Cyberpunk Movement

Before cyberpunk became a genre, it existed as 'The Movement', a literary community of young writers disappointed with the state of the mainstream science fiction. The writers, most notably Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker and John Shirley exchanged ideas, short stories and articles through a newsletter, Cheap Truth, edited by Sterling who remains the leading theorist and advocator of the genre.

Two defining moments in the birth of the genre were the publications of Mirrorshades and Neuromancer.

Mirrorshades: an anthology of short stories by the first wave of cyberpunk writers, in 1986 established the group as a whole. The preface of the anthology, written by Bruce Sterling, contained the first concise definition of cyberpunks. It tried to establish the ideological and stylistic essence of cyberpunk and place the genre in the tradition of science fiction.
Neuromancer: written in 1984 became the very landmark of cyberpunk writers winning the "Triple Crown" of Science Fiction writing: Nebula, Hugo, and Phillip K. Dicks, and Ditman award something no other Science Fiction work has done.

This novel is about a cracker operating in cyberspace, a cybernetically-enhanced bodyguard/mercenary, and a pair of mysterious artificial intelligences.

Gibson wrote two sequels in the same setting, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Following the publicity created by Neuromancer, cyberpunk moved beyond its literary origins. The term became widely used in media during the 80's and its meaning was extended to a whole range of technological sub-cultures, most importantly the hackers. Neuromancer influenced a whole spectrum of science fiction culture, movies, comics, role-playing and computer games (all discussed in later sections of this website).

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