Word of the Day

: February 2, 2009

cyberpunk

noun SY-ber-punk

What It Means

1 : science fiction dealing with future urban societies dominated by computer technology

2 : an opportunistic computer hacker

cyberpunk in Context

Cyberpunk -- with its androids and cyborgs and human-electronic networks -- almost turns reading into a computer game.

Did You Know?

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.