If you’ve ever done it, you know: cat sitting for a friend is annoying. Stupid cats never stay still long enough for you to sit on them.
But for writer April McCloud, cat sitting for a friend wasn’t that bad, since it inspired her to write this new noir-ish cyberpunk sci-fi thriller novel The Switch (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, she explains how that happened, as well as what else inspired and influenced this novel.
While virtual reality doesn’t count as reality, yet, it someday might.
Which brings me to Keith Anthony Baird’s new dystopian / cyberpunk science fiction / urban fantasy novella SIN:THETICA (paperback, Kindle), in which a bounty hunter has to hunt his bounty in VR.
In the following email interview, Baird discusses what inspired and influenced this story.
When we think of artificial intelligence, we usually expect it to be, well, intelligent.
But in his new “sci-fi that’s a bit cyberpunky” novel Mal Goes To War (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Edward Ashton gives us an AI who, well, let’s just say he’s perfectly capable of making bad decisions.
In the following email interview about Mal, Ashton talks intelligently about what inspired and influenced this smart story.
Apologies for spoiling a movie you should’ve seen 31 years ago, but one of the big shocks of 1992’s Alien3 came when Bishop from Aliens showed up, only it wasn’t that Bishop, it was Michael Bishop Weyland, the creator of the Bishop android. And while he wants the queen growing inside Ripley, he also wants his ‘droid back.
Which is where the story begins for T.R. Napper’s cyberpunk-infused military science fiction thriller Aliens: Bishop (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Napper discusses how he came to write this book, as well as whether the real Bishop, iconic actor Lance Henriksen, has gotten his copy yet.
You’d be forgiven for thinking no one reads poetry. You never see a poet on The Tonight Show. Or someone wearing a t-shirt they got when their favorite poet performed at the local football stadium. And yet, amid all the talk of AI created art, there’s been a lot of conversations about computer generated poetry.
Which leads us to Do You Remember Being Born? (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), a new novel by author Sean Michaels in which a famous poet is asked to collaborate with an AI. In the following email interview, Michaels discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as how he used AI to write it.
Read enough murder mysteries, or watch any cop shows or movies, and you’ll inevitably hear a police officer say that the victim, “Never saw it coming.” But what if no one ever saw it coming because they were blinded by the murderer? This is the idea behind Thomas Mullen’s new novel Blind Spots (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook), in which something caused people all over the world to go blind, and while they’ve since compensated with cybernetic implants, a murdererous hacker is now taking advantage of these devices. In the following email interview with Mullen, he discusses what inspired and influenced this cyberpunk sci-fi noir mystery thriller.
While many writers follow the edict that you should write what you know, it can be a double-edged sword, as a good story in which something bad happens might make you think, “I hope this is something they don’t really know.” It’s where I found myself while conducting the following email interview with author Iori Kusano about their cyberpunk sci-fi novella Hybrid Heart (paperback, Kindle), which they call a “cautionary tale.”
In the darkly humorous cyberpunk sci-fi novel Mickey7, worker’s comp isn’t a thing…and for a rather unfortunate reason.
But job security must be because that story’s titular worker is back for, well, more work.
In the following email interview, author Edward Ashton discusses what inspired and influenced the sequel, Antimatter Blues (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
Some writers hate talking about genres, some don’t mind it at all, or embrace it. Then you have writers like James Callan, who created his own for what he calls his salacious misadventure cyberpunk sci-fi novel A Transcendental Habit (paperback). In the following email interview, Callan discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as what makes something a “salacious misadventure.”