Cyberpunk

[orig. by SF writer Bruce Bethke and/or editor Gardner Dozois]

n.,adj. A subgenre of SF launched in 1982 by William Gibson's epoch-making novel 'Neuromancer' (though its roots go back through Vernor Vinge's 'True Names' (see the Bibliography) to John Brunner's 1975 novel 'The Shockwave Rider'). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series.

See cyberspace, ice, go flatline.