this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
670 points (99.4% liked)
Cyberpunk
1478 readers
27 users here now
What is Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk is a science-fiction sub-genre dealing with the integration of society and technology in dystopian settings. Often referred to as “low-life and high tech,” Cyberpunk stories deal with outsiders (punks) who fight against the oppressors in society (usually mega corporations that control everything) via technological means (cyber). If the punks aren’t actively fighting against a megacorp, they’re still dealing with living in a world completely dependent on high technology.
Cyberpunk characteristics include:
- Dystopian city setting where mega-corporations rule
- Full integration of technology into society, featuring cybernetic implants
- Outsider protagonists (punks) who often are very familiar with the technology around them
- Hard boiled detective and film noir vibes and influence
- Themes dabbling in trans-humanism, existentialism, and what it means to be human.
Prefixes for posts
- [AI Art]
- [Art]
- [Book]
- [Game]
- [Meme]
- [Movie]
- [Video]
This is a community focused on cyberpunk as a genre of fiction. Please post any news articles about our real world slipping into a dystopian nightmare at: !aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
Icon created by @cloudless@feddit.uk | Banner generated via AI model
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The original Tron was pretty groundbreaking as a movie released in 1982, at least from the visual perspective.
It spawned a bunch of derivative works - the animated show Reboot, the Matrix franchise, games like the CCG "Netrunner", books like Neuromancer and Ready Player One.
Nevermind all the technical hurdles they had to accomplish in order to generate these effects. No way you get to Toy Story or the Marvel franchises without the entry-level effort of Information International, Inc. or Mathematical Applications Group.
Surface level, sure. It was your standard "Computers Ate My Dad" silly Disney story. But it mainlined a certain flavor of SciFi/Fantasy and popularized animation techniques that have matured substantially since then.
Unless the 3rd book I have yet to read is about being inside a computer system, Neuromancer is so far from being derivative of Tron, I don't know how it ended up on your list. 🤨
Wintermute and Neuromancer, as superintelligent computers orchestrating an evil business empire, strike me as direct parallels to the CPU in Tron.
And the Cowboys, jacking in to outwit these AIs from within their own digital landscape, echo the Tron heroes combating evil computer minions in gladiatorial games.
You have it the wrong way around if anything.
If you read Burning Chrome, you can see all the Gibsonian cyberspace elements where already there in something that was FINISHED IN 1981.
The first outline of Neuromancer, titled "Jacked In" is from the same year.
Gibson had no idea about what he was talking about and that's why his work is not derivative in any way of other sci-fi work on the subject.
Lisberger, Tron's creator, was shopping around the idea for the movie as early as '78.
But sure, these ideas weren't strictly concurrent. They both came out of real life computer and Internet development inspiring the themes within the media.
Point being, Tron popularized an idea that catapulted similar media.