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Comment by electricslpnsld | Hacker News Reader

> Neuromancer, William Gibson’s first novel, was published in 1984. It helped to establish the cyberpunk genre of science fiction

Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer -- Brunner's Shockwave Rider form 1974 comes to mind (and is a pretty interesting and strangely timely read, given that it is almost 50 years old).

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I agree that there were a number of earlier novels and stories that were cyberpunk in their sensibilities: John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and "Stand on Zanzibar", Vinge's "True Names", Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" are some of the most obvious. I think Neuromancer helped establish cyberpunk because of it's popularity and it's vivid conceptualization of "cyberspace" as a separate parallel realm, similar to the Celtic Otherworlds, that is visited in more of a lucid dream state--to pass the final barrier Case has to flatline and cross over into what is essentially a land of the dead.

I think Shockwave Rider captured the sense of accelerating change and what Toffler called "future shock" (modeled on "culture shock" it's the discomfort from finding yourself embedded in the foreign culture of the future). Vinge anticipated privacy issues (and may other important considerations in his other works like "Rainbows End") and Dick is exploring the nature of what it means to be human.

Gibson's Neuromancer shows a world where extensive body modifications are commonplace, but it does not seem to affect anyone's self-image or concerns about identity. So at some level "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is more philosophically and psychologically profound.

Other early works that I associate with cyberpunk are:

Vernor Vinge, True Names

Thomas P Ryan, The Adolescence of P1

Algis Budrys, Michaelmas

Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

David Gerrold, When Harlie Was One

Obviously, SF involving computers is pretty extensive, and there is a fuzzy line between "cyberpunk" and "this story involves computers at some level." My criteria are: Are computers major characters in the story, and secondarily, are they helping other characters break lots of rules? :-)

Shockwave Rider is interesting because of how early it was and how unique at the time. That doesn't establish a subgenre though.

Cyberpunk wasn't coined as a term until right around the same time as Neuromancer came out and Neuromancer swept the big sci-fi awards, making it a fair thing to say that it 'helped to establish'.

Brunner is amazing - far ahead of his time.

"Stand on Zanzibar" is one of my favorite books of all times. That said, I think the Shockwave Rider actually holds up less well than Neuromancer, because it was more tuned into the reality of software of its day.

Still a great read though.

Now I need to go and reread the Stand on Zanzibar.

- bookworm/assassin

One of the most significant pre-Gibson cyberpunk titles was True Names by Vernor Vinge -- a computer scientist who understood the nature of technology as it existed at the time of writing.

>Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer (...)

Interestingly, the movie Blade Runner hit theaters before William Gibson had finished writing Neuromancer. When he saw the movie, he was afraid people would think that he ripped off the movie's aesthetic. [0,1] Most people would probably assume the movie was influenced by the book, but the movie almost killed the book.

[0]https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-did-william-gibson-really-feel-a...

[1]http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2003_01_01_archive.as...

>Cyberpunk dates at least a decade before Neuromancer

No, it doesn't. Proto-cyberpunk ideas existed, certainly (and more than 10 years before Neuromancer; you can trace the roots back to 60s New Wave SF), but the word itself only predates the book by a year. Neuromancer was very much a crystallization of ideas that had been floating around the zeitgeist.

Or 3 years, depending on how you consider it. The word was coined by Bruce Bethke for his short story Cyberpunk, which was written in 1980 but not published until 1983. Gibson began writing Neuromancer in 1981, though it wasn't published until 1984.

Don't forget Alfred Bester. The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are interesting precursors to Gibson.

He also wrote a fantastic, underrated novel that is definitely his most cyberpunk: The Computer Connection (1975), also published as Extro. It's great fun, and at times paints a future even more callous about human life than Gibson ever described (the main character is arguably a serial murderer, even if he has good intentions). The book was poorly reviewed at the time, and I wouldn't mind admitting that it's "flawed", but it's still one of my favourites.

I keep thinking I read Gibson said something along the lines of "Delany's Nova was his attempt to reach the heights of The Stars My Destination, and Neuromancer was my attempt to reach Nova."

But I haven't been able to find it again. Maybe I imagined it.

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