cyberpunk

Noun

cyberpunk (countable and uncountable, plural cyberpunks)

1. (uncountable) A subgenre of science fiction which focuses on computer or information technology and virtual reality juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
   • But by 1987, cyberpunk had become a cliche. Other writers had turned the form into formula: implant wetware (biological computer chips), government by multinational corporations, street-wise, leather-jacketed, amphetamine-loving protagonists and decayed orbital colonies.1991 January 7, Lewis Shiner, “Confessions of an Ex-Cyberpunk”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   • Cyberpunk stories are set in a futuristic, dystopic environment—the opposite of utopian—in which computer technology plays an important role. […] The protagonists of cyberpunk stories are technologically proficient, lonely adventurers struggling with issues of identity and forced to use computer...2015, Abby H. P. Werlock, Encyclopedia of the American Short Story, Infobase Learning, →ISBN
2. (countable) A cyberpunk character, a hacker punk, a high-tech low life.
   • The film The Matrix redefined what a cyberpunk looked like.
3. (countable) A writer of cyberpunk fiction.
   • […] cyberpunks like William Gibson, Lucious Sheperd^([sic]), Bruce Sterling […]1989 January, SPIN, volume 4, number 10, page 50
4. (uncountable) A musical genre related to the punk movement that makes use of electronic sounds such as synthesizers.
   • A more technologically elaborate current of microtonal music can be found at M.I.T and Berklee College of Music, where R. Boulanger works in exotic equal temperaments and non-octave scales (E₆₀ and the 13th root of 3, i.e. the Bohlen-Pierce scale) using the CSOUND acoustic compiler, the Mathews...2003, Jan Haluska, The Mathematical Theory of Tone Systems, →ISBN, page 109
   • At Meredith we stayed up all night listening to doof doof cyberpunk music and I saw you cry for the first time, at four in the morning bottle of ice tea and vodka in hand I saw your real face and something changed.2014, Gemma White, Furniture is Disappearing, →ISBN, page 41