Although I write Fantasy, I’m a Cyberpunk enthusiast who mentally lives in the high-tech effed-up future authors and artists imagined in the ‘80s. My imagination has been so influenced by Cyberpunk since I watched (and eventually read) Akira as a kid that I ended up creating a Fantasy world with a retro-futuristic, low-life/high-tech vibe, and a lot of motorcycles. An awful lot. I’m also a rebel by heart and a queer person, hence my stories always feature a fight against society and LGBTQ+ characters. I like reading about dystopias, morally grey characters, and dark content. This is what I read, and this is what I write about.
I wrote...
The Harbinger of Freedom: The Falling Feathers Series, Act I
This book is dear to my heart and led me towards Cyberpunk literature. Neuromancer is the first book I’d suggest to anyone approaching the genre for the first time. Hackers, ruthless organised crime and corporations, low-life in a dystopian high-tech society, a tormented protagonist, cyborgs, and AI. This book features them all and Gibson is an outstanding storyteller. Bonus points for the badass razor-girl Molly Millions, a deadly cyborg I often mention as one of my favourite characters of all time.
The book that defined the cyberpunk movement, inspiring everything from The Matrix to Cyberpunk 2077.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.
More than three decades later, Gibson's text is as stylish as ever, his noir narrative still glitters like chrome in the shadows and his depictions of…
Akira is a must-read manga masterpiece, a deep analysis of government corruption, political upheaval, criminality, and decay of society. Apart from the breathtaking art, what caught my attention was the complex story and the nihilistic, harsh, and hopeless world Akira shows. There are virtually no good characters in this story and it fits the apocalyptic, decadent reality they face and live. Expect a lot of psychic abilities and motorcycles, along with gritty, graphic violence.
Akira 1 introduces readers to a gritty Neo-Tokyo, built on the ashes of a Tokyo annihilated by a blast of unknown origin that triggered World War III. The lives of two streetwise teenage friends, Tetsuo and Kaneda, change forever when paranormal abilities begin to waken in Tetsuo, making him a target for a shadowy agency that will stop at nothing to prevent another catastrophe like the one that levelled Tokyo. At the core of the agency's motivation is a raw, all-consuming fear of an unthinkable, monstrous power known only as Akira.
The protagonist is a pizza-delivery man and hacker named Hiro Protagonist. I couldn’t stop laughing and couldn’t stop reading after that! The worldbuilding, the humour, and all the kitschy weirdness it features had an incredible impact on me. Besides, the Metaverse is amazingly described. I also appreciated for a male-authored story from the ‘90s to mention a device like the Dentata. I won’t spoil what it is….
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30…
More a space opera than a full-fledged Cyberpunk story, Schismatrix is a masterpiece with incredible worldbuilding and socio-political commentary. This book impacted mine on many levels; it features an initially hopeless protagonist who eventually fights for a cause, a revolution with struggling factions, a dystopian tyranny, futuristic pirates. It’s a visionary book permeated with deep reflections on human essence and transhumanism, one that’ll make you wonder where humanity is heading, what our purpose is, and what our search for growth and change will entail.
The Nebula-nominated novel of “abrave new world of nearly constant future shock”—plus all the short fiction of the Shaper/Mechanist universe (The Washington Post).
Acclaimed science fiction luminary and a godfather of the genre’s remarkable offspring—cyberpunk—Bruce Sterling carries readers to a far-future universe where stunning achievements in human development have been tainted by a virulent outbreak of prejudice and hatred.
Many thousands of years in the future, the human race has split into two incompatible factions. The aristocratic Mechanists believe that humans can only achieve their greatest potential through technology and enhancing their bodies with powerful prosthetics. The rebel Shapers view…
Pat Cadigan is one of my favourite authors. Mindplayers is a short book, bizarre and strange but fascinating as per Cadigan’s style. The main setting here is the human mind. The protagonist is forced to become a Mindplayer, a sort of state-controlled psychologist who jacks into people’s minds in order to cure them. This book makes you wonder how vast the world inside your head is, and if your thoughts and memories really belong to you once a government takes control of them. There’s even Brain Police involved, what can be more dystopian than this?
Allie Haas only did it for a dare - the kind of dare you know is a mistake but you do it anyway because it's Mistake Yime. But putting on the madcap that Jerry Wirerammer has 'borrowed' was a very big mistake. The psychosis itself was quite conventional, a few paranoid delusions, but it didn't go away when she took the madcap off. Jerry did the decent thing and left her at an emergency room for dry-cleaning but then the Brain Police took over. Straightened out by a professional mindplayer, Allie thinks she's left mind games behind for good but…
As an avid reader, I read a wide variety of books. Of the fiction genre mystery and suspense remain my favorite. From the classics to the gritty, a well-told mystery is a literary gem. As my mystery palette has aged—like my taste in wine—so are my demands of what makes a good mystery novel. The best mysteries for me contain more than a serpentine journey toward the hidden truth. They have intriguing characters, crisp dialogue, interesting settings, formidable foes, and of course indispensable heroes or anti-heroes. My writing goal is aimed at achieving the same level of literary penmanship of the mysteries I enjoy reading so much.
Daniel “Dan” Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world’s leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, “Better environment through industry.”
Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile. Shortly afterward, Dan…
Daniel "Dan" Bluford is the Director of Polar City Single Organism Research Lab Facilities. A business he helped to create. The world's leading architect of sustainable, ecologically conscious products for energy, manufacturing, water treatment, waste management, and environmental clean-up equipment. A company whose mission statement read in part, "Better environment through industry."
Unable to stay awake on his drive home after work, the loving husband and father stopped for coffee at a familiar coffee shop. The place was empty, aside from a lone barista. A young woman with a sacred Maori chin tattoo and an infectious smile.
The Harbinger of Freedom is the first act of the Falling Feathers Series, a crazy mix of blood, sex, drugs, hacking, cybernetic augmentations, shamanism, fantasy creatures, artificial life, and an overall retrofuturistic and Cyberpunkish aesthetic. In this vast, complex world, liberty and self-determination play a pivotal role in the search for balance and justice for all, while the diverse characters are pawns in a gritty game of power, intrigues, and violence in which there is no place for surrender or subjugation.
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