What Is a Cypherpunk?

Cyberpunk (cyberpunk, is a combination of cyber and punk), also known as digital punk, cyberpunk, computer punk, online punk , is a branch of science fiction, with the theme of computer or information technology, usually in novels There is a plot of social order being disrupted. Cyberpunk's plot now usually revolves around the contradictions between hackers, artificial intelligence, and large enterprises. The background is set on a dystopian earth in the near future, rather than the early cyberpunk outer space. It actually marks the improvement and advancement of the shortcomings of previous science fictions that did not focus on the specific settings of information technology.

Cyberpunk

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The work of Philip Dick (1928.12.16 ~ 1982.3.2) became the predecessor of Cyberpunk.

"The main question I care about is: What is real? I even question this universe. I want to know if it is real. I want to know if we are all real!" Dick often puts the characters in the pen into a fictional world, a He questioned the world of its construction and institutions. These stories seem ridiculous fantasy, the characters find that the world they live in every day is an illusion, which originates from the external physical world. All his works are based on the basic assumption of "no single, objective existence of truth."

Philip Dick's writing is a decaying world, the profound decline of civilization, and the fall of science and technology. Dick was not recognized by the world during his lifetime, but his books kept reprinting after his death. He was exclaimed as the great writer and avant-garde writer of our time, and perhaps the most surprising and shocking writer. Someone set up a science fiction award in his name. His novels have been remakes into movies frequently. In addition to the famous "Blade Runner" in the history of science fiction, there are also "Minority Report", "Comprehensive Memory", "Memory Rift", "Farming Invasion" and so on.

"Expansion Trilogy" by William Gibson

William Gibson is often associated with cyberpunk because of his novel Neuro-Wanderer (1984). He focuses on style, character growth, and the atmosphere of traditional science fiction, and the Neuro-Wanderer has been awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. According to the Jargon File, Gibson's poor understanding of computers and today's hacker culture has given him special speculation about the role of computers and hackers in the future, a view that is naively irritating to hackers, but It makes them feel very exciting.

Other notable cyberpunk writers include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Pat Cadigan, Jeff Noon, and Nepali Neal Stephenson. It is worth mentioning Stephenson, who is considered a representative of postcyberpunk, although most people think this distinction is unnecessary.

Raymond Chandler strongly influenced the author of this genre with his desolate strokes, cynic worldview, and mutilated writing. Cyberpunk's world is a desperate world of dystopian, film noir. Philip K. Dick also had a big influence on this genre. The themes of his work include social desolation, artificial intelligence, paranoia, and blurred boundaries between reality and some kind of virtual reality.

Vernor Vinch, an active writer in the Cyberpunk genre to this day, Vernor Vinch has a very high reputation and is very good at writing hard science fiction. His novels are logical and compact, and show the wonders of science and technology, especially for the creation of details and amazing foresight. Numerous meticulous and scrutiny descriptions make the fictional "different world" and the race in which it lives are almost unreal. It has a lot to do with his own scientific literacy. Ferno Vinch is himself a mathematician and computer expert. His real name and surname made him famous in 1981. He won the Hugo Award for Fire in the Abyss in 1992 and defeated Harry Potter and Azkaban in 2000 with the prequel of the book Abyss The Prisoner, and won the Hugo Award.