cyberpunks

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
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