Long, but a good read, though I started skimming around the (broken?) [IMG] tags. Great history and clarification of the source of what "we" imagine as cyberpunk and what that means.

Reading this in the context of recent discussions about 'Reading Neuromancer for the First Time in 2025'[0] and The Paris Review interview with William Gibson[1]. I recommend the discussion of [0] and reading all of [1] if you're into this.

The article defines cyberpunk as 'science fiction that imagines “late capitalism”'. In Gibson's Paris Review, he says (to paraphrase) that the past as it was cannot be imagined; we can only imagine the future. There's no "speculative" that's purely the future, because it all must build on the present.

I found the post illuminating and a great disambiguation of the term "cyberpunk" and the (messy) history of the term. There's no mention of the term "solarpunk", which some regard as a sort of modern-successor-thing to cyberpunk. I haven't read any yet. I sometimes imagine Doctorow's work as post-cyberpunk, somehow more painful because it's often realistic but also more positive. Like the article says, it's hard to classify things.

I'm a huge Neuromancer and Gibson fan, and love the cyberpunk aesthetic as well as the "Neuromantic" genre. I haven't read much Bruce Sterling, so glad to get to read 'Mozart in Mirrorshades'.

The article does touch on Japanese cyberpunk, to say that it's outside the context of the post --- which I appreciate! The discussion from 3 days ago [0] has some great comments making those distinctions, though I'm only familiar with a small part of the media.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44548353 [1]: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fi...