By many critical standards, William Gibson’s Neuromancer was the first cyberpunk novel. Thus, Gibson’s work has helped to define the genre. In Neuromancer, Gibson pits a renegade young man, an outsider with drug problems, against mega forces that rule the world. His unique expertise in cyberspace enables him to become a kind of chosen one. The world of Neuromancer is a dark, hopeless place, one in which corporate control of the masses is near absolute. Neuromancer helped establish a lineage of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. Gibson’s The Peripheral shares many of the same tropes as his seminal cyberpunk novel, with important modifications that help push the subgenre in new directions.

One of the first hallmarks of a cyberpunk novel is that it usually involves marginalized groups of people who are empowered by their technical acumen. Flynne and Burton Fisher fit this description. Burton is a wounded veteran who may or may not suffer from PTSD. He has a short fuse and is prone to violent outbursts. He and his posse of veterans form a kind of non-conformist clique. These are not nihilistic punks in the traditional sense, but their outsider status fits the general description of punk-like characters.