A guy called Michael Crichton – you may have heard of him – wrote and directed a little-known sci-fi piece called <em>Runaway</em> in 1984.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2
It’s not a surprise that the writing was solid. The sci-fi was hard. There were elements of social criticism – which is necessary for a noir detective story. So why was this not a true cyberpunk story?
This film had a lot of the “cyber” – miniature guided missiles, intelligent robots, swarm warfare. This film had very little “punk.” The hero was considerably more straight-and-narrow than a typical noir detective. The bad guy was cartoonishly bad.
The basic notion of “cyberpunk” is “high tech, low life.” In <em>Blade Runner</em>, the hero is not exactly a low-life – but he is definitely oppressed by the cops in classic noir-detective style. The bad guys are clearly high-tech-low-life baddies.
Crichton’s earlier work included hard sci-fi such as <em> Looker, Coma, Westworld, The Andromeda Strain.</em> Cyberpunk enthusiasts who enjoy the hard sci-fi of cyberpunk will probably find a lot of inspiration in those stories. All of them are relevant to later cyberpunk stories, but I don’t think any of them can be called “cyberpunk.”
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