As alluded to in this comment, I had an English professor when I was a freshman at Georgia Tech who was very much into the whole cyberpunk genre.

Her name is Anne Balsamo (now at USC) and she didn’t like me.

I wrote about her several years ago and since it came up in a comment, I thought I’d repost my run in with Anne:

I was enrolled in English 102 and had a woman professor named Anne Balsamo. This was the first quarter after the first President Bush had lost and she was absolutely giddy about her boy Clinton being President. We had to read Maya Angelou and watch the inauguration as well. The first day of class she stood up and told us that she was a liberal and that if there were any conservatives in the class or anyone that liked Rush Limbaugh, they had best be on their way out the door. She went on and on about this liberal agenda and that piece of legislation. It got rather humorous, as at that time the vast majority of Tech students were conservative leaning. I guess I had a smile on my face while I was contemplating the next ten weeks of hell that I was about to go through when she stopped talking, looked at me and asked, “Do you have anything you wish to add to this discussion?” I looked around as if to say, “Me?” Then I said, “No Ma’am.” To which she replied, “Then stop smirking!” I kid you not. Everyone looked at me and their looks told me they were thinking the same thing I was, that I had best get out of that class. Well I did not leave and I refused to buckle under to her liberal mantra. As a result, I got a “C”. Go figure.

So yes, Anne killed cyberpunk for me. Who knows, maybe I would’ve liked those types of books. Maybe my life would have been different…

Or…maybe I need to read Neuromancer one more time without Professor Anne’s input.