This word, which literally combines the words cyber and punk, first appeared as the title of a short story entitled “Cyberpunk,” by Bruce Bethke. The term was published in the AMAZING science fiction stories magazine in 1983. The short story was a high-tech science fiction story about a group of teenage crackers with ethical shortcomings. Bethke said that the coining of the word was his attempt to find a word that would combine the notions of “punk attitudes” and “high-technology.”

In a 1993 issue of Time magazine, the term “cyberpunk” was more broadly used to define a culture involved with virtual sex, drugs, and rock and roll music—a counterculture segment of the computer age. The term combined “cyber” from communication and control theory with “punk” to indicate a rebellious youth segment with anti-social tendencies and having a disdain for conventional ways of using cyber tools.

Two defining books of cyberpunk include Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

See Also: Computer; Computer Underground (CU).