CY8ERPUNKS

Prior art · LIT

Literature

Era 0 · 1948–1974

Ground

cybernetics meets the counterculture

  1. 1962

    La Jetée (Marker)

    Time-loop, memory, the still-image aesthetic.

  2. 1964

    Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad

    Philosophical robot fables. Also Lem's Summa Technologiae (1964) — speculative futurology of machine minds.

  3. 1968

    Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    Precursor to Blade Runner.

  4. 1970

    Alvin Toffler, Future Shock

    "Information overload," accelerated change, the psychological cost of technological velocity.

  5. 1971

    THX 1138

    (Lucas). Control-society aesthetics.

  6. 1974

    Ted Nelson, Computer Lib / Dream Machines

    Self-published, designed as a flipped two-sided book. — collage, hand-lettering, psychedelic diagrams. "You can and must understand computers NOW." Direct model for a magazine that is both theory and object.

Era 1 · 1975–1982

Proto-cyberpunk

the term exists before the label

  1. 1975

    John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider

    Coins predicts computer viruses, networks, data havens, the Delphi pool. Also Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1968) for the pop-collage prose technique.

  2. 1979

    Ridley Scott, Alien

    (film). Also Stalker (1979, Tarkovsky).

  3. 1980

    Bruce Bethke writes the short story "Cyberpunk"

    (published Amazing Stories, 1983). Coined as a title, later adopted as a genre label.

  4. 1981

    Vernor Vinge, True Names

    First fully fleshed-out in fiction. Predates Gibson's coinage by a year.

  5. 1982

    William Gibson, "Burning Chrome," Omni

    Also "the sprawl" is seeded here.

Era 2 · 1983–1986

The term & the wave

  1. 1983

    Bruce Bethke, "Cyberpunk," Amazing Stories

    (published). Term enters print.

  2. 1984

    William Gibson, Neuromancer

    Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick Award. Defines cyberspace, the matrix, ICE, console cowboys, zaibatsu, the sprawl.

  3. 1984

    Gardner Dozois popularizes "cyberpunk"

    In his Washington Post piece "SF in the Eighties," applying it to the new cluster of authors. Term goes from story title to movement label.

  4. 1985

    Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix

    The other major 80s cyberpunk novel, and more political/transhumanist than Neuromancer.

  5. 1986

    Bruce Sterling, ed., Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology

    (Arbor House). Preface + 13 stories. Gibson, Sterling, Rucker, Shiner, Cadigan, Bear, Shirley, Maddox, Swanwick, Jeter, Effinger.

  6. 1986

    Gibson, Count Zero

    Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (nanotech).

Era 3 · 1987–1991

Cyberculture & cryptography

  1. 1987

    Stewart Brand, The Media Lab

    (1987). MIT Media Lab as the future. Negroponte enters the picture.

  2. 1988

    Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

    (1988) — closes the Sprawl trilogy.

  3. 1989

    Semiotext(e) SF

    Anthology (eds. Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson). Post-cyberpunk SF plus theory, including Burroughs and Ballard. Bridges the SF scene and the theory scene.

Era 4 · 1992–1996

Cypherpunks, Wired, the Declaration

  1. 1992

    Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

    The , "avatar" in its modern sense, burbclaves, franchising, and a very different (Asiatic/ meme-hazard) theory of what information does to minds.

  2. 1992

    Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge

    (eds. R.U. Sirius, Queen Mu). The magazine as a book — the anthology-as-manifesto move.

  3. 1992

    Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown

    The Sundevil raids from the inside; also famously released free online.

  4. 1994

    Gibson, Virtual Light

    (1993 UK / 1994); Tim May, The Cyphernomicon (1994); Kevin Kelly, Out of Control (1994); Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia and Media Virus (1994); Timothy Leary, Chaos & Cyber Culture (1994).

  5. 1995

    Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, "The Californian Ideology"

    (1995). the "bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley" into a faith that the free market + technology = liberation. CY8ERPUNKS must read this as self-criticism, not as an enemy text. It also correctly predicted that Wired's libertarianism would paper over welfare cutbacks and deregulation. (Sources: Wikipedia, monoskop PDF, Sterling's Medium repost.)

Era 5 · 1997–2004

Network culture & the critique

  1. 1997

    Radiohead, OK Computer (1997)

    The mainstreaming of tech anxiety. (1998) — the single best book on the mystical/religious underside of cyberculture; strongly recommended for the editorial register.

  2. c. 2003

    Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

    (2003, first CC-licensed novel from a major publisher); (2005) — the definitive AI-and-uploading cyberpunk novel. Stross is the bridge from 80s cyberpunk to the current AI moment and is probably underused in our canon. Also Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe (2004).

Era 6 · 2005–2015

The cypherpunk payoff

  1. c. 2006

    Daniel Suarez, Daemon

    (2006) and Freedom™ (2010) — autonomous software seizing economic power. Widely ignored, very relevant now.

Era 7 · 2016–2026

AI

  1. 2020

    GPT-3; Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red)

    The game is the emblem of the retro re-hash: enormous, beautiful, and almost entirely a 1980s mood board. (Its redemption arc via Edgerunners and the 2.0 overhaul is also worth noting as craft.)