Top 10 Themes of My Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk Detective Series: Liquid Cool

There are a lot of sub-genres in science fiction and I’ plan to write in quite a few of them. However, for Liquid Cool, my sci-fi detective thriller series I chose cyberpunk. But it’s my cyberpunk reimagined! Authors like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson are the most famous and the singular greatest movie of the genre is Sir Ridley’s Scott’s classic Blade Runner from 1982. However, the “golden years” of the cyberpunk genre, at least in Hollywood, ended back around 1985. Though interest exploded again with the Matrix movie trilogy. Most cyberpunk literature today is really not cyberpunk, including my own Liquid Cool. But Blade Runner and cyberpunk will be linked together forever and that’s what I was going for.

Why the interest in this category of science fiction? There was the utopian science fiction, “Star Trek-ian,” society, learning lessons and evolving into something better–or at least, wanting to. However, back in the ‘80s we were still in the Cold War—America versus the Soviet Union. Science fiction writers can show us the hopeful, but they can also show us versions of the likely, or what they feel to be likely based on the current societal trends. Enter cyberpunk and dystopian science fiction.

The darker side of science fiction is not new. Mary Shelley gave us the first science fiction novel with Frankenstein in 1818 and it was a dark and frightening one. Classic science fiction on television like The Twilight Zone and The (original) Outer Limits more often than not showed very dystopian futures and science (or man) gone awry. But cyberpunk gave us a new twist that endeared not only me, but millions of others and has never completely gone away–a gritty science fiction on the streets.

With my cyberpunk series, I put my own twist on the sub-genre. How? Construct a future from the current time into a cyberpunkish future? No. That’s not particularly creative in my mind. I wanted to re-imagine cyberpunk not as a writer in the ‘80s projecting out to 2015 and beyond. I would be a writer from that future, pretend I was back in the ‘80s, and write a different dystopian future. Here’s my Top 10 List!

1) Old = Mega-corporations. New = Mega-corporations and Uber-governments.

This has not only been a staple of cyberpunk, but many books and movies, especially conspiracy ones. The ubiquitous, all-powerful megacorporations controlling governments or replacing them altogether.  Well, this is not the ‘80s and it’s okay to feature dastardly megacorporations like the Weyland Yutani Corporation from the Alien movies, but we’re missing the big, fat elephant in the room—government! My series has its own “Cold War” but the opponents are mega-corporations versus uber-governments—both vying against each other for ultimate control. But interestingly, there are many people in both camps fighting to make sure that neither one ever does.

2) Old = Japan rules the world. New = Heavy Asian influence, including cool samurai swords.

Back in the ‘80s, there was also something else happening on the economic stage: the rise of Japan as a major economic global power. The first Die Hard movie, Rising Sun (Michael Crichton’s blockbuster book that became a mediocre movie), and Gung Ho. Americans really did think Japan was going to economically take over the world and cyberpunk seemed to incorporate that fear. Japan does play a major role in my series because of specific industry—bionics (yes, cyborgs!) But the world of my series will read more like that of the old accounts of New York’s urban, ethnic melting pot with one ethnic group dominating specific areas or industries, including China-Town and Old Harlem. As for Japanese samurai swords, they’re just cool so they’re in.

3) Old = Digital rules. New = Analog versus digital.

Much of the science fiction of that era was very prophetic. The big thing they missed was the pervasiveness of the cell phone/smartphone, but no one could predict Steve Jobs so that can be forgiven.  Also, since those writers were in the dawn of the computer age, they correctly foresaw past the Analog Age to the Digital Age, even if their view of digital was stuck in an old Atari game framework (a la the movie Johnny Mnemonic). The power of digital technology is quite astonishing, but so are the dangers. Hackers have gotten into the credit card records of major companies and even into the secret systems of the United States government–including the White House! We are in the digital age and we’re never going back (update: I’m not so sure about this statement I made back in 2015 anymore), but my series does an interesting thing. Earth did return to mostly analog technology after a catastrophic digital technological disaster that we only getting pieces throughout the series. But off-worlders (called “Up-Top”) take digital technology to limits we never imagined were possible. We have both technologies in its world and will provide a means to have some poignant examinations of technology as it relates to our daily lives.

4) Old = Robots, cyborgs and synthetic humans. New = No synthetic humans, but robots and cyborgs galore.

In the next book of my first After Eden series, there will be a scientific group that sets out to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is no God. They end up (according to them) doing quite the opposite. In cyberpunk stories, man is able to create biological humans and androids indistinguishable from actual humans, or create robots with such advanced artificial intelligence that they inevitably have to be classified as sentient beings. I personally believe we’ll be able to create an illusion of the former, but never the latter. Unfortunately, I believe we will be able to cheat and create all kinds of things that we shouldn’t and will pay a heavy price for it. Futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said it best when he described our most advanced robots as having “the intelligence of a retarded cockroach.” On the machine side, we will continue to advance, but to get to the point of sentience, I think not. That is not to say that we won’t turn over large parts of our life to some version of artificial intelligence—oops, oh wait, too late, we already do—and will continue to expand that. We will also advance our bionic technology. I do look forward to that day when we can say we’ve eliminated paralysis, blindness, and deafness from the world. Yes, we will achieve those things. “Brain-reading” technology is science fact, not science fiction anymore. But plugging brains into machines and downloading a person’s life essence into a robot will remain science fiction. In my cyberpunk series, they spend no time on notions of creating life, but in the practical (and profitable) realm of improving life through technology, especially mechanical. The “higher end” fixes involving genetic engineering and manipulation is reserved for the upper class. For everyone else, it’s the $999.99 bionic hand.

5) Old = Flying cars. New = Well, yeah!

There are many, many reasons why even if we could make the technology economically sound that we would never have the flying cars as seen the Fifth Element movie or any of the Star Wars films. For one simple word: terrorism. In my new series, they find a way to make it feasible for the simple reason that they have no choice. They are just too many people packed into their urban cities that roads have to be the skies. There are also other peculiarities of their metropolis that make this path the one their society embraces which doesn’t apply to us.