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List of cyberpunk works

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File:Gibson sprawl.jpg
William Gibson's "Sprawl Trilogy" of novels

The following is a list of works commonly ascribed to the cyberpunk genre of science fiction. While some of these works have become accepted as archetypal examples of cyberpunk—Neuromancer and Blade Runner spring to mind—the classification of others can be debated. Science-fiction fandom is known for its contentious nature, just as SF writers are often celebrated for inventiveness. Consequently, all categorizations are likely to be incomplete, contested or provisional.

Several observers, including the SF writer David Brin, have commented that cyberpunk was not as original as the genre's boosters once claimed. Works like Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis (1927) contain elements which a 21st-century viewer might call "cyberpunk", even though they predate the cyberpunk canon by many years. These works could be labeled cyberpunk's "precursors", though the causal connection is not always clear.

Furthermore, it should be noted that works published after 1993 are increasingly likely to be labeled "postcyberpunk", a term first applied to Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Notable precursors to the genre

List of novels

List of short story anthologies

List of poetry

List of graphic novels / comics

List of non-fiction / critical studies

Audiovisual media

Notable film precursors

List of cyberpunk films

Note: most of the films listed are cyberpunk-related either through narrative or by thematic context.

List of films borrowing some cyberpunk elements

It is interesting to note that the more recent Star Trek movies, particularly Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), draw upon cyberpunk themes: malevolent cyborgs in the first case and malevolent clones in the second. Oddly, the Borg — arguably the most widely recognized cybernetic organisms in popular culture — originated as space opera villains in a distant-future story, not as characters from a dystopian near-future Earth. This may serve as a testament to the difficulty of categorizing science fiction.

List of TV series

Note that TV series, by their very nature, can incorporate stories from a variety of different genres. For example, the original Star Trek included episodes of military science fiction ("Balance of Terror"), comedy ("The Trouble with Tribbles") and character-driven SF drama ("Is There in Truth No Beauty?"). It is therefore debateable whether an entire series can be classified as "cyberpunk" (or as any other SF sub-genre) based on a subset of its episodes. Furthermore, according to Lawrence Person's postcyberpunk thesis, writers since the mid-1990s have been incorporating cyberpunk tropes into their SF simply because those tropes are familiar — the same way a writer who grew up reading Asimov's Foundation series would write space opera stories full of hyperspatial Jumps. This behavior leads, presumably, to works which include cyberpunk themes in less dystopian contexts, with a wider variety of characters (not just razorgirls and burnt-out, drug-addicted hackers), and embracing other SF settings. Joss Whedon's Firefly series might be a good example: while its overall form is a "space western", individual episodes deal with human beings used as black-market organ carriers and with malevolent megacorps.

List of bands

See also the article on cyberpunk music.
  • Apoptygma Bezerk
  • Atari Teenage Riot: "Digital hardcore" music fusing punk, electronic and noise elements with strong political overtones.
  • Chemlab: Electro/Rock/Coldwave/Industrial with cyberpunk lyrical content.
  • Contra: Industrial power noise electronica, with heavy references to hacker culture and political uprisings.
  • Ed Rush & Optical: Synthetic sounds, heavy with drum and bass.
  • Fear Factory: Industrial-tinged heavy metal (originally death metal) utilising samples from cyberpunk films; lyrical content often hints at dark future for mankind, with several references to the Terminator movies.
  • Front 242: Belgian industrial band heavily influenced by science fiction and synthetic sounds.
  • Future Sound of London: Produced and created albums ISDN and Dead Cities, both composed with varying degrees of cyberpunk themes and influences.
  • Gary Numan: New Wave artist who borrows themes from cyberpunk, making music which is predominantly cyber-related.
  • God Lives Underwater: Heavily computer synthesized rock, featured on the soundtrack to Johnny Mnemonic.
  • Gridlock: Plays "noize" music.
  • Haujobb: EBM/Industrial with cyberpunk themes and lyrical content. This German band's name is derived from the term "skinjob", Blade Runner''s slang for android.
  • Kraftwerk: One of the first bands to embrace synthesizers. Their live act includes four robotic alter egos of the band members.
  • KMFDM: Play guitar industrial and were featured on the soundtrack to Johnny Mnemonic.
  • Machinae Supremacy: A Swedish Metal/Bitpop band with cyberpunk lyrical content.
  • Nine Inch Nails: Popular Industrial-Rock with lyrical inspiration from cyberpunk, world dissolution and misanthropy.
  • Noisia: Neurofunk, synthetic jungle music.
  • Red Harvest: A Norwegian industrial/prog-metal band incorporating cyberpunk imagery and lyrical content.
  • Skinny Puppy: A Canadian band that pioneered cyberpunk (experimental electronica).
  • UV: Plays new-styled EBM music with songs discussing technology. They were featured in the DVD box set of The Matrix.
  • Velvet Acid Christ: Plays in the style of aggro-industrial.
  • Vennaskond: Estonian cyberpunk, particularly their albums Warszawianka and Võluri Tagasitulek.
  • VNV Nation: Plays futurepop.
  • Zeromancer: Their first two albums, Clone Your Lover and Eurotrash, evoke a distinctly cyberpunk atmosphere, as do the videos produced during this period. The music itself can be described as a fusion of industrial metal and synthie pop.

List of computer and video games

The following links were last verified 10 October 2005.

Game websites

Band websites

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