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.”
One of the great things about science fiction is that you can use to explore issues that mean a lot to you. It’s what writer Al Hess did in his cyberpunk / decopunk / gay romance / cozy post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel World Running Down (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Hess discusses what inspired and influenced this meaningful story.
When it comes to putting together their first short story collections, some writers start out with a theme or a plan and stick to it. Then there’s writers like Izzy Wasserstein, who, in assembling hers, All The Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From (paperback), found that a theme emerged anyway.
In the following email interview, Wasserstein discusses what inspired and influenced these stories, and why she ran with the emergent theme as opposed to running away from it.
Given that she works for Meta on their Oculus VR gaming headset, you’d expect that writer Kimberly Unger’s day job would’ve had a huge influenced on her VR cyberpunk techno-thriller The Extractionist (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). But as she explains in the following email interview, not only was that not the case, but the reverse isn’t entirely true, either.
Bookstore shelves are quickly filling up with novels that are reworkings of classic tales (Madeline Miller’s Circe; Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne…). But you might want to wait a moment before adding Rich Larson’s Beowulf-inspired post-cyberpunk sci-fi novel Ymir (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) to that shelf. While he admits in the following email interview that Ymir‘s working title was Cyberpunk Beowulf, he also says that his novel doesn’t owe nearly so much to the original epic poem as his original title suggests.
As much as people love giant robots, no one worships them as if they were gods. Well, not in our reality, anyway. But they do in the world of Zoe Hana Mikuta’s young adult cyberpunk / dustpunk sci-fi novel Gearbreakers, and that was kind of the problem. A problem so big, in fact, that it didn’t just fit into one book. Hence we have Godslayers (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), the second half to Mikuta’s epic duology. In the following email interview, Mikuta explains what inspired and influenced this second half.
Usually when we think of djinn, we think of fantasy tales. And usually when we think of AI overlords, we think of cyberpunk sci-fi. But one day, not so long from now, when we think of stories involving djinn and AI, we’ll think of Saad Z. Hossain, author of the cyberpunk sci-fi / cli-fi / urban fantasy novella Kundo Wakes Up (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Hossain talks about this genre-mashing story, the novella that narratively preceded it, The Gurkha And The Lord Of Tuesday, and the new novel that narratively precedes both of them, Cyber Mage.