‘In the beginning, the stereotypical cyberpunk protagonist was a disaffected loner from outside the cultural mainstream. Ultimately this proved not only tiresome but also betrayed a lack of extrapolative rigor. No future could exist in which there were only data thieves in trench coats and meglomaniacal middle managers. Someone had to be baking the bread and driving the trucks and assembling all those flat screens. Cyberspace needs electricians! Where were the middle class in the CP stories? What were their families like? Could the cyberpunks be part of a communtiy and still be punks?

(…) the punk in post-cyberpunk continues to make sense if it is pointing toward an attitute: an adversarial relationship to consensus reality. This attitude is just south of cynicism but well north of mere scepticism. (…)

The characters in a PCP story need this healthy dose of attitude because their relationship to reality is different from ours. Yes, there may well be, and often is, a virtual reality that is as persuasive as reality itself and far more pleasant (…) [b]ut reality itself is everywhere mediated, and what comes between the characters and reality must constantly be interrogated.’

— James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, ‘Introduction: Hacking Cyberpunk’, in: Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (San Francisco, CA: Tachyon, 2007), p. xi-xii.