Cyberpunk is near-future science fiction built on the collision of ubiquitous advanced technology with social decay — the field's own shorthand is high tech, low life. Power belongs to corporations rather than states, the technology is consumer-grade and grubby rather than gleaming, and the protagonists are criminals, contractors and outsiders who use the system's tools against it without ever escaping it. Emerging in the 1980s as a deliberate reaction against clean technocratic futures, its assumptions have aged into something close to reportage, which is the central challenge of writing it now.
Also written as cyber punk.
Technology is worn, not marvelled at
The genre's tonal signature is that nobody finds the technology impressive. It is second-hand, badly maintained, subscription-locked and full of advertising. Writers who present implants and networks as wonders are writing a different genre; the cyberpunk move is to show someone irritated by a device that is also keeping them alive.
Corporate power, not government power
The structural inversion that defines the mode is that the entity able to kill you, employ you and adjudicate your disputes is a company. This changes the shape of every plot: there is no appeal to a higher authority, contracts replace laws, and the protagonist's leverage is information rather than rights. A near-future thriller where the state remains the ultimate power is not cyberpunk, whatever its aesthetics.
The dating problem
Much of the original movement's speculation has arrived, so writing the mode today requires deciding what it is now extrapolating from. Contemporary work tends to move the frontier — biology, climate, algorithmic management, platform labour — rather than restage consoles and mirrorshades. Reproducing the 1984 furniture produces pastiche, which is a legitimate aesthetic choice but should be a deliberate one.
Where to see it working
Neuromancer — William Gibson
The founding text: contract criminals, corporate sovereignty, and technology that is used rather than admired.
Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
Corporate franchise-states pushed to satire, with the protagonist's leverage entirely informational.
The Windup Girl — Paolo Bacigalupi
Moves the frontier to biotechnology and calories, showing what the mode looks like when it stops restaging consoles.
How it goes wrong
Presenting the technology as wondrous rather than worn and irritating.
Leaving the state as the ultimate power, which is the inversion the mode is built on.
Restaging 1980s furniture without deciding what the book is extrapolating from now.
Letting the protagonist escape the system, when the mode's premise is that there is no outside.
Related terms
Dystopian Fiction
Fiction set in a society organised around a principle the book treats as monstrous, and which works well enough to persist.
Hard Science Fiction
Science fiction that holds itself to known physical law, deriving its plots from real constraints rather than invented capability.
Noir
Crime fiction defined by moral compromise and a protagonist whose own weakness delivers them to a bad end.
Space Opera
Science fiction at interstellar scale, driven by character, adventure and politics rather than technical plausibility.
Not sure which shelf your own manuscript belongs on? Run it through the book genre and comp title finder — free, no sign-up.