- - - [ Cyberpunk Essentials ] - - -
New to cyberpunk? Lazy? Don't feel like researching to find out what the must-see, must-read, and must-play highlights of the genre are? Look no further chummer, this page is for you. Download at your own risk.
I'm not going to outright tell you what cyberpunk is. That's for you to work out. The first thing you should do is read a bit. William Gibson is viewed as the father of cyberpunk, and some of his writing is downright prophetic. If you're ambitious, you could tackle Neuromancer, the book that started it all.
If you're less ambitious, read Burning Chrome (PDF, HTML) a short story by Gibson that predated Neuromancer.
There's also an anthology called Burning Chrome, you should read that too at some point. It's not all cyberpunk, but almost all of it is pure scifi gold. These are optional, but reccomended. For your convenience, the cyberpunk stories are:
It's also worth reading the short story Cyberpunk by Bruce Bethke, where the term was first invented.
On to watchable media. The first one to mention is Blade Runner (magnet link here). Gibson walked out halfway through when he first saw it, because he didn't want people to think he was ripping it off for Neuromancer.
The next one is Ghost in the Shell (magnet). Not much needs to be said here, besides that it's a true classic and a must-watch.
There's a surprising lack of cyberpunk games out there. The best I can reccomend are Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. While I personally haven't played DX, I can vouch for DXHR's cyberpunk quality. It gets the aesthetic down perfectly. You can find a download for that yourself (make sure you get the director's cut). If you're into retro stuff, Based Kojima's "Snatcher" might be good for you.
That's all you need to get started. Have fun, chummer. Poke around the site, visit /cyber/, avoid /r/cyberpunk on reddit, and have fun. Welcome to the club.