"What starts the process, really, are laughs, slights and snubs when you are a kid. Sometimes it's because you're poor, or Irish or Jewish or Catholic or ugly or simply that you are skinny. But if you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance, while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts.

"Once you learn that you've got to work harder than anybody else, it becomes a way of life as you move out of the alley and on your way. In your own mind you have nothing to lose, so you take plenty of chances, and if you do your homework many of them pay off. It is then you understand, for the first time, that you have the advantage because your competitors can't risk what they have already. It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it because it is a part of you and you need it as much as an arm or a leg.

"So you are lean and mean and resourceful, and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance."

Richard Nixon, 1974

so, what is it?

The cyberpunk genre is an offshoot of traditional science fiction that rose to prominence in the early 80's; deciding what defines it is often as difficult as asking blind men to describe an elephant. Cyberpunk is often characterized by a dystopian near-future society, a global emphasis that reflects current trends in economics and politics, and pervasive high-technology.

Characters are often loners, or punks on the edges of society who must use their wits to survive and better themselves. Hacker street gangs, high-tech storm chasers, professional street samurais, renegade AIs and mega-corporations, neural computer interfaces and pocket-sized fission weapons... the images and flavor of the genre are gritty, often soaked with dark humor and satirical twists on current trends.

the history of cyberpunk

The first Cyberpunk authors frequently published short stories in magazines like Omni and Isaac Asimof's Science Fiction. Known informally as the Mirrorshades Group, they brought a fresher contemporary flavor to their writing, in the same way that punk music in the late 70's had reflected postmodern culture. Neuromancer, by William Gibson, was one of the first novels to go achieve widespread recognition in 1984. The story of a hacker 'cowboy' hired to steal an AI from a powerful corporation, it coined the term Cyberspace, and put cyberpunk on the map.

Bruce Sterling, another of the genre's founding fathers, wrote classics like Heavy Weather and Islands in the Net, and edited the Mirroshades anthology, a diverse compiliation of classic cyberpunk stories. Niel Stephenson's Snow Crash marked a second generation with the story of a down-and-out hacker whose pizza delivery mishap catapults him into a war between the mafia, the government, and a power-hungry communications tychoon.

cyberpunk related links

it's more than a movie: blade runner was an is one of the major influences on the look and feel of classic cyberpunk. the smogged, arcology-filled los angeles is still a work of art.

max headroom was the first (and only true) cyberpunk television series. brilliant stuff, with the tongue in cheek bungee-jumping-off-a-burning-bridge feel that makes the great cpunk fiction so fun.

if you're looking for info on the man behind neurmancer, the william gibson page is the place to go. book summaries, news about other projects he's working on, and a chic design make it a nice place to visit.

bruce sterling's cyberpunk reading list is a moral imperative.you like cpunk, this man can show you the roots of the genre, back when people didn't know what to call it.

though it's still under development, mirrorshades is my personal brainchild. an original cyberpunk world set in the 2030's. a media-centric world with paranoid advertisers pulling the strings, it's got some grit and some cheese thrown in for good measure.

some of my own stuff...

as you may have guessed, i am about to inflict my own cyberpunk-flavored scribblings on you, the humble reader. they're tiny little sketches, not stories, but they're mine and they've been uploaded. check out watching and one long night, with other short sketches yet to come.