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ProbablySPTucker t1_ixtf5uy wrote

>I'm looking to write a Cyberpunk story without being too derivative of the series I'm watching right now (Cyberpunk Edgerunners).

Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop game it's all based off of, more or less codified the genre, and every cyberpunk thing made after it is, to some extent or another, derivative of Mike Pondsmith's work.

There's no way you're going to be able to avoid standing on the shoulders of this particular giant, and that's okay. Don't worry about it too much. Trying to write cyberpunk without being too derivative of Pondsmith is like trying to write space opera without biting off Star Wars too much, or high fantasy without making it too obvious you're drawing from Tolkien.

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TopReputation t1_ixu1njx wrote

And Pondsmith's work is derivative of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. Neuromancer is OG Cyberpunk

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ProbablySPTucker t1_ixv1p1u wrote

Hence why I said "codified," not "created."

There's a metric ton of things pre-Pondsmith that I treat as proto-cyberpunk, because they have part of the picture but not the whole thing. The Sprawl trilogy is part of the way there (enough that it slots in neatly to the genre now), but it's not the whole package. Ditto Blade Runner, Hardwired by Walter Williams, Bubblegum Crisis, RoboCop, The Running Man, Akira, The Caves of Steel by Asimov... we could be here for a while if I just rattled off every work that put some ingredients into the soup pot.

Cyberpunk 2020 was what synthesized all of those genre elements into what we, in the modern day, immediately recognize as the cyberpunk genre and not just weird sci-fi noir stuff. It was the point at which cyberpunk went from a relatively loose literary movement, branched off from New Wave sci-fi, to a genre.

e: To put it another way, if CP2020/2077/ER is to cyberpunk as Star Wars is to space opera, then stuff like Neuromancer and Blade Runner slots into the same relative role to CP2020 that stuff like Flash Gordon and Lensman does for Star Wars.

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