The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

the Fourth of July(1989). The critically acclaimed film
earned Cruise his first Academy Award nomination
for Best Actor and also served to highlight his talents
as a serious actor.

Impact After paying his dues early in the decade,
Tom Cruise exploded onto the screen during the
mid-1980’s. As a hardworking young actor, he took
on roles in twelve different movies during the de-
cade. Many of these films became huge box-office
successes and built for him an enormous fan base. In
addition to making him a superstar, Cruise’s acting
also earned him a place in American cinematic and
cultural history. His performance inRisky Business,
especially the scene in which his character dances
and lip-syncs to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and

Roll,” became ensconced in American popular cul-

ture and memories of the 1980’s.

Further Reading

Johnstone, Iain.Tom Cruise. London: Hodder &

Stoughton, 2007.

Prince, Stephen.American Cinema of the 1980’s:

Themes and Variations. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers

University Press, 2007.

Sellers, Robert.Tom Cruise: A Biography. London:

Robert Hale, 1997.

Bernadette Zbicki Heiney

See also Academy Awards; Film in the United

States; Hoffman, Dustin; Teen films.

Cyberpunk literature

Definition Science-fiction subgenre dealing with

computer-dominated future societies

Cyberpunk responded to the development of computer net-

works by imagining worlds in which they were pervasive

and defined human relationships. Works in the genre an-

ticipated the development of the Internet, the World Wide

Web, and virtual-reality gaming.

The principal texts that gave rise to and exemplified

cyberpunk literature were a series of stories by Wil-

liam Gibson begun with “Johnny Mnemonic” (1981)

and culminating with the novelNeuromancer(1984);

the earlier stories were collected inBurning Chrome

(1986). The characters in Gibson’s stories are able to

project themselves into the virtual “cyberspace” con-

tained in a worldwide computer network by “jacking

in” through their personal computers (PCs). The

countercultural values and slick, picaresque story

lines of Gibson’s work inspired a cyberpunk move-

ment, named by Gardner R. Dozois, loudly advertised

by Bruce Sterling’s fanzineCheap Truth, and widely

popularized by Sterling’s best-selling anthology

Mirrorshades(1986). Other key texts of cyberpunk fic-

tion included Sterling’sIslands in the Net(1988) and

his Shaper/Mechanist series, which was launched in

1982 and culminated in the novelSchismatrix(1985);

Rudy Rucker’sSoftware(1982) andWetware(1988);

Gibson’sCount Zero(1986) andMona Lisa Overdrive

(1988); Michael Swanwick’sVacuum Flowers(1987);

and some of the short stories in John Shirley’s

Heatseeker(1988) and Pat Cadigan’sPatterns(1989).

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Cyberpunk literature The Eighties in America

Tom Cruise receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in
1986.(AP/Wide World Photos)