What is Cyberpunk?

Cyberpunk!

You’ve probably heard of it and assume it has something to do with science fiction. But what does it mean, exactly?

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that’s older and harder to define than you might think. In fact, we devoted this entire blog post to it!

So let’s dive in and understand what it is– and what it is not.

1. The History of Cyberpunk
2. Notable Early Works and the Origins of Cyberpunk
   1. Books
   2. Comics and Graphic Novels
   3. Video Games
   4. Movies and Animation
3. What is Cyberpunk?
4. Going Deeper: Defining Cyberpunk
   1. The Visual Aesthetic
   2. Themes and Philosophy
   3. Science Fiction and Where Art (and Cyberpunk) Imitates Life
   4. Are We Already Living in a Cyberpunk Dystopia?
5. Themes Explored by Cyberpunk and Their Real-Life Counterparts
   1. Clandestine Hacking and Cyberwarfare
   2. Transhumanism, Cyborgs and body modification
   3. Androids, AI, and the Turing Test
   4. Late Capitalism and Inequality

The History of Cyberpunk

It may surprise you to learn that Cyberpunk traces its roots all the way back to the 1960s and 70s, when the term cyberpunk was first coined– although the origins are somewhat murky.

While a lot of science fiction is utopian and depicts future worlds where technology solves all our problems, early cyberpunk literature emerged from a more cynical and grounded perspective– where humans live under a constant onslaught of ever-increasing technology, and still dealing with a lot of the same societal problems and issues we are today, like crime, drugs, poverty, and so on. Writers like Harlan Elison and J.G. Ballard were early pioneers of this burgeoning genre. 

Cyberpunk media includes novels, comics, animation, movies and even its own subcultural movement and fashion.   

Notable Early Works and the Origins of Cyberpunk

The first cyberpunk authors were born out of the new wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 70s, where stories blended old-fashioned film noir detective stories with futuristic dystopian science fiction. 

1. Books

Noted cyberpunk works include William Gibson’s Neuromancer, arguably the first recognized cyberpunk novel in 1984, and he’s credited with “inventing” the genre as we know it today, although he didn’t do it alone.

Artwork adaptation of Necromancer (1984)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in 1992 was one of the most influential novels that cemented the subgenre among science fiction fans, bringing it more into the mainstream.

Original cover art of Snow Crash (1992)

2. Comics and Graphic Novels

As they do in a lot of other areas, Japan led the way in adopting cyberpunk into the animation industry with Akira and Ghost in the Shell.

A poster of Akira (1988)

And really, Japanese cyberpunk deserves its own blog entry, because there’s simply too much of it to go into here.

Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell in particular dealt with topics of transhumanism and human identity as told through an unapologetically hard-boiled sci-fi detective story– something that would become a common trope in the genre.

The franchise led to an anime film adaptation as well as a Hollywood movie later on.

Meanwhile, Judge Dredd in 2000 A.D. comics was a pioneering early example of the genre with Western audiences. 

3. Video Games

You don’t get a much more decidedly archetypical work than the eponymously-titled video game Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red in 2020.

But video games saw cyberpunk titles rise up as early as the 1980s with Metal Gear and Deus Ex with themes and visuals typical of the genre. 

4. Movies and Animation

1982’s Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford was arguably the film that brought the cyberpunk movie to the mainstream masses of Hollywood audiences.

Original poster of Blade Runner (1982)

But it was not the first. Earlier examples include Westworld in 1973 (yes, that Westworld, now a series), Tron (1982), and Escape From New York (1981). Johnny Mnemonic was another standout film in the burgeoning genre.

Original poster of another Cyperpunk-esque sci-fi film, Tron (1982)

But critics would argue that Metropolis, released all the way back in 1927, counts as one of the first cyberpunk movies to grace theater screens.

And while it was a commercial flop, the big-screen Hollywood adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s manga (Japanese graphic novel) and anime (Japanese animation) Ghost in the Shell was praised for getting that authentic Japanese cyberpunk look and feel just right. And no doubt it was visually stunning.

Heard of the Terminator franchise? Robocop and sequels? The Matrix franchise? These are pivotal moments in the evolution of cyberpunk, featuring strong elements and themes typical of the genre. 

