Editing Cyberpunk (section)

=== Etymology ===
The term "cyberpunk" first appeared as the [[Cyberpunk (short story)|title of a short story]] by [[Bruce Bethke]], written in 1980 and published in ''[[Amazing Stories]]'' in 1983.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Definition of cyberpunk|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyberpunk|access-date=2020-09-19|website=www.merriam-webster.com|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Cyberpunk|url=http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cyberpunk|access-date=2020-09-20|website=www.sf-encyclopedia.com}}</ref> The name was picked up by [[Gardner Dozois]], editor of ''[[Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine]]'', and popularized in his editorials.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cruz |first=Décio Torres |chapter=Blurring Genres: Dissolving Literature and Film in Blade Runner |date=2014 |chapter-url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137439734_4 |title=Postmodern Metanarratives |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |isbn=978-1-349-49431-6 |access-date=2023-01-08 |pages=30, 32|doi=10.1057/9781137439734_4 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lavigne |first1=Carlen |title=Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A Critical Study |date=2013 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-0-7864-6653-5 |page=9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ER26ZJkc30C&q=cyberpunk+bethke+1983+dozois&pg=PA9 |access-date=19 September 2020}}</ref>

Bethke says he made two lists of words, one for technology, one for troublemakers, and experimented with combining them variously into compound words, consciously attempting to coin a term that encompassed both punk attitudes and high technology. He described the idea thus:

{{blockquote|The kids who trashed my computer; their kids were going to be Holy Terrors, combining the ethical vacuity of teenagers with a technical fluency we adults could only guess at. Further, the parents and other adult authority figures of the early 21st Century were going to be terribly ill-equipped to deal with the first generation of teenagers who grew up truly "speaking computer".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-books-fiction/the-early-life-of-the-word-cyberpunk/|title=The Early Life of the Word "Cyberpunk" - Neon Dystopia|date=13 November 2016|website=NeonDystopia.com|access-date=28 December 2017|archive-date=10 November 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221110183214/https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-books-fiction/the-early-life-of-the-word-cyberpunk/|url-status=dead}}</ref>}}

Afterward, Dozois began using this term in his own writing, most notably in a 1984 ''[[The Washington Post|Washington Post]]'' article where he said "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."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1984/12/30/science-fiction-in-the-eighties/526c3a06-f123-4668-9127-33e33f57e313/|title=Science Fiction in the Eighties|first=Gardner|last=Dozois|date=30 December 1984|access-date=28 December 2017|via=www.WashingtonPost.com}}</ref>

Also in 1984, William Gibson's novel ''Neuromancer'' was published, delivering a glimpse of a future encompassed by what became an archetype of cyberpunk "virtual reality", with the human mind being fed light-based worldscapes through a computer interface. Some, perhaps ironically including Bethke himself, argued at the time that the writers whose style Gibson's books epitomized should be called "Neuromantics", a pun on the name of the novel plus "[[New Romantics]]", a term used for a New Wave pop music movement that had just occurred in Britain, but this term did not catch on. Bethke later paraphrased [[Michael Swanwick]]'s argument for the term: "the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly imitating ''Neuromancer''".

Sterling was another writer who played a central role, often consciously, in the cyberpunk genre, variously seen as either keeping it on track, or distorting its natural path into a stagnant formula.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.athabascau.ca/courses/engl/491/cyberpunk_history.pdf|title=Postmodern Metanarratives: Blade Runner and Literature in the Age of Image|website=AthabascaU.ca|access-date=28 December 2017|archive-date=16 May 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180516165257/http://www.athabascau.ca/courses/engl/491/cyberpunk_history.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 1986, he edited a volume of cyberpunk stories called ''[[Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology]]'', an attempt to establish what cyberpunk was, from Sterling's perspective.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2013/01/review-of-mirrorshades-cyberpunk.html|title=Speculiction...: Review of "Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology" Edited by Bruce Sterling|last=Jesse|date=27 January 2013|website=Speculiction.Blogspot.com|access-date=28 December 2017}}</ref>

In the subsequent decade, the motifs of Gibson's ''Neuromancer'' became formulaic, climaxing in the satirical extremes of [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[Snow Crash]]'' in 1992.

Bookending the cyberpunk era, Bethke himself published a novel in 1995 called ''[[Headcrash]]'', like ''Snow Crash'' a satirical attack on the genre's excesses. Fittingly, it won an honor named after cyberpunk's spiritual founder, the [[Philip K. Dick Award]]. It satirized the genre in this way:

{{blockquote|...full of young guys with no social lives, no sex lives and no hope of ever moving out of their mothers' basements ... They're total wankers and losers who indulge in Messianic fantasies about someday getting even with the world through almost-magical computer skills, but whose actual use of the Net amounts to dialing up the scatophilia forum and downloading a few disgusting pictures. You know, cyberpunks.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://wc.arizona.edu/papers/91/32/13_1_m.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151114070119/http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/91/32/13_1_m.html|url-status=dead|title=Bethke crashes the cyberpunk system - October 8, 1997|archive-date=November 14, 2015|website=wc.arizona.edu}}</ref>}}