cyberpunk
noun
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Cyberpunk and Literature
In science fiction circles, "cyberpunk" is a genre that often features countercultural antiheroes trapped in a dehumanizing high-tech future. Its roots extend back to the technical fiction of the 1940s and '50s, but it was years before it matured. The word cyberpunk was coined by writer Bruce Bethke, who wrote a story with that title in 1980. He created the term by combining "cybernetics," the science of replacing human functions with computerized ones, and "punk," the raucous music and nihilistic sensibility that became a youth culture in the 1970s and '80s. Not until the 1984 publication of William Gibson's novel, Neuromancer, however, did "cyberpunk" really take off as a term or a genre.
Examples of cyberpunk in a Sentence
Clare Mulroy, USA Today, 6 Nov. 2025
There’s sour-sweet gummy worms (cyberpunk from Ken Liu and K.M Fajardo).
—Literary Hub, 1 Oct. 2025
The Best Alien Audio Drama Alien 3 (2019) Before Alien 3 was ever turned into one of the most controversial films in the entire series, its producers asked cyberpunk author William Gibson to write a draft of the script.
—Daniel Dockery, Vulture, 22 Sep. 2025
Perhaps best known for his work on television, Lee starred as Dr. Alex Park in ABC’s medical drama The Good Doctor and was a lead in the Netflix cyberpunk thriller Altered Carbon.
—Denise Petski, Deadline, 10 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Cyberpunk.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyberpunk. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.
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