adventure alongside the first woman he has ever met presents both a future society where homosexuality is the norm and the lingering sexism and homophobia of our own world. Cyberpunk, a genre arising in the mid-1980s, has been seen as heteronormative and masculine to a large extent, although feminist and ""queer"" interpretations are mooted by some critics."
"would come to call their movement ""Cyberpunk"". One, Bruce Sterling, later said: Ballard, Zelazny, and the rest of New Wave was seen by the subsequent generation as delivering more ""realism"" to science fiction, and they attempted to build on this. Similarly influential, and generally cited as proto-cyberpunk, is the Philip K. Dick novel ""Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"", first published in 1968. Presenting precisely the general feeling of dystopian post-economic-apocalyptic future as Gibson and Sterling later deliver, it examines ethical and moral problems with cybernetic, artificial intelligence in a way more ""realist"" than the Isaac Asimov ""Robot"" series that"
"(Lazarus Long series, 1941–87), A. E. van Vogt (""Slan"", 1946), Isaac Asimov (""I, Robot"", 1950), Arthur C. Clarke (""Childhood's End"", 1953) and Stanisław Lem (""Cyberiad"", 1967). C. S. Lewis' ""That Hideous Strength"" (1945) contains an early critique of transhumanism. In a series of science fiction novels by Neal Asher, the protagonist is an augmented human who carries out missions for ""Earth Central Security"", an artificial intelligence and superhuman coalition. The author portrays a variety of augmentations in addition to the copying of memory and human minds into crystals and the presence of both benevolent and malevolent artificial intelligences. The cyberpunk"