Well said. The setup clearly was an (IMO schlocky) parody of the genre. The meat of it: neuro-linguistic hacking, the raft, the devastating gun called “reason” that was all superb and faithful to the genre.
And in the real world there's the Earth model that heavily influenced Google Earth, and the librarian's "intelligence without consciousness" conversational style is looking pretty damn prescient right now.
I found the main neuro-linguistic hacking plot to be incredibly campy; it certainly took some of the core concepts of the genre and dialed them up to the point where one could argue it was parody.
I found it deeper than most concepts in the genre, the core of that plot is one of the most impotant questions in contemporary philosophy - the realtionship between thought and language.
Then Sherlock Holmes is far too late to the game to be foundational in the detective story genre (first appearing in 1887, 46 years after The Murders in the Rue Morge).
the bulk of tech foresight - Metaverse, Gargoyles, Earth (Google Earth)... I think it's foundational. the fact it lagged several years behind the sprawl trilogy, mirrorshades, or schismatrix, etc isn’t relevant imo
Edited to be more polite - my intention was not to be rude or uncivil.
and microtransactions in Ubik.... *shrug*
I mentioned quintessential works rather than "origin stories" to avoid an inevitable "all work is derivative".
edit: True Names surely should have been added in my brief list.
I want to assume you're joking, but I've encountered people who earnestly think the essence of cyberpunk is the retro-80s neon aesthetic, so your comment is in Poe's Law territory for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKRJfIPiJGY