Richard Levesque

I was pleased to see that the first review of my cyberpunk novel, The Somniscient, started off by saying, “In The Somniscient, Levesque has come up with one of the first original themes in cyberpunk in years.” That’s pretty cool, praise I’m very happy to receive.

It got me thinking, though–What are the themes in cyberpunk? It’s a sub-genre of science fiction that’s been around since the early 1980s, dating back to William Gibson’s early stories and his ground-breaking novel, Neuromancer (Gibson’s short story “Burning Chrome” would have to be my favorite, though). In those stories and the ones that followed as the sub-genre took off, we see a lot of focus on technology, especially the melding of human and machine as tech gets into characters’ brains and their lives are never the same. Conflict in these stories often comes in the form of large corporations or dystopian entities trying to use the tech to their advantage while the lone hacker or band of renegades fights the power.

The thing about cyberpunk that I always found so appealing, though, was the characters’ low-class status. In a cyberpunk book or story, the protagonist isn’t even your average Joe. Rather, the hero is somewhere below the average Joe, a down-and-out type whose only means of survival is the ability to bounce a lot of ones and zeroes around in order to make a buck. That’s where the punk in cyberpunk comes in. I’m not sure who first described cyberpunk as being about “high tech and lowlifes” but it’s pretty apt.

Gibson hit the jackpot when he came on the scene in the early 80s in part because his books and stories were timed beautifully with the advent of personal computers, and his down-and-out characters tapped into the idea that having a keyboard of one’s own could have a leveling effect, allowing the otherwise disenfranchised to have a little bit of power and maybe take some away from the people who already had way too much of it–the whole point of “Burning Chrome.”

The dystopian element seems like a natural development when you consider the nature of power. The down-and-out punk needs something to rebel against, and a powerful government or corporation fits the bill nicely.

And the appeal of cyberpunk has only grown as we’ve gotten into the era of social media and user-created content. The access points have gotten smaller and smaller–from desktop to laptop to phone (even if phones are starting to get bigger now). How much longer until it’s just a chip in one’s head? And until then, readers–not just the lowlifes but more likely a readership made up of the 99%–get to fantasize about having more power than just the ability to build websites or post videos but to really become one with technology and leave the limitations of the world behind.

Those are the kinds of things I’ve tried exploring in The Somniscient. Is it ground-breaking? I hope so. Maybe you’ll let me know.

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