Cyberpunk

Definition

Emerging in the early 1980s in Omni and Asimov's SF before being canonized by Neuromancer (Gibson, 1984), cyberpunk runs on a simple equation: maximal technology + maximal social decay. Bruce Sterling, who edited the manifesto anthology Mirrorshades (1986), put it: "the street finds its own uses for things." It's not a future — it's a present extrapolated 15 years out, dystopian by accumulation rather than catastrophe.

What it's for

Cyberpunk provides a ready-made setting to interrogate privacy, identity, work in the digital age, corporate concentration, the human-machine border. Its codified atmosphere (neon, rain, night, mixed languages) immediately carries tone. Today, many decor elements (supranational corporations, conversational AIs, biometric surveillance) have become ordinary present — which forces the genre to reinvent itself.

Variants by genre

• Classical cyberpunk: Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling — the Sprawl, megalopolis, hackers.
• Post-cyberpunk: less binary stakes, heroes better integrated into the system (Stross, Doctorow).
• Biopunk: genetic rather than digital focus (Oryx and Crake by Atwood).
• Solarpunk: explicit opposite response — low-impact technology, ecological communities.
• Cyberpunk-noir: crossover with hardboiled crime (Altered Carbon).
• Asian cyberpunk: major current (Mamoru Oshii, Satoshi Kon) that partly created the aesthetic before the West.
• Cyberpunk-romance: emergent (The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet with cyber inflection).

Common pitfalls

• Aesthetic without politics: neon and trench coats, but no underlying systemic critique.
• All-powerful hacker who solves everything in three decorative lines of code.
• Confusion between cyberpunk and any dark future (a post-apocalyptic universe isn't cyberpunk).
• Decor copy-pasted from Blade Runner without updating (no generative AI, no platforms, no gig economy).
• Exclusively male and solitary characters: convention reproduced without thought.
• Spectacular implants without cost (maintenance, reverse hacking, addiction).

Examples

• William Gibson — Neuromancer (1984): genre-founding matrix, ICE, cyberspace.
• Neal Stephenson — Snow Crash: metaverse avant la lettre, mafioso pizza syndicates.
• Bruce Sterling — Islands in the Net: political post-cyberpunk.
• Mamoru Oshii — Ghost in the Shell: philosophical cyberpunk, disembodied consciousness.
• Richard K. Morgan — Altered Carbon: cyberpunk-noir, consciousness transfer as class engine.
• Pat Cadigan — Synners: feminine cyberpunk, long invisibilized.
• Cory Doctorow — Little Brother: youth post-cyberpunk, contemporary surveillance.
• Maurice G. Dantec — Babylon Babies: politically loaded francophone cyberpunk.
• Mr. Robot (Sam Esmail): televisual cyberpunk set in the present, no future.
• Alain Damasio — Les Furtifs: contemporary French cyberpunk, surveillance + bodily resistance.

Writing tips

• Update the setting by 40 years: Neuromancer was written in 1984, and many of its markers (AI, biometric surveillance, platforms) are already the present. Your 2026+ cyberpunk has to imagine the after (post-generative AI, climate collapse, algorithmic governance), not replay the neon of Blade Runner.
• Make every implant cost something: health, debt, maintenance, reverse-hacking, emotional dependence. Cyberpunk collapses when tech only has upsides — cost is what produces the politics.
• Write the systemic critique before the decor: name the corporation, the law, the governance flaw you want to dissect. If you strip out the neon and nothing remains, you're writing digital steampunk, not cyberpunk.
• Include at least one POV that endures technology (a platform worker, a patient on a failing prosthesis) alongside the hacker. That contrast is what stops it becoming a lone techno-fantasy.

Go deeper: Writing fantasy and SF with AI and The 7 worldbuilding sins.

Revision checklist

• Does my universe contain an identifiable political critique (corporation, surveillance, class)?
• Does the technology have a concrete cost (health, addiction, debt) for characters who use it?
• Is the decor updated relative to the 80s, or merely reproduced?
• Are there characters who endure technology instead of mastering it?