A key tenet of geek culture is knowledge we judge and are judged based on our encyclopedic knowledge of games, sci-fi, comics, anime, collectibles and more. But its impossible for one human being to know everything, no matter how many chips you get put in your brain. Thats where we come in. With this series of Geeksplainers, well give you everything you need to know to get up to speed on some of the most complicated, intense subjects in the pop culture universe. No longer will you have to fake it in conversations until you have time to run to the bathroom and engage in a 45 minute Wikipedia session. Let us be your guide, now and forever.

This installment: jack in, hack the Gibson, and learn everything you need to know about cyberpunk.

As technology changes, so does science fiction. In the 1950s and 60s, tales of rocket-powered explorations to other planets dominated the industry. With the introduction and eventual ubiquity of networked computers, sci-fi minds started exploring the ramifications of that data-driven world in the early 1980s. As science fiction matured, it started to wrestle with issues of the day like drug culture and expanded consciousness, prejudice and class issues. Cyberpunk gave creators space to explore characters who werent pioneering heroes, but marginal losers ground down by the pressures of the future.

Over the last few decades, cyberpunk has morphed and changed with technology, always keeping one baleful eye on the future. As networked communication has become a bigger part of the ordinary persons life, the focus on hackers as denizens of the cyberworld has faded a bit, replaced by concerns about privacy, identity and the forthcoming singularity where artificial intelligence gains consciousness. Certain values still hold, though: cyberpunk is still grimy, uncompromising and unromantic.

William Gibsons 1984 novel Neuromancer is widely regarded as the touchstone for cyberpunk fiction. In it, hacker Henry Dorsett Case is hired for one last job working for an ex-military officer and discovering the creation of a powerful AI that could change the world forever. It painted a picture of a corporatist future where powerful factions worked against each other with no regard for the public health or safety and the people who got caught in its gears. Dozens of derivative works followed in its wake.

Two years earlier, director Ridley Scott dropped the movie that did more than any other to establish the visual aesthetic of cyberpunk. Blade Runner dropped viewers into a futuristic Los Angeles choked with smog and lit with neon, as a group of replicants escape their servitude and impending death to run loose on Earth. Harrison Ford stars as ex-cop Rick Deckard tasked with hunting them down. So many of the key touchstones of cyberpunk are here malevolent corporations, shifting humanity, morally questionable technology comes from this movie.

Fire up your Kindle, because there is a lot of top-flight literary cyberpunk to process. After Neuromancer, which should be your first stop, try these.

Neal Stephensons Snow Crash is more than a little silly in hindsight, but its still worth reading to see what the early 90s thought the future would be like. Hiro Protagonist (I know) is a pizza deliveryman-slash-hacker in 21st century Los Angeles who spends a good deal of time in the Metaverse, an online virtual reality that resembles nothing more than Second Life. When a virus in the Metaverse starts causing brain damage to users in the real world, things start popping.

For short stories, the 1986 Bruce Sterling-edited anthology Mirrorshades is still well worth picking up. Some of the decades most influential cyberpunk authors weighed in here, including William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Marc Laidlaw and other vital voices working at the intersection of science fiction and tech.

Modern cyberpunk is probably best represented by the successful Takeshi Kovacs novels of Richard K. Morgan, starting with Altered Carbon. As technology becomes increasingly linked to biology as opposed to silicon circuits and virtual spaces, the new wave is all about body hacking, consciousness transplanting and other grisly concepts.

1999s The Matrix was an absolute mindblower when it dropped the Wachowskis deftly leveraged the concept of existence as simulation and crafted a huge mythology around it. The two sequels didnt really pack the same cultural impact, but in hindsight theyre not terrible each boasts at least one incredible hyper-kinetic action sequence and some fun performances. The first one is definitely a must-watch though.

