1. [cybernetics + punk] a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on the effects on society and individuals of advanced computer technology, artificial intelligence, and bionic implants in an increasingly global culture, especially as seen in the struggles of streetwise, disaffected characters.
- 1983 B. Bethke title Amazing Stories (Nov.) № 94: Cyberpunk
- 1984 G. Dozois SF in Eighties Washington Post Book World (Dec. 30) № 9/3: But surely the wild and woolly "outlaw fantasy" Waldrop began producing in the '70s played some part in shaping the esthetics and literary style of the "cyberpunk" movement.
- 1988 Times Literary Supplement (Oct. 21) № 1180/3: The subgenre of science fiction now widely known as Cyberpunk, in which life in the computerized jungle of the near future can only be survived by young street-wise masters of software interfaces and the arts of combat.
- 1992 SF Age (Nov.) № 70/2: Many of us no longer conceive of [...] a world where computers and electronic networks and free exchange of information enhance our lives rather than creating the grisly world of cyberpunk.
- 1996 B. Sterling Workshop Lexicon R. Wilson Paragons № 352: In proper ideologically-correct cyberpunk fashion, the Turkey City Lexicon was distributed uncopyrighted and free of charge.
- 2000 Interzone (Feb.) № 52/1: If cyberpunk has an enduring characteristic, it is not so much the fusing of information technology and Chandleresque noir, but the rejection of the monolithic futures of traditional science fiction in favour of fragmentation, plurality and a gleeful inversion of the accepted power-structures.
- 1984 G. Dozois SF in Eighties Washington Post Book World (Dec. 30) № 9/1: About the closest thing here to a self-willed esthetic "school" would be the purveyors of bizarre hard-edged, high-tech stuff, who have on occasion been referred to as "cyberpunks" — Sterling, Gibson, Shiner, Cadigan, Bear.
- 1991 FantasySpring № 37/1: What do you think of the experimental, and often deliberately controversial, fiction of the New Wave, Cyberpunks, etc.?
- 1996 D. Pringle, et al. Ultimate Ency. of SF № 56/2: There are many young people in the world who ardently desire to be cyberpunks; they regard the rapidly-expanding and fundamentally anarchic Internet as their natural environment.
- 2006 P. Di Filippo (Washingtonpost.com) (Internet) Jan. 15: There have been at least two subsequent generations of cyberpunks since that school of science fiction broke big in 1984.
- 1989 C. Stoll Cuckoo's Egg № 245: This was a sensitive medical device, not a plaything for some cyberpunk. Some poor computer geek, indeed.
- 1992 B. Sterling Hacker Crackdown № 56: I exempt the word "cyberpunk," which a few hackers and law enforcement people actually do use. The term is drawn from literary criticism and has some odd and unlikely resonances, but, like hacker, cyberpunk too has become a criminal pejorative today.
- 1993 Wired (Sept./Oct.) № 90/2: Cyberpunks are setting the stage for a coming digital counterculture that will turn the '90s zeitgeist utterly on its head.