But when it comes to defining this subgenre, the borders get blurry. Some works feature the hallmark themes of human identity, transhumanism, and surviving hyper-capitalistic dystopian worlds.

Others embrace the signature visual style common with seminal hard-boiled cyberpunk anime and comics. It gets muddy when trying to decide if a work can be classed as cyberpunk or not.

Which brings us neatly to:

What is Cyberpunk?

To start with, let’s consider this handy chart that compares various science fiction franchises and breaks down what is and isn’t cyberpunk:

Going Deeper: Defining Cyberpunk

Broadly, Cyberpunk is defined by two key characteristics: the visual aesthetic and its philosophical themes. Let’s break it down:

1. The Visual Aesthetic

The distinctive “look” of cyberpunk is probably the most recognizable aspect of the genre.

The aesthetic of cyberpunk is slick, dark, rainy cities with saturated neon in beautiful but unnatural colors; humanoid androids rubbing shoulders with real humans often augmented with cybernetic implants and tech to the point you can’t tell them apart; and often a decidedly retro synthpop-esque soundtrack. Throw these together, and everyone instantly thinks of cyberpunk.

The origins of this look came from blending dystopian sci-fi with an old-school film noir feel, reminiscent of black-and-white hard-boiled detective stories. And indeed, many major works in the genre follow this recipe in their storylines (Blade Runner, The Long Tomorrow).

And while the look is certainly an aspect of the genre, it’s not its only defining trait. 

2. Themes and Philosophy

Going deeper, this subgenre examines several key ideas/themes:

• “Low life, high tech”: This perspective on the future deals with rampant, ubiquitous technological and scientific achievements– but unlike the polished utopian worlds you’d find on Star Trek, all this technology serves as metaphors for existing human societal problems, like poverty, societal decay, crime, drug addiction, political corruption, and so on. Put another way, the tech is everywhere but it has solved zero problems while creating many more.
• Human identity and transhumanism: The most common theme explored by most archetypical Cyberpunk fiction is, what does it even mean to be human in a world where robots and humans are indistinguishable from each other? In a world where androids are startlingly human-like, and humans are heavily augmented with cybernetic implants and enhancements, where does the human end and the robot begin? Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner both grapple with this question.
• Consumerism and libertarian capitalism: An underlying topic often overlooked by casual viewers/readers of Cyberpunk is that beneath the somewhat-glitzy neon-soaked surface of Cyberpunk worlds, is an underbelly of rampant free-market capitalism taken to its inevitable extremes. Industrial espionage, clandestine corporate hacking, and massive amoral corporations toying with human lives, and the protagonist is often simply trying to survive it all. These enormous megacorporations are typically more powerful than cops and entire governments, in a telling critique of unfettered capitalism creating monsters that are too huge to slay. 

To take a step back for a moment, it’s also important to remember that science fiction itself isn’t merely about trying to imagine a future.

Rather, it’s using technology and science as metaphors for themes and societal problems that we face today, and making us ask questions about where we are as a species and where we’re headed. 

Utopian science fiction- like Star Trek, for example– lets us imagine a future where we will have solved problems we may consider to be unsolvable today, and makes us contemplate what it would take for us to get there.

Dystopian science fiction, on the other hand, uses speculative technology as a metaphor for those same unsolved problems of today, but also warns us about how much worse things can get if we do nothing to stop it now. 

And these aren’t purely philosophical, abstract concepts. Many of these ideas are based on real things happening all around us right now. 

For example:

3. Science Fiction and Where Art (and Cyberpunk) Imitates Life

So you might be wondering: what’s the point of cyberpunk, and science fiction in general?

How does it relate to our daily lives? And how realistic is this genre, anyway? Is this all just dark fantasy and cool worlds imagined for pure entertainment and nothing more?

Or are there deeper meanings, that these imagined worlds serve as a prophetic warning of where we’re headed?

4. Are We Already Living in a Cyberpunk Dystopia?

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is through this meme:

Not convinced? Let’s give you some solid proof with this real world example here:

This is a real billboard ad that appeared across San Francisco in 2024, and sparked quite the controversy (source). Here’s another version of the same billboard ad to drive our point home.

With the advent of AI and ubiquitous internet connectivity in our daily lives, it can be argued that we’re currently living in an early cyberpunk dystopia in the making.

