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ProbablySPTucker t1_ixv1p1u wrote

Reply to comment by TopReputation in [PM] Give me prompts to help me think of some character and plot ideas. I'm looking to write a Cyberpunk story without being too derivative of the series I'm watching right now (Cyberpunk Edgerunners). Bonus points if the prompt includes something to help make the world unique and different. by SorryUncleAl

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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