Because, to me, it is the genre that most poignantly captures the zeitgeist of our current societal woes and fears. It's a mirror held up to our present, reflecting our anxieties about the loss of humanity in an increasingly digital world, the looming omnipresence of AI, and the stark realities of societal violence and inequality. In the pixelated shadows of cyberpunk, we see the reflection of our world – not as it is, but as it could be.

The literary works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson provided the foundational text of my cyberpunk education. As the internet rose to prominence with the CERN’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, so did the genre reach its peak. As always with new tech, a primal fear of the unknown grips us humans. Such literary manifestation can be found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which revolves the invention of electricity.

We haven’t changed that much since 1818.

Visually speaking, it was Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner that got me hooked at a very young age. From then on, I devoured all I could watch. From Gibson’s adaption of Johnny Mnemonic to Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, with everything I could find in between – The Matrix trilogy, Alita Battle Angel, Blade Runner 2049, Minority Report, Upgrade, Ready Player One, I Robot, Dredd, Elysium, Chappy, The Creator – the list goes on...

Then, everything changed for me when CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077. The video game, based on Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk Table Top Roleplaying Game, took me further into the genre’s narrative than I could imagine. It took me weeks to stomach the amazing storytelling as I finished the game, panting and in tears.

That was the pivotal moment when it struck me. CD Projekt Red have managed to make lightning strike twice. As with their monumental success with The Witcher series (based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s book series), the took a well-known IP (if you’re a geek, of course) and turned it into narrative gold.

But, doing so, they managed to revitalize a genre that had slowly lost its main appeal along the years. After all, we now live in a 1985’s dystopia, give or take a few catastrophes and technological dark wonders. Worse than that, we only get the tedious bits from this “dark future”, as Pondsmith calls it. the quelling of populations, the slow disappearance of the human spirit.

Not the anarchy part. Where’s the big “Fuck You”, the middle finger that Neo gives Agent Smith during his interrogation in the first Matrix installment? But I digress.

The crux of my point, where we come at last, is that the genre has been given a second life, with welcome additions to its code. As with Cyberpunk 2077’s amazing love stories with NPCs (Judy, I still love you with all my Female V’s heart), the profoundly nihilistic aspect of the characters navigating the 80s and 90s for mere personal survival has given way to something more.

And so, within my own universe, I want to delve deeper into other aspects of this genre, all the while keeping true to its main concept. Spirituality, literature, poetry, love and human connections are all concepts I have taken away from Dan Simmon’s amazing work in his Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium and Olympos saga.

Yet, amidst this high-tech dystopian vista, I yearned to explore something more profound, something intrinsically human. My vision was to delve beyond the chrome and glass, to find the beating heart within the machine. I sought to weave a narrative that, while steeped in the genre's traditional themes of corporate dominance and technological omnipotence, also explored the enduring human spirit.

In the end, my attraction to cyberpunk stems from a desire to tell stories that are as spiritually rich as they are technologically advanced. I believe that within the cold, digital frontiers of the cyberpunk world, there exists a profound opportunity to explore the eternal quest for meaning, connection, and humanity. It is in the shadows of this neon-drenched dystopia that I find the brightest glimmers of hope, resilience, and human spirit.

Until next time!