When Cyberpunk Became a Formula

Cyberpunk began not as a ready-made setting, but as an insurgent literary movement: high technology fused with underground culture, hackers and resistance to authority. Its defining charge was social, not just futuristic machinery. The 1988 tabletop RPG made that movement portable, letting groups rehearse its conflicts in their own scenarios. Portability and commodification could coexist with political critique, and later works could turn cyberpunk’s habits into targets for self-parody.

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