1st Edition
Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture
A collection of engaging essays on some of the most significant figures in cyberpunk culture, this outstanding guide charts the rich and varied landscape of cyberpunk from the 1970s to present day.
The collection features key figures from a variety of disciplines, from novelists, critical and cultural theorists, philosophers, and scholars, to filmmakers, comic book artists, game creators, and television writers. Important and influential names discussed include: J. G. Ballard, Jean Baudrillard, Rosi Braidotti, Charlie Brooker, Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Donna J. Haraway, Nalo Hopkinson, Janelle Monáe, Annalee Newitz, Katsuhiro Ōtomo, Sadie Plant, Mike Pondsmith, Ridley Scott, Bruce Sterling, and the Wachowskis. The editors also include an afterword of ‘Honorable Mentions’ to highlight additional figures and groups of note that have played a role in shaping cyberpunk.
This accessible guide will be of interest to students and scholars of cultural studies, film studies, literature, media studies, as well as anyone with an interest in cyberpunk culture and science fiction.
Introduction
Anna Mcfarlane, Graham J. Murphy, and Lars Schmeink
1. J. G. Ballard
Jaak Tomberg
2. Steven Barnes
Isiah Lavender Iii
3. Jean Baudrillard
Michał Kłosiński
4. Lauren Beukes
Lars Schmeink
5. Rosi Braidotti
Agnieszka Kotwasińska
6. Charlton ‘Charlie’ Brooker
Filip Boratyn
7. Pat Cadigan
Ritch Calvin
8. David Cronenberg
Matthew Flisfeder
9. Samuel R. Delany
Jędrzej Burszta
10. Philip K. Dick
Francis Gene-Rowe
11. Cory Doctorow
Benjamin Franz
12. Warren Ellis
David. M. Higgins And Matthew Iung
13. William Gibson
Keren Omry
14. Donna J. Haraway
Julia Grillmayr
15. N. Katherine Hayles
María Goicoechea
16. Nalo Hopkinson
Rebecca J. Holden
17. Sogo Ishii
Sasha Myerson
18. Ray Kurzweil
Nicholas Laudadio
19. Jaron Lanier
Leighton Evans
20. Marshall Mcluhan
D. Harlan Wilson
21. Syd Mead
Pawel Frelik
22. Misha
Stina Attebery
23. Moebius
Nicolas Labarre
24.Janelle Monáe
Lidia Kniaź- Hunek
25. Richard K. Morgan
Adam Edwards
26. Annalee Newitz
Wendy Gay Pearson
27. Mamoru Oshii
Brian Ruh
28. Katsuhiro Ōtomo
Shige ‘CJ’ Suzuki
29. Marge Piercy
Christopher D. Kilgore
30. Sadie Plant
Ania Malinowska
31. Mike Pondsmith
Evan Torner
32. Thomas Pynchon
Rob Latham
33. Rudy Rucker
Jonathan Thornton
34. Joanna Russ
Jeanne Cortiel
35. Melissa Scott
Robin Anne Reid
36. Ridley Scott
Simon Spiegel
37. Lewis Shiner
Graham J. Murphy
38. Masumune Shirow
Mark Player
39. Warren Spector
Christophe Duret
40. Stelarc
Agnieszka Kiejziewicz
41. Neal Stephenson
Anna Mcfarlane
42. Bruce Sterling
Paul Raven
43. Allucquére Rosanne ‘Sandy’ Stone
Anna Kurowicka
44. James Tiptree, Jr.
Anya Heise-Von Der Lippe
45. Alvin and Wendy Toffler
Doug Davis
46. Shinya Tsukamoto
Mark Bould
47. Vernor Vinge
Sébastien Doubinsky
48. Lana and Lilly Wachwoski
Dan Hassler-Forest
49. Norbert Wiener
Willian Perpétuo Busch
50. Shoshana Zuboff
Jo Lindsay Walton
Honourable Mentions
Anna Mcfarlane, Graham J. Murphy, and Lars Schmeink
Biography
Anna McFarlane is Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Leeds, working on traumatic pregnancy and its expression in science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2020) and is co-editing The Edinburgh Companion to Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities. Her first monograph is a study of William Gibson’s novels, Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades (2021).
Graham J. Murphy is Professor with the School of English and Liberal Studies, Faculty of Arts, Seneca College. He is co-editor of Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives (2010), Cyberpunk and Visual Culture (2018), and The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2020). In addition to numerous book chapters and journal articles, he authored "Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk" for The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019) and a chapter on feminist cyberpunk for The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction (2022).
Lars Schmeink is Research Fellow at the Europa-Universität Flensburg and Lead Researcher of the "Science Fiction" subproject of "Future Work," a federally funded research project on labor in the 22nd century. He is also the author of Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society, and Science Fiction (2016), and the co-editor of Cyberpunk and Visual Culture (2018), The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2020), and New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction (2022).
"Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture is an excellent introduction to some of the writers, artists, theorists, and scientists whose influence has helped to shape today’s technocultural imaginary. Readers will (re)discover cyberpunk culture’s makers, from J.G. Ballard to Rosi Braidotti, from Marshall McLuhan to Richard K. Morgan, from Rudy Rucker to Joanna Russ, from Vernor Vinge to Norbert Wiener. Fifty Key Figures is both an exciting supplement to MacFarlane, Murphy, and Schmeink’s recently published Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture and an important contribution to cyberculture studies in general."
Veronica Hollinger, Editor of Science Fiction Studies and Professor Emerita of Cultural Studies at Trent University, Canada
"Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture brings together a truly diverse and global array of entries that explodes the limits of cyberpunk’s perceived "monocromatism," and heteronormative, masculine biases. The entries gathered here reveal cyberpunk to be a key cultural formation for investigating the racial, class, gender, and sexual intersections of our increasingly techno-saturated late capitalist present. Your favorite "deep-cut" author might be missing, but you’ll discover far more than you’ll miss."
Hugh Charles O’Connell, Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
"From classic Movement sf writers like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan to key precursors like Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., and Philip K. Dick and contemporary practitioners like Charlie Brooker, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Lauren Beukes, and Janelle Monáe -- with a truly global collection of writers, filmmakers, scientists, and philosophers spanning every field of art and innovation over more than a century -- McFarlane, Murphy, and Schmeink's Fifty Figures lays any possible doubt to rest: cyberpunk still rules our world."
Gerry Canavan, President of the Science Fiction Research Association and Associate Professor of English, Marquette University, USA
