Description:
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.
Review Quotes:
"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