Katheryn Bigelows 1995 Strange Days wasnt a success on release, but history has been very kind to it and its now a definite cult classic. A new technology called SQUID allows you to record memories and experiences on disc and let others relive them. Former LAPD detective Lenny Nero gets caught up after a robbery and discovers a seedy underworld of blackmail, rough sex and nasty tech.

David Croenenbergs eXistenZ came out the same year as The Matrix, but the two movies couldnt have more different takes on the concept of realistic virtual worlds. Croenenbergs VR game is so immersive that it opens up a dark and twisted Russian nesting doll, where players can never be sure if theyre in or out. Like all of the Canadian iconoclasts films, its a real head-scratcher.

Over in Japan, Shinya Tsukamotos 1989 Tetsuo: The Iron Man presented a much more horror-focused take on the genre, telling the story of a salaryman afflicted by a curse that slowly transforms his body into metal. The grisly creep of technology to dominate our lives is the metaphor here, and its made horrifyingly literal.

Obviously were going to have to revisit this once CD Projekt Reds Cyberpunk 2077 comes out, but video games have explored cyberpunk themes for decades. Here are the ones youll want to try out.

Hideo Kojimas Metal Gear Solid series has flirted with technological concepts common to cyberpunk, but the maverick designer really delved into the genre in one of his earliest games, 1988s Snatcher. Heavily inspired by Blade Runner, this graphic adventure follows investigator Gillian Seed as he investigates a plague of bioengineered humanoids killing people and taking their place. This game was wildly ambitious for its era and pushed envelopes with grisly gore and complex moral quandaries.

Probably the premier franchise in cyberpunk gaming is Deus Ex. The first game in the series was released in 2000 and put players in the augmented shoes of government agent JC Denton as he tries to stem the spread of a genetically engineered virus. Designer Warren Spector was burnt out on traditional sci-fi and fantasy, so he built something very grounded and different. The original Deus Ex was tremendously influential on PC gaming especially with its focus on player choice and adaptability, and sequels have further expanded its world and mythology.

The modern cyberpunk wave has brought some really cool new entries into the canon. Some of our favorites include violent top-down shooter Ruiner, turn-based strategy heist game Invisible, Inc. and bartending simulator (its bizarre how many cyberpunk stories have scenes set in bars) Va-11 Hall-A. These games each touch on a different aspect of the genre in interesting ways.

Glad you asked! There are tons of really amazing comics that mine cyberpunk for inspiration.

One of the earliest is Frank Millers 1983 limited series Ronin, which tapped into the genres Asian fixation for a story of a Japanese samurai reincarnated 800 years later in a futuristic New York. The villain is an artificial intelligence that controls biocircuitry, and Millers art is in a fascinating place that takes inspiration from manga, European legends like Moebius and his noir background.

A few years later, Masamune Shirow would begin Ghost In The Shell, one of the most influential Japanese cyberpunk works. Major Makoto Kusanagi is a cyborg, grievously injured as a child and raised in an entirely artificial body. Shirow combines incredible kinetic action sequences with remarkably deep meditations on the nature of personhood. The spin-off anime is also great, but its fine to avoid the 2017 American movie.

Cyberpunk is having a bit of a resurgence for a number of reasons. First, were more conscious than ever about the dangers of the digital world and more dependent on it. Youre reading this on a portal to all of the information in the world (unless you printed it out to read on the toilet), and the consequences of that network failing would be literally apocalyptic. Questions of digital identity and privacy are now a big deal.

Additionally, a number of the technologies that were key to early cyberpunk fiction have finally become fact. Virtual reality is now affordable and portable enough that you can use it on your phone, and augmented reality lets you overlay the digital world over the real one. What seemed fantastic in the days of CRTs and 300 baud modems is now a normal part of life.

In some ways, were already living in the future that 1980s cyberpunk predicted. What will the world look like another 30 years from now? Read, watch and play our recommendations above and you might just find out.

For more on cyberpunk, check out our breakdown of the nearly one-hour-long Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay footage, as well as these Ford factory floor robot legs.

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The Geeksplainer: Cyberpunk - Geek.com