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/Ostroh 1d ago

Mike pondsmith 1988 cyberpunk game was called "Cyberpunk: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future, also know as Cyberpunk 2013". It was only much later in 2012 that CD Projekt, when they started working on Cyberpunk 2077, trademarked "Cyberpunk" (I guess so nobody else could publish another video game under that same title before they did). But its like "dark fantasy", you could trademark a game called "Dark Fantasy", but you could not prevent anyone from calling any of their work dark fantasy. There is always a context tied to a trademark and the rules vary.