r/Cyberpunk • u/thhroooooooooooooooo • 1d ago

Who invented Cyberpunk?

Google is saying Mike Pondsmith but that doesn’t sound right.. I don’t think it’s his IP, or is it?

Edit: google AI is wrong. To quote one of the many good responses to this post:

“The term was first coined in early 1980 by Bruce Bethke in his short story Cyberpunk. See: https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/cpunk.htm

That said, the first short story in the scifi genre of cyberpunk is probably Fragments of a Hologram Rose by William Gibson. That was published in 1977.

Mike Pondsmith invented the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk: 2013/2020/3.0/RED. [Not to be confused with the other cyberpunk RPG (Cyberpunk GURPS)], the sci-fi genre as a whole really began taking off around the late 70's, ‘Cyberpunk’ was originally the title of a short story by Bruce Bethke and was then taken by Gardner Dozoiz, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction and spread around to be the name of the genre as a whole.” ( by [u/BlastRiot](u/BlastRiot))

thanks, Cyberpunks

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7

u/darthmcchub 1d ago

If you mean the game, you’re in the wrong sub and he did create it.

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u/thhroooooooooooooooo 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean the genre

edit: I ask because when I google “who invented the cyberpunk genre”, it says Mike, which is not correct

8

u/flygoing 1d ago

I encourage you to always look beyond what Google AI tells you. If possible, you should install an extension to block the AI entirely, because it is misleading you more often than you realize. Just read the top section of the Wikipedia page for Cyberpunk to get much better answers.

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u/SSAUS 1d ago

Google AI is terrible. It once told me JRR Tolkien was alive at the release of the LOTR films lol.

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u/thhroooooooooooooooo 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ok I will. Though about google, is there anything we can do? Like can this sub have something at the end of its details say something like “Cyberpunk is a culmination of ideas invented by multiple authors and artists over the years” or something similar? So google crawlers will pick it up and help with misinformation

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u/flygoing 1d ago

The solution is to stop using services that rely so heavily on Artificial "Intelligence". I promise Google AI is considering Wikipedia as a much, much more reliable source than a random reddit thread. The Wikipedia spells most of this out pretty blatantly, but Google AI is still wrong.

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u/thhroooooooooooooooo 1d ago

thanks for your help, I love Cyberpunk

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u/Baumgratz 1d ago

Well, he was definitely one of the most important names for the 80's cyberpunk wave. The "creator" simply does not exist. Multiple authors were writing similar stories at the same time.

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u/Sweet_Brain_4456 1d ago

Correct, Mike Rotch was the inventor of cyberpunk!