Cyberpunk Setting
Comment by Geoff Hinkley

Okay, just a few words of my own about writing this setting. First of all, it wasn't easy.

A number of you will probably want to ask me why we didn't just use Cyberpunk 2020 or 'Neuromancer' or even just say Cyberpunk and leave it at that. Basically, collaborative fiction needs a good framework to start off with, if only because it is very difficult to write for a collaborative fiction in a complete vacuum. A good framework is needed so everyone has a good idea of what goes and what doesn't.

However, I felt that a new Cyberpunk setting was needed for two reasons. First of all, most of you will have pretty strongly preconceived ideas of what Cyberpunk should be. Hopefully, using a slightly different setting will encourage people to be slightly more creative and original. Science Fiction should always be about pushing back boundaries. Secondly, most of the core of the Cyberpunk genre was written in the early Eighties and the world itself has moved on since, making quite a few of the assumptions and predictions made in that earlier work look pretty silly now.

So here is my Cyberpunk setting - set somewhere in the 2070s. Okay, it is not the most ludicrously detailed setting ever - Seven Wonders of the World and some extra notes on the great powers of the setting, Tachy-Capital and the GSSA. Hopefully, there should be enough there to give a flavour of the setting and start pumping those creative juices. The details are up to you though. Please do not e-mail me with questions like, "What actually happened at the Deutsche Industrien incident?" or "What does the GSSA know about the Virgo signal?" I don't know the answers. Hopefully, these questions will inspire people to go away and write some answers for themselves. This is, after all, meant to be a collaborative fiction.

Personally, having written the setting, I am planning to sit out of the proceedings for a bit (maybe help the Despot with the editing side) and let other people steer the way. But, fear not, I will be chipping in later with my own twisted morality play style that you have all come to love me for.

One last thing, one of the great strengths of collaborative fiction which, I think, has yet to be fully exploited is the way in which it can break away from the convention of a strong central plot. This is a purely individual plea, but it would be nice to see, perhaps, a number of different, overlapping plot strands as well as a few incidental episodes. I think that would be good.

So, read on and write on. Right on!

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