Sir Ridley Scott’s 1984 Apple Commercial. — one of greatest commercials of all time (and before he was ‘Sir’)
“A Garden of Pure Ideology…We Are One People…We Shall Prevail!”
Now we’re in a world that has depth and reality to me. Not a cyberpunk universe of just evil mega-corporations. A complex cyberpunk universe of mega-corporations and uber-governments. Besides not predicting the cell-phone/smartphone, isn’t that the big oversight of old cyberpunk. But just as they couldn’t predict Steve Jobs, they couldn’t have predicted how massive government would grow under both Democratic and Republic administrations. It is actually quite astonishing and scary when you stop think about it. I would argue the size government to be scarier than any dastardly mega-corporation of fiction, namely because the latter is real.
However, despite my own biases, my upcoming cyberpunk series will have plenty of bad guys in the shadows, good guys in the overcast light, but a lot of grays. Not a detente between the United States and the Soviet Union as in the 1980s, but a detente between the mega-corporations and the uber-government with average people squeezed in between. That’s a world I’m interested in and can write my detective story in. That’s a world I can get readers excited about.
I said I wanted to put a new spin on the cyberpunk esthetic. What else will you find in this new re-imagining of the cyberpunk universe besides cyborgs and digital samurais?
#Cyberpunk #ScienceFiction
Austin Dragon is the author of over 30 books in science fiction, fantasy, and classic horror. His works include the sci-fi detective LIQUID COOL series, the epic fantasy FABLED QUEST CHRONICLES, the international futuristic epic AFTER EDEN Series, the classic SLEEPY HOLLOW HORRORS, and new military sci-fi PLANET TAMERS series. He is a native New Yorker but has called Los Angeles, California home for more than twenty years. Words to describe him, in no particular order: U.S. Army, English teacher, one-time resident of Paris, ex-political junkie, movie buff, Fortune 500 corporate recruiter, renaissance man, futurist, and dreamer.
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