CY8ERPUNKS

Timeline

Era 2 · 1983–1986

The term & the wave

  1. 1983

    Bruce Bethke, "Cyberpunk," Amazing Stories

    (published). Term enters print.

  2. 1983

    Bruce Sterling starts Cheap Truth

    (1983–1986, 18 one-page issues, written as ). Un-copyrighted, explicitly encourages "xerox pirates" to circulate it. This is the single best model for a CY8ERPUNKS zine — cheap, viral, deliberately uncopyrighted, pure polemic. (Source: Wikipedia / Tachyon Publications.)

  3. 1983

    ARPANET switches to TCP/IP

    (Jan 1, 1983). The internet, properly speaking, begins here.

  4. 1983

    RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook

    (V. Vale & Andrea Juno). Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Mark Pauline/Survival Research Labs, Monte Cazazza. The body-horror + machine aesthetic. Wildly influential on the visual register.

  5. 1983

    Videodrome

    (Cronenberg, 1983) — media, flesh, control. Also ** (1983) — hacking enters the mainstream imagination.

  6. 1983

    New Order, "Blue Monday"

    (1983). The best-selling 12-inch single ever; Peter Saville's die-cut sleeve is a design landmark. Also and Art of Noise — the Fairlight era.

  7. 1983

    Cybotron, Enter

    The album (1983).

  8. 1983

    Howard Chaykin, American Flagg!

    (1983). Also Frank Miller's Ronin (1983) and The Dark Knight Returns (1986) — comics turn graphic-design-heavy and dystopian.

  9. 1984

    William Gibson, Neuromancer

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

  10. 1984

    Stewart Brand at the first Hackers Conference (Nov 1984): "Information wants to be free."

    The full line: information wants to be free and wants to be expensive. The exact phrasing was reported in the Washington Post, Nov 18, 1984; Brand had just published Whole Earth Software Catalog. (Sources: Quote Investigator, Wikipedia, Wired retrospective.) - Important nuance for our editorial stance: Brand's line is usually half-quoted. He said both halves. A magazine that claims this lineage should hold both: distribution is free, value is not. That tension is the interesting territory.

  11. 1984

    Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review

    The academic frame for the genre's cultural politics.

  12. 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.

  13. 1984

    High Frontiers

    Launched (R.U. Sirius / Ken Goffman, co-editor Morgan Russell). Psychedelics + science + human potential. Becomes ** (1988), then Mondo 2000 (1989).

  14. 1984

    Emigre

    Magazine launched (Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko; Berkeley, 1984–2005). Licko built fonts on the new Macintosh; the magazine is the visual record of the desktop-publishing revolution. Held in MoMA's collection. Essential for CY8ERPUNKS' type and layout decisions.

  15. 1984

    Apple Macintosh launch

    (Jan 24, 1984). MacPaint, bitmap fonts, the "1984" ad. Desktop publishing → zines get cheap and pretty.

  16. 1984

    FidoNet

    (1984) — hobbyist BBS network. Pre-internet grassroots networking.

  17. 1984

    Decoder

    (1984, Muscha) — Genesis P-Orridge, William Burroughs, FM Einheit. Industrial film about muzak as control.

  18. 1984

    The Terminator

    ** (both 1984). Repo Man is the punk-cyberpunk LA register and is closer to the actual ethos than most.

  19. 1984

    Nam June Paik, "Good Morning Mr. Orwell"

    (Jan 1, 1984) — satellite video-art broadcast. Also Paik's "electronic superhighway" coinage.

  20. 1985

    Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto," Socialist Review

    (as "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"). Cyborg as boundary-breaking figure; rejects rigid categories. and a cornerstone of cyberfeminism.

  21. 1985

    The WELL founded

    (April 1985, Stewart Brand & Larry Brilliant, Sausalito). Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. — literate, argumentative, countercultural, community-owned-adjacent. Its whole culture descends from the Whole Earth Catalog.

  22. 1985

    Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix

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

  23. 1985

    Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) writes the T.A.Z. essays

    (written 1981–1988; published as T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone in 1991, Autonomedia). — enclaves outside state control, and the idea that the internet is one. Essential for the political theory of CY8ERPUNKS.

  24. 1985

    Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought

    The people behind the personal-computer revolution, written by a WELL regular.

  25. 1985

    Max Headroom

    Character debuts (1985; TV series 1987).

  26. 1985

    Brazil

    (Gilliam, 1985). Bureaucratic dystopia; ducts.

  27. 1986

    Bruce Sterling, ed., Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology

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

  28. 1986

    Gibson, Count Zero

    Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (nanotech).

  29. 1986

    Omni e-magazine on CompuServe

    (1986) — an early magazine-goes-online move worth citing for CY8ERPUNKS' own channel strategy.

  30. 1986

    Kraftwerk, Electric Café

    Ministry, Twitch (industrial turns to dance); (EBM).