The Artificial Kid was published by Harper & Row in 1980. The Kid is a teenage street fighter on the planet Reverie — a world colonized by anarchists and artists. He records his combat with hovering cameras and distributes the footage to fans: a media celebrity whose product is carefully choreographed violence. When political upheaval threatens Reverie, the Kid discovers that his entire identity — his youth, his skills, his fame — has been artificially constructed by a patron with political motives.
Sterling’s anticipation of media culture is remarkable: the Kid is essentially a YouTuber or TikTok star avant la lettre — someone who monetizes personal spectacle through distributed video. The novel also explores body modification, reality as performance, and the collapse of the distinction between authentic and artificial identity — all themes that would define cyberpunk.
Written before Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” (1982) or Neuromancer (1984), The Artificial Kid demonstrates that the cyberpunk sensibility was emerging simultaneously in multiple writers — a response to shared cultural conditions rather than one writer’s individual invention.
Collecting The Artificial Kid
First edition (Harper & Row, New York, 1980): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Very good/very good: $25–$60