cyberpunk

noun

Etymology: From cyber- + -punk, coined by American writer and software developer Bruce Bethke as the title of a 1983 short story, and later popularized by Gardner Dozois.

1. A subgenre of science fiction which focuses on computer or information technology and virtual reality juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

   “But by 1987, cyberpunk had become a cliche. Other writers had turned the form into formula: implant wetware (biological computer chips), government by multinational corporations, street-wise, leather-jacketed, amphetamine-loving protagonists and decayed orbital colonies.”

   “Cyberpunk stories are set in a futuristic, dystopic environment—the opposite of utopian—in which computer technology plays an important role. […] The protagonists of cyberpunk stories are technologically proficient, lonely adventurers struggling with issues of identity and forced to use computer skills to fight menacing forces of domination.”

2. A cyberpunk character, a hacker punk, a high-tech low life.

   “The film The Matrix redefined what a cyberpunk looked like.”

3. A writer of cyberpunk fiction.

   “[…] cyberpunks like William Gibson, Lucious Sheperd^([sic]), Bruce Sterling […]”

4. A musical genre related to the punk movement that makes use of electronic sounds such as synthesizers.

   “A more technologically elaborate current of microtonal music can be found at M.I.T and Berklee College of Music, where R. Boulanger works in exotic equal temperaments and non-octave scales (E₆₀ and the 13th root of 3, i.e. the Bohlen-Pierce scale) using the CSOUND acoustic compiler, the Mathews radio drum and various MIDI synthesizers; nearby, E. Mullen performs cyberpunk music in E₁₉ and the 13th root of 3.”

   “At Meredith we stayed up all night listening to doof doof cyberpunk music and I saw you cry for the first time, at four in the morning bottle of ice tea and vodka in hand I saw your real face and something changed.”