n2020  Check-in [871b94c673]

Added README.md version [157807d8a0].

            1  +# Working Title: Death Alley
            2  +
            3  +This is a writing project for which writing actual prose begins in November
            4  +2020, having performed some planning and outlining in the previous month(s).
            5  +
            6  +## What kind of story is this?
            7  +
            8  +It's a near-future speculative fiction thing dealing with (realistic-ish) AIs,
            9  +pseudo-literally-underground agitators, government contractors, and the
           10  +conflict between individual identity and conformist socialization tendencies.
           11  +
           12  +## Why this story?
           13  +
           14  +1. 2020 is the Year of Cyberpunk.  How do I know?  Read all about it:
           15  +
           16  +    [2020: The Year Of Cyberpunk](http://cyberpunkyear.com/)
           17  +
           18  +2. I read a book by a great cyberpunk author this year, and it was the first
           19  +   book he ever wrote that actually sucked.  It inspired me to do better.
           20  +
           21  +3. I have a theory about cyberpunk and postcyberpunk.  Basically, they're two
           22  +   genres taking place in the same world.  This provided a lot of inspiration
           23  +   for this story, too:
           24  +
           25  +    The above-board, white-market, mainstream, dominant paradigm is that of the
           26  +    postcyberpunk, where people have dayjobs and houses and are both
           27  +    technologically and socially connected.  It's high tech, normal life.  The
           28  +    technology is consumer and corporate oriented.  There are often AIs
           29  +    involved.  The postcyberpunk protagonists are normal people with corporate
           30  +    or government jobs, or occasionally independent consultants, typically with
           31  +    some technological savvy but usually not the "elite" of technologist
           32  +    fields.  Bad things happen to them, and they get pulled out of their
           33  +    comfortable suburban lives.  They have to deal with criminals and
           34  +    agitators, terrorists and corrupt members in otherwise "good guy" jobs
           35  +    (politicians, corporate managers and workers, law enforcement, and so on).
           36  +    Their task is, usually, to overcome the terrible events overtaking them and
           37  +    reclaim their "normal" lives with wives and kids and job security.
           38  +    Sometimes, they have to save the world along the way.
           39  +
           40  +    The gritty, sordid, black-market, outcast, hidden underworld is the world
           41  +    of the cyberpunk, where people are criminals either by choice or (more
           42  +    often) by circumstance and misfortune, where people have technical or
           43  +    combative (or, often, both) skills for which there is little need in the
           44  +    postcyberpunk world.  They may just be trying to survive, down on their
           45  +    luck, hunted by law enforcement or criminal bosses.  It's high tech, low
           46  +    life, to paraphrase Bruce Sterling.  The technology is illicit, stolen,
           47  +    makeshift, or top secret military/corporate stuff.  There are often AIs
           48  +    involved.  The cyberpunk protagonists.  The cyberpunk protagonists may be
           49  +    grifters, fixers, criminal middlemen, contract killers, or even
           50  +    revolutionaries trying to overturn the corruption of the dominant order.
           51  +    Bad things are always happening to them, but usually the story is about a
           52  +    time that's especially bad, even if it seems good at first, and they
           53  +    usually start out with a goal of either taking on a hard target or just
           54  +    basically surviving.  They have to deal with undercover cops and jackbooted
           55  +    oppressors, mob bosses and the average corrupt politician (because they're
           56  +    all corrupt), corporate managers and their soulless minions, and often
           57  +    duplicitous "friends" and other agents of betrayal.  They often lose in the
           58  +    end, or at least fail to achieve their beginning goals; bittersweet endings
           59  +    are not uncommon.  Sometimes, they have to save the world along the way,
           60  +    often by tearing down the dominant paradigm.
           61  +
           62  +    If you were paying attention, you might have noticed something about these
           63  +    two genres: each includes, in its list of potential antagonists and
           64  +    obstacles, the protagonists of the other genre.  The technology in the two
           65  +    genres mostly don't overlap, but seem entirely capable of coexisting in the
           66  +    same world.
           67  +
           68  +    To put it another way . . .
           69  +
           70  +    Cyberpunk says "They're replacing our souls with advertisements,
           71  +    criminalizing freedom and privacy, and concentrating all political and
           72  +    economic power in the hands of unaccountable psychopaths."
           73  +
           74  +    Postcyberpunk says "Yeah, but ***I got the new iPhone!  WOOHOO!***"
           75  +
           76  +    In either case, inject some action-drama that crosses the boundry between
           77  +    them, and you have a story.
           78  +
           79  +    The reason this entire wall of text helps explain how I was inspired to
           80  +    write this story is simple: I'm using elements of both genres in a