While the interpretation of any art is highly subjective by definition, here’s a collection of real news stories and happenings that give us hints that we may already be living in a primordial cyberpunk dystopia of our own making without realizing it.

Themes Explored by Cyberpunk and Their Real-Life Counterparts

1. Clandestine Hacking and Cyberwarfare

Hacking in general is pretty cyberpunk. But in the imagined future worlds of this genre, this is taken to full-blown digital warfare between mega corporations and governments alike. 

And it wasn’t long before fantasy became reality. Every military has a cyberwarfare division, and there have been examples of not just criminal hacking (ransomware, for example) but entirely military operations such as the Stuxnet virus— a highly sophisticated worm designed specifically to cripple the Iranian nuclear program, developed all the way back in 2005. For perspective, that was the year YouTube was first launched.

2. Transhumanism, Cyborgs and body modification

The idea of transhumanism is that as tech advances, humans will be able to modify their own bodies as they see fit, in much the way a computer geek would set up their computer.

And while modifying one’s body heavily seems bizarre and even controversial, critics and philosophers would argue we already do so, citing examples such as tattoos and piercings, and especially plastic surgery.

And note that it’s not limited to mere aesthetics, because there’s also prosthetics and even semi-robotic limbs for amputees, braces for crooked teeth, eyeglasses for poor vision, heart pacemakers, hearing aids, nanotechnology for surgery, and so on— things that improve and prolong life by modifying the body with temporary or permanent implants, including devices that are highly sophisticated and electronic. We’re also on the cusp of brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink.

So it can be easily argued that it’s not a question of if, but of how far we’ll continue to take it in the future.

3. Androids, AI, and the Turing Test

Another common theme in cyberpunk is computers and robots gaining sentience and becoming indistinguishable from real humans.

While this seems far-off since we don’t yet have physically humanoid robots walking around, we’re already seeing a blurring of the lines between real people and AI bots online.

Alan Turing, regarded as the father of the modern computer, famously invented “The Turing Test,” a test that only a human being could pass but even the most sophisticated robot could not.

And indeed, we’ve all seen Captchas on websites trying to cut down on bot traffic and checking to see if you’re really a human user or not. So on some levels, we may already be there.

Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner are both stalwarts of the genre and explore these themes in depth.

Rogue androids struggle to be human and fight for freedom while being hunted for it (Blade Runner); and similarly, Ghost in the Shell’s protagonist is not much more than a brain in a highly sophisticated cybernetic body, blurring the lines between “human with cybernetic enhancements” and “actual robot,” while she hunts down a hacker who implants androids with the memories of entire human lifetimes and makes them believe they are, in fact, human and not machine.   

4. Late Capitalism and Inequality 

With corporations legally having human rights, a growing global divide between the rich and the poor, a growing homelessness crisis even in first world nations, lack of affordable healthcare, and clandestine hacking in the news of individuals, corporations and governments alike, it’s not hard to spot some of the deeper themes running through most works of cyberpunk fiction.

If anything, these themes have been proven right in recent years, going from “imagined future dystopia” decades ago to uncomfortably close to real life today.

For example, Elysium, a 2013 film starring Matt Damon, was about a poverty-stricken world where a glamorous space station orbited in the skies above, housing the world’s richest few, with access to the best high-tech healthcare.

The protagonist undergoes body modification and works with a team of shady techno-punks to get him on the station so he could be treated for fatal radiation exposure on the job.

Notably, this film was the second by director Neill Blomkamp after the critically-acclaimed District 9, which featured similar themes telling a story of extraterrestrial refugees trapped on Earth and treated brutally.

In Conclusion

So to sum up:

• Not all science fiction is cyberpunk, but all cyberpunk is science fiction.
• Art imitates life and serves as important social commentary and criticism— even otherworldly styles like fantasy and science fiction.

Art in general is more than entertainment or escapism. It’s a way for us as humans to reflect on the nature and meaning of life, and make us think, through stories and metaphors and imaginary worlds- even fantastical worlds.

It serves to let us reflect on the human condition and imagine what’s possible, both good (utopian) and bad (dystopian).

Cyberpunk is really all about our relationship with technology, questioning what it is to be human, and serves warning about where scientific and technological advancement may lead us.

And with the state of the world today, it’s both current and worryingly prescient at once.