# Headcrash

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{{Short description|Book by Bruce Bethke}}
{{about|the cyberpunk novel|hard drive failure|head crash|the German-American band under the same name|HeadCrash (band)}}
{{More citations needed
| date = May 2017
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{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book| 
 | name          = Headcrash
 | title_orig    =
 | translator    =
 | image         = headcrash.jpg
 | caption = 
 | author        = [Bruce Bethke](/source/Bruce_Bethke)
 | illustrator   =
 | cover_artist  =
 | country       = United States
 | language      = English
 | series        =
 | genre         = [Science fiction](/source/Science_fiction)
 | publisher     = [Warner Books](/source/Grand_Central_Publishing)
 | release_date  = 1995
 | media_type    = Paperback
 | pages         = 
 | isbn          = 978-0446602600
}}

'''''Headcrash''''' is a [satirical](/source/satire) [cyberpunk](/source/cyberpunk) novel by [Bruce Bethke](/source/Bruce_Bethke), published in 1995 by [Warner Books](/source/Grand_Central_Publishing). It won the [Philip K. Dick Award](/source/Philip_K._Dick_Award) in 1995.

It follows Jack Burroughs, who loses his bureaucratic corporate job and goes undercover on the InfoBahn (internet), creating a new persona as a popular, cool virtual character aliased MAXK00L, in a [virtual reality](/source/virtual_reality) social media area:

{{cquote|...full of young guys with no social lives, no sex lives and no hope of ever moving out of their mothers' basements ... They're total wankers and losers who indulge in Messianic fantasies about someday getting even with the world through almost-magical computer skills, but whose actual use of the Net amounts to dialing up the scatophilia forum and downloading a few disgusting pictures. You know, cyberpunks."}}

Bethke unintentionally named the entire [cyberpunk](/source/cyberpunk) subgenre of [science fiction](/source/science_fiction) in his 1983 story "[Cyberpunk](/source/Cyberpunk_(novel))".

==Reception==
Enjoying moderate sales and mixed reviews (often centering around whether the reviewer saw it as satire or a failed attempt at sincere comedy), the book went on to capture a few awards, most notably the [Philip K. Dick Award](/source/Philip_K._Dick_Award) for best paperback novel in 1995.<ref>[http://www.philipkdickaward.org/2003/03/1995_philip_k_d.html 1995 Philip K. Dick Award]</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Philip K. Dick Award}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:1995 American novels
Category:Cyberpunk novels
Category:1995 science fiction novels

{{1990s-sf-novel-stub}}

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Headcrash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headcrash) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headcrash?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.