I really think that cyberpunk, high tech low life is a romantic genre like vampire is. The loneliness, the despair, the fate. I'm not very good with words to describe it but it's a feeling. It's about uncommon people who deliberately decide to step out of the mass, even if it's renouncing to the comfort modern technology can provide. Choosing the low life because the normal life is giving away too much of your soul trading it for comfort and simplicity of a corporate life.

They use the technology for efficiency, they don't care about all the glitter they want it to work even if it's awful and not other user friendly.

They are antisocial but they take some pride of it.

I think it's interesting to consider where did the entire idea of cyberpunk come from.

It definitely didn't pop out of thin air, if you simply look at fiction of the 70s. Of course probably everyone is familiar with Shockwave Rider, because it's cited on Wikipedia and most article writers begin (and end) their research on Wikipedia.

But I decided to make a simple timeline of ingredients that would end up forming the idea of cyberpunk.

• 1920 - R.U.R. play by Karl Capek. Invented the concept of robots and of robot rebellion - though notably the robots in the play are organic, making them bioroids/replicants by moden nomenclature.
• 1925 - Metropolis novel by Thea von Harbou. (followed by the 1927 Fritz Lang movie). Incredibly ahead of its time, one of the first depictions of a high tech society, where the high technology doesn't liberate the underclasses, but is used to oppress them further. Also definitely something is to be said about 1920s being fueled by the zeitgeist of socialist movements and anti-capitalism, something that would also fuel 1980s counter-culture, and also post-2008 resurgence of cyberpunk. Also interesting that author of the novel was a women - should we include Thea von Harbou among female pioneers of cyberpunk alongside Pat Cadigan?
• 1932 - Brave New World. One of the OG dystopian fiction novels, featuring genetically engineered society controlled by drugs, it is definitely reminescent of modern biopunk.
• 1948 - 1984 by Orwell. I mean, I had to mention it, as being the definitive depiction of a surveillance society and a police state.
• 1953 - Caves of Steel. The first full sized novel in Robot cycle by Isaac Asimov, it's set on a polluted dystopian Earth, inside an overpopulated metropolis that is entirely underground (as surface is no longer livable). Thematically it also focuses on cybernetic technology (robots) and examines its place in a society at large (rather than focusing on personal stories like it's predecessor "I, Robot"). And of course, the trope of a human detective with a robot partner became pretty common in cyberpunk crime fiction in the future. Interesting that Asimov's Robot cycle was created as intentional denial/deconstruction of the vision of robots as shown in R.U.R.
• 1956 - Naked Sun, also by Asimov. While I've seen people discuss influence of Caves of Steel on cyberpunk, I've yet to see anybody discuss Naked Sun. The story describes a colony planet of Solaria, whose human inhabitants conduct social activities mostly by 'viewing' i.e. - videochat. The story predicts a number of interesting ideas that we would see as true, for example people seeing nudity on video chat as less scandalous than nudity in person. Anyone interested in sources of cyberpunk who has read Caves of Steel has no reason to not also read Naked Sun.
• 1956 - Stars My Destination. By Alfred Bester. By many it's considered to be the start of New Wave of science fiction, a new movement that focused on grand adventures of dashing heroes, and more on regular people living realistic, grounded lives. It also is one of origins of concepts like cybernetic augmentations, and giant megacorporations ruling society.
• 1962 - Clockwork Orange. Made famous by the 1970s movie by Stanley Kubrick, depiction of "ultraviolence" and youth delinquency, together with using brainwashing as a punishment for a crime would prove to be highly influential.
• 1964 - Simulacron 3 - One of the earliest depictions of a simulated reality, including the "simulated city" trope as seen in Matrix and Dark City. Later adapted into a German television serial "World on a Wire" in 1973.
• 1968 - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K Dick. The novel that would end up adapted as the movie Blade Runner, it formed de facto shape of cyberpunk as a genre. Also notable as it's almost a deconstruction of the Asimov's Robot cycle, just like it was deconstruction of R.U.R. When we include other Dick's works, like A Scanner Darkly (about drugs and technological surveillance state), Ubik (which focuses on grounded and demystified use of psychic powers for corporate espionage) and We Will Remember It For You Wholesale (about memory implants used for entertainment and espionage) and Minority Report (exploring idea of "precrime", which would end up being focus of some cyberpunk works like PsychoPass), his blueprint on the genre becomes extremely clear. Of the five mentioned works, four of them would be adapated into cyberpunk movies, some more than once.
• 1971 - THX 1138, by George Lucas. Now we enter the 70s, and looking at dystopian films of the 70s, it suddently makes more and more sense where did cyberpunk come from. THX 1138 is mostly responsible for setting up a lot of visual language for future cyberpunk works, and expands on idea of a completley controlled society (that we will see reused in films like Equilibrium).
• 1973 - Westworld, by Michael Crichton. A classic, the film uses idea of using cybernetic technology for simulated entertainment - though in this case it's literally android actors physically performing roles. The visual of a robot taking off their faceplate to show circuits below is easily one of the most iconic visual tropes in cyberpunk and all science fiction. The sequel, Futureworld, did not involve any original creatives, but it does have cyberpunk-like elements.
• 1973 - Soylent Green, by Richard Fleischer. The film depicts a future dystopian society, where overpopulation, global warming and pollution make it incredibly hard to feed the growing human population, with extreme class disparity - where the poor can only eat highly processed "Soylent" food product made by the Soylent Corporation. NYPD detective Robert Thorn investigates murder of a Soylent Corporation executive right after introduction of a new product, Soylent Green. This leads him down a rabbit hole of a conspiracy, leading to the reveal everyone already knows - "Soylent Green is people!". Now this movie is even more notable considering some deranged techbros decided to call their meal replacement sludge "Soylent", which I personally think as the starting point of modern faux futurism movement that someone has described with the Alex Blechman's tweet "Finally, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel "Please don't create the Torment Nexus".
• 1975 - Rollerball and Death Race 2000 - released the same year, both movies are commentary on the idea of "bloodsport", with idea of future sports becoming more and more violent for mass entertainment, which would become very common cyberpunk trope.
• 1975 - Shockwave Rider by Johmn Brunner- Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows this one because it's on Wikipedia. Moving along.
• 1977 - Judge Dredd comics, originally created by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra and Pat Mills. A satire of American "cowboy cop" movies like Dirty Harry and of police brutality, Dredd comics are not "pure" cyberpunk, but they did influence the genre a lot, and a lot of their storylines are very cyberpunk. One notable I can think of is "Art of Kenny Who?" which predicted the current problems caused by the boom in AI art (like corporations realizing it's cheaper to copy someone's artstyle instead of actually paying them).
• 1977 - Fragments of a Hologram Rose, by William Gibson. The beginning of Gibson exploring themes that would found the genre he is most famous for, like sense-recordings or the urban tech-noir setting.
• 1979 - Fireball - This one is interesting. Almost everyone mentions Akira among early progenitors of cyberpunk, and most know the anime film is based on a manga. But few people know that Akira manga had a prototype in latge 1970s. In fact, this original was even more 'cyberpunk' than the work we know - the primary antagonist was not Tetsuo, psychically awakened delinquent, but a rogue AI that ran Neo-Tokyo as a police state. In the finished manga the AI is replaced with the character of the Colonel, which I think is a shame - considering that ESP powers are a metaphor for human evolution, I think making the antagonist a computer could've played nicely into that. If you love Akira you should read Fireball, it's relatively short as it was never properly finished.
• 1981 - Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson. Here it all begins. For sure and for certain. Cybernetics, monomolecular blade, the first ever razorgirl with first appearance of Molly Millions, the entire Sprawl setting - this is the flashpoint of the entire genre as we know it now. Together with Burning Chrome, published year later, this is the foundational text of the genre. And a great point to end this timeline.

