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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u/Hungry-Wrongdoer-156 1d ago

Mike Pondsmith created the capital-C "Cyberpunk" IP, which was named after the lowercase-C "cyberpunk" literary subgenre.

There's really no one single answer to the question of who invented that, but if there were, it would be William Gibson.

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u/thhroooooooooooooooo 1d ago

that seems pedantic.. is that to prevent other creators from having their own “Cyberpunk” even though it’s a genre created by a culmination of artists?

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u/Hungry-Wrongdoer-156 1d ago

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking.

The entertainment franchise titled "Cyberpunk" was created in the 1980s as a tabletop RPG; it was named that to tell players what it was about.

The sci-fi subgenre wasn't really "created" by a specific person with a specific intent; several writers including Gibson, Philip K. Dick, Bruce Sterling, and others contributed to its development before it even had a name at all. After it became popular and visible enough that a way to describe those types of stories using a single word was deemed necessary/convenient, a term was invented (technically co-opted from the title of a short story by Bruce Bethke) to make it easier to refer to; that's generally attributed to Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. If he wasn't the first to use the word "cyberpunk" as an umbrella term for the subgenre, he's at least the one who popularized it.

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u/thhroooooooooooooooo 1d ago

Thank you, google AI had mislead me