> If cyberpunk can be defined as an imagining of late capitalism, you don’t have to be a leftist to imagine it, but it sure does fucking help your analysis.
Article is long, but thorough, but it misses one key preceding influence -- the feminist and new wave sci-fi authors of the 60s and 70s. In particular, it's not difficult to see the roots of Cyberpunk in the works of Le Guin, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr, J. G. Ballard, etc. all contributing to create fertile soil for Cyberpunk as a genre.
The works of those authors imagined sexual liberation, drug use, environmentalism, new sexualities, and the influence of technology on daily life. While none of them wrote things that were themselves cyberpunk, they had an essential role in driving genre to where it could begin. (And indeed, one of the most prominent figures in the genre, Bruce Sterling, once credited J.G. Ballard.)
I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth, but of course he didn't! None of us write anything without standing on the shoulders of those who came before, building on the works and ideas of those that came before. It doesn't diminish Gibson's accomplishments to talk about what he might be drawing from, at least for me, it adds a richness and a thing to go and explore and try to understand what the natures of the world was during the time those books were being written.
> I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth, but of course he didn't! None of us write anything without standing on the shoulders of those who came before, building on the works and ideas of those that came before.
Not defending him or speaking for him, but based on his Paris Review interview, I think Gibson would be the last person to claim he invented the genre; he was trying to do something inside of science fiction, and instead science fiction "othered" the thing he was doing by calling it a sub-genre and continuing going on doing the science fiction writing they were already doing.
The article claims that cyberpunk and "Neuromanticism" are distinct, with the "Neuromantics" coming out and doing the same thing as Neuromancer, without the cyberpunk ethos being there underneath.
I agree -- Gibson is never the one saying he's invented the genre. He's been consistent about this for decades (and even finds the genre itself to be kinda nonsense.) It's mostly fans who push for the Sprawl Trilogy to be this bolt from a clear sky.
> I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth, but of course he didn't!
He probably came as close as an author could to inventing the genre whole cloth. No one's claiming that Gibson had zero influence from previous SciFi. But the authors you mention didn't write anything that could be perceived as being cyberpunk without generalizing things to the point where they're meaningless ("Russ wrote about cyborgs, and Gibson did too!" - yes, they were an ongoing staple in SciFi for years).
The vast majority of what people think of when they think of cyberpunk comes from Gibson, as far as I can tell. I've tried in vain to find anything close to it pre-Gibson (again, without generalizing things to the point where we're not really talking about cyberpunk anymore). I'd say he's more responsible for cyberpunk as a genre than Tolkein is for generic fantasy.
> Article is long, but thorough, but it misses one key preceding influence
That's because the article is simply not really exploring distinct genres that had an influence on cyberpunk, but searching its ethos. It's not really like this is an exceptional omission in the article.
> I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth
That's not exactly the point of the article, of which about half is devoted to criticizing Gibson.
As always John Brunner gets forgotten, although "The Shockwave Rider" is a very direct and obvious influence on Gibson. As are his other dystopian books.
Wasn’t it heavily influenced by a vision of dystopia, mixed with Luddism and cybernetics? I’m not an enthusiast of this gender of fiction but that’s the impression I get.
It basically adds humanity to a future (where for some the ideal was homo sovieticus).
I don't think I made the claim it was solely influenced by new wave and feminist authors from the seventies. I suspect the workers rights movement (luddism), cybernetics, and different views of dystopia (including those penned by folks like Le Guin) contributed to shaping it.
Article is long, but thorough, but it misses one key preceding influence -- the feminist and new wave sci-fi authors of the 60s and 70s. In particular, it's not difficult to see the roots of Cyberpunk in the works of Le Guin, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr, J. G. Ballard, etc. all contributing to create fertile soil for Cyberpunk as a genre.
The works of those authors imagined sexual liberation, drug use, environmentalism, new sexualities, and the influence of technology on daily life. While none of them wrote things that were themselves cyberpunk, they had an essential role in driving genre to where it could begin. (And indeed, one of the most prominent figures in the genre, Bruce Sterling, once credited J.G. Ballard.)
I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth, but of course he didn't! None of us write anything without standing on the shoulders of those who came before, building on the works and ideas of those that came before. It doesn't diminish Gibson's accomplishments to talk about what he might be drawing from, at least for me, it adds a richness and a thing to go and explore and try to understand what the natures of the world was during the time those books were being written.