biopunk n.

a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on the societal effects of biotechnology and genetic engineering

SF Criticism

Genre

  • 1991 BBR (#19) Summer 52/1 page image

    Eva asks what use is cyberpunk in a country where you can’t even find a functioning public telephone box. In an attempt to define a literature more appropriate for her country [sc. Czechoslovakia], she comes up with Biopunk, where mutants, genetic diseases and chimeric organisms take the place of computers, programs and viruses.

  • 1993 Science Fiction Studies Nov. 463

    Cyberpunk and ‘biopunk’ writers ‘often foreground [the] metafictional potential of paraspace’ by developing an analogy between the author of the text and the author of the cyberspace or paraspace world.

  • 2002 ‘R. U. Sirius’ Cool SF Genre: Biopunk in Rolling Stone Apr. 11 80/2

    Cyberpunk was about information technology and hacking the datasphere. Its successor, bio punk, is about biotechnology and hacking the gene pool.

  • 2014 R. Powers Orfeo 266 Richard Powers (I) bibliography

    Between mail-order synthetic DNA and a kitchen stocked with a thousand dollars of gear, an amateur could create a new lethal pathogen. Given how many people want to harm this country, biopunk is one of the greatest threats facing us.


Research requirements

antedating 1991

Earliest cite

in BBR

Research History
Bill Mullins submitted a 2002 cite from "R.U. Sirius" in Rolling Stone.
Jesse Sheidlower submitted a 1991 cite from BBR.

We would like cites of any date from other authors.

Last modified 2023-01-20 01:55:45
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.