"Cyber" pertains to information systems, like those in a computer."Punk" refers to fractious youth. Together the two elements suggest an artificial human with torn clothes and spiky hair (e.g., Daryl Hannah's character Pris in Blade Runner).

The term cyberpunk comes from the title of a short story by Bruce Bethke "Cyberpunk" (1983)
William Gibson's first novel Neuromancer (1984) brought the term into general use.

Cyberpunk is fiction dominated by the feeling that man is dwarfed by machine in a technological world.

Cyberpunk "is distinctive in its pervasively technological climate, its fascination with bioengineering, and the dystopean landscape through which its alienated figures typically move" (Telotte 76). Cyberpunk asks the questions:

• Who or what is in charge in this new digital world?
• How do we define life in a digital environment?
• How is our own sense of self is constructed by the culture we inhabit?

Cyberpunk works portray a society alienated from nature and organized along corporate rather than tribal, familial, or national lines.

The setting is often an city of dreadful night where street smarts provide the ethic in a world modeled on the contemporary inner city--the rock scene, the drug scene, and hackers' dreams of glory.

Cyberpunk attempts a fusion of the gothic mode with its stylistic sophistication and noir atmosphere and the heavily-technological concerns and essential metaphors of hard science fiction.

Godfathers of cyberpunk include Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs.

The first cyberpunk novel is generally considered to be William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984), winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula.

Other Key Works:

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, basis for film Blade Runner
• "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson
• The Matrix (film) and its sequels

For more titles, see

• Browse by Subgenre: Cyberpunk