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German article: Libertarismus: Eine Stadt ohne Staat | ZEIT ONLINE

https://youtu.be/bY4qzce0MHc?si=H9rbr_EtOA6ilOvm

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/business/chechnya-kadyrov-musk-tesla-cybertruck-disabled/index.html

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/science_fiction_eye

Remote controlled counterinsurgency appearing on your nightly news.

https://youtu.be/mvXxC5z-FL8?si=08GHZ4nz0ENMtPhE

hiya! i wrote a thing that may be of interest to folks here, thanks for the permission to share it!

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Hit The Ground Running is the first novel in an intended series of near-future crime capers set in a cyberpunk version of the UK!

Built on the bones of a former northern England shipbuilding town, Unity City is an extraterritorial city-state fully owned and operated by worldwide megacorp Imperium International LLC. Renji Starkweather has everything he needs to succeed within Unity: confidence, a fast mouth, and most importantly, a famous aunt. But despite his coveted position within the city’s enforcers, restless Renji has never quite fit in with the company values, and when an impulsive stunt involving an airship and far too many bladed weapons sends him plummeting into Unity's buried depths, he begins to see the real human cost of those record profits.

Thrown into the path of a notorious gang of criminals named The Loose Ends, Renji is keen to help them even the score; and once an unfair gas bill threatens to leave the city's poorest freezing in their own homes, he finds himself with a chance to do just that. Teaming up with a gruff single dad on a mission, a laid-back hacker DJ, and her furious bruiser of a sister, Renji has a plan involving an audacious heist of tonight’s company Christmas fundraiser– but in order to pull it off, he’ll have to dodge his vicious former boss and avoid his terrifying aunt, all while gaining the trust of his new allies. 

What could possibly go wrong…?

it's a little goofier than many cyberpunk books, but i kept to the themes i love about the genre- anti-capitalism, wealth inequality, fighting the bastards in charge, all that good stuff. if you think of an episode of Leverage but a little gayer and with cybernetics, you're basically there.

it's currently funding on kickstarter right now, but it's also up for preorder at amazon or kobo, or for request at netgalley, if that is your thing.

that lush cover above was drawn by ben fleuter, whose webcomics are very much worth a read!

Need a setting for your cyberpunk story? Start with this documentary. The Tower of David (La Torre de David)) gets a mention.

The World's Biggest Abandoned Skyscrapers