Why don't you ask the cyberpunk group?

I think of gibson and stephenson as being pretty definitive cyberpunk. I do not, however, know who should get the credit for starting it. certainly, gibson borrowed heavily from dick in some ways. however, it seems like gibson took the "cyber" and added the "punk".

I have not read much of dick's work, but as far as I know he didn't have ninja robot babes with razorblade fingernails.

william gibson Neuromancer

bruce sterling Schismatrix

john shirley Eclipse


lewis shiner Frontera

i personally think that pkd borders on sci-fi, let alone cyberpunk. the father of cyberpunk imho are gibson, sterling, and stephenson

Koosh, you've aroused my curiosity: what do you mean "pkd borders on sci-fi"?
Could you be making an implicit observation about the difference between "Science Fiction" and "Speculative Fiction"?
MWAAA HA HA HAHAAAAAAA!
Seriously though, would you care to amplify?

yeah that's basically it. i don't see many example of traditional sci-fi elements in his stories, especially books like "the man in the high castle" (yes i am aware it won the hugo award) i think are mostly "speculative fiction" stories based more around character and speculation than the "sciences". the scientific element in his stories is usually the human mind, which is definitely not understood in our society anywhere near the capacity he suggests, and if often a topic explored more by mainstream fiction authors than science-fiction authors. don't get me wrong, he's one of my favorite authors for this reason. i found william gibson's latest novel "pattern recognition" to be in a similar context.

yeah I know what you mean. My take is that Spec Fic basically holds that the future will be determined by human innovation and determination, check out space opera novels from the 50s, you already know what I mean. Then writers started to get more into the details of how futuristic technology would actually work, which started to take us away from the basic questions about humanity which are at the core of Spec Fic. As I see it, Cyberpunk switches the baseline again, asserting that the future will be determined by the whim of greedy and soulless corporations, and lazyness, or at least lack of vigilance on the part of the masses. This, I think, is why people consider Dick the first Cyberpunk writer. Check out A Scanner Darkly if you haven't already, I think you'll see the elements coming into play.
Ugh, no more rambling for right now.

William Gibson would probably agree. I wouldn't.

PKD is considered Cyberpunk because of the blurred reality effects taht occur within most of his novels, and all the ones that I have read. I would consider him more of a godfather, and Gibson the father. As far as SF, there has always been a big controversy as to should the genre be called or split by the therm speculative fiction. The fact is, most Sci Fi, and the reason why most places (especially in the U.S.) classify Sci-Fi and and fantasy together, is because the stories are not always based upon possible future science, but merely exist in a speculative futrue time, or maybe not at all (such is the case with the alterer present/futures/histories, like The Man in the High Castle, and most of Turtledoves novels). But anyway, however you define and sepearte the genre, I love it all.

I think an absolutely critical source for Cyberpunk is actually a film: the Godard movie Alphaville. Not only is the plotline of the movie one that has resonance in a lot of cyperpunk fiction (a detective named Lemmy Caution finds himself in conflict with an artificially intelligent computer who is running a city called Alphaville), I think it also introduces another essential element of the genre: the marriage of sci-fi elements to hard-boiled detective fiction. That is, the heroes in cyberpunk are often very much like the heroes of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammet novels. (I think that Gibson has spoken highly of Chandler as an influence.)

A highly recommended film, if very odd (the computer in the movie, Alpha 60, sounds like he's talking in burps, for example.)

Amongst the major Cyberpunk writers, including Gibson and Sterling, John Shirley is considered the true father of Cyberpunk. His CITY COME A WALKIN is the blueprint. I know all three of these guys and know this to be true.

When Bill Gibson wrote NEUROMANCER he didn't own a computer. It was written on a manual typewriter.

I think that one of the pivotal things about a cyberpunk work is the style aspect as exemplified by the cyberpunk staple, mirrorshades.

The Matrix is pretty much the ultimate cyberpunk statement interms of its visual stylings BUT it isn't 'proper' cyberpunk because the martial arts replace the visceral way that cyberpunk authors talk about information interchange.

Gibson hit the cyberpunk mood just right and he did it first with Neuromancer even though the computer sequences in it are completely ridiculous if you know anything about computers.

If you contrast it with something like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash then you can see how Cyberpunk evolved into a fictional arena for authors who actually knew something about the real politics of cyberspace to discuss their virtual world.

Another comparison: Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown is nearly cyberpunk non-fiction because it does attmept to give hackers a veneer of cool in the real world. In a way this work suffers for the opposite reason to The Matrix because it has much substance but little in the way of style due to its source.

So your ideal cyberpunk statement is something midpoint between The Hacker Crackdown and The Matrix, so Neuromancer again...

Personally I consider genre defining statements like this to be marketing tools rather than anything that really deserves this level of analysis. Philip K Dick had his moments and some of those moments did examine data interchange speculatively but he wrote naked while speeding his tits off and cried if people interrupted him... so what we can learn from Dick is limited by the unfortunate circumstances of his creative process.

Two comments:

First, anyone who's interested in this should read M John Harrison's "The Centauri Device" (puiblished 1973 I think), and consider whether it'd fit into cyberpunk-the-genre or not.

Second, Gibson's lack of computer savvy was essentialto "Neuromancer" and its world. His entire vision is based on a single universal data format. (And before anyone starts, does it occur to them that his having written the book might have influenced the world we're now in?)

Third, style's only part of the point. The point is that fiction is about people. Not technology, as such. The reason SF is interesting is that it attacks the interface between people and their technology and how they affect each other.

Fourth, Philip K Dick's writing habits are not relevant to his ideas or his writing, as such. Go read your favourite novel again, and ask what the writer(-s) were wearing at the time. Can you tell? I can't, and neither can fpkk.

(I know, that's more than two. But they were worth it

Epic bump, brah.

oh am I really that late? I didnt even look at any dates

damn that was 7 years ago. I revived a 7 year old thread just to bash a group. haha go me