Neo Cyberpunk Volume 2
A Cyberpunk Anthology
A Cyberpunk Themed Anthology
Maybe you are a long time cyberpunk fan, maybe you aren’t. It isn’t until you realize that you are surrounded by it. Some of the most popular movies, series and books are classed as cyberpunk. Its not all about William Gibson, and Cyberpunk 2077. If you look closely, everything from Robocop, to the Matrix could be seen as a cyberpunk future. So what many modern writers are writing is cyberpunk. There are many and I count myself as lucky to have fallen in with a few of the best.
While I am certainly not a cyberpunk authority, I enjoy that style of science fiction in my games, screens, and books. There is an innate rebel in me that wants to break out from the constructed world we live in, with its manufactured order, and see if I can survive in a high tech future without becoming enslaved to it.
These are some of the themes that seem to be a constant in my writing. What is humanity, and how to we keep it in a high tech world. How do we construct a society that isn’t a race to a technological self destruction. That is humane and allows for the best versions of ourselves. Cyberpunk is often sign posts, warnings, of the possibilities of unfettered advancement without consideration for the humanity that remains beneath the layers of tech.
The ultimate version of this, to me at least, is Robocop. He is a cop, a human, but he is turned into the ultimate police robot. Deep beneath the impenetrable amour, beneath the wires and electronics, there is something, a man, still in there. We ultimately see this battle between man and its machine encasement. It begs the question, are we to become the ghosts of tomorrows machines?
For Volume 2 of Neo Cyberpunk, The Anthology, I wrote a story called Animat to Animus. I chose a point in time, where the Animat, the automaton, begins to take on the intelligence of the swarm of all the other Animats. They share their knowledge, and begin to learn from each other and operate as an entity. Its a thought experiment and while I still think its a good story, its thoughtful more than action packed. The beauty of the anthology, is there is something for everyone. In the blurb, we put in there that the anthology holds up a black mirror to society. I think this is quite poignant. The black mirror of our screens reflecting back on ourselves. and the black mirror, like the Netflix series, that explored some of these questions.
The cover of the book you will have noticed is a woman revealing that behind her face is machinery, this fits intuitively into where I believe we are at as a society now. Our electronics are not physically behind our faces just yet, but the technology we use is inside our brains, and one day it may well be physically there too.
The Journey of the Anthology.
I’m proud to have been involved in this project. I lucked into being invited into the first Neo Cyberpunk Anthology, wrote my story on short notice and it was well received. A few people drifted away from the anthology group after the release and throughout the year, and I was asked to help set up Volume Two of Neo Cyberpunk.
My experience in publishing was limited, but I’d managed to publish a short anthology with Davene Le Grange just to get used to the way things work. So I agreed to help put it together and yes, it was hard work.
Thankfully the group in the anthology are really easy to get along with and also talented writers. Each story that came through had its own unique flavor, and interesting take on the genre.
The stories in Neo Cyberpunk Volume 2 are so varied that its impossible to narrow the theme down any further. My personal favorite stories are quite inventive. I loved the Cyber Viking story by Ben Fisher-Merritt, he is a man of many talents, and quite often talks about his work on his home Forge. We encouraged him to write on this theme, the theme of a man of the world who can make things and is good with his hands, stuck in a high tech world. He built a fantastic character that fulfilled those elements, and he turned it into an exciting story with all the duality and humanity that a Cyborg Viking can exhibit.
We have set it up on Amazon world wide for sale as an eBook and as a paperback. For the first time we are releasing it also on Kindle Unlimited. I hope you find the time to check it out and get some great entertainment, and thought provoking work out of it.
