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Which book is credited with popularizing the cyberpunk genre?

Which book is credited with popularizing the cyberpunk genre?

Last updated: June 4, 2024

With any genre, there’s never really a singular moment that creates it, but more like a series of moments leading up to it.

This holds true for the cyberpunk genre, which rose to prominence largely in the late ‘80s and is still pretty darn popular today. Before Blade Runner, there was the science fiction of the '50s and '60s that laid the groundwork for cyberpunk’s unique mix of ‘80s aesthetics with dystopia and futuristic technology.

But while it didn’t pop out of thin air, there is one book that is often seen as at the very least popularizing, if not finally putting the pieces together, for a genre that had been trying to be born for at least a few years. Which book is it?

 

The answer is: Neuromancer. William Gibson’s Neuromancer was published in 1984 and quickly proved itself as a milestone work in science fiction, despite being Gibson’s debut novel.You’ve got a drug-addicted hacker, a dystopian city in Japan, AI, and even a virtual reality of sorts called the matrix. Yep. Did Gibson invent cyberpunk? That’s up for debate, but Neuromancer was definitely one of the earliest and remains one of the most well-known works in the genre.Source

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