SOURCE: Sterling, Bruce. Preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling, pp. ix-xvi. New York: Arbor House, 1986.

In the following introduction to his seminal anthology Mirrorshades, Sterling introduces and elucidates the defining characteristics of the genre of cyberpunk.

This book showcases writers who have come to prominence within this decade. Their allegiance to Eighties culture has marked them as a group—as a new movement in science fiction.

This movement was quickly recognized and given many labels: Radical Hard SF, the Outlaw Technologists, the Eighties Wave, the Neuromantics, the Mirrorshades Group.

But of all the labels pasted on and peeled throughout the early Eighties, one has stuck: cyberpunk.

Scarcely any writer is happy about labels—especially one with the peculiar ring of “cyberpunk.” Literary tags carry an odd kind of double obnoxiousness: those with a label feel pigeonholed; those without feel neglected. And, somehow, group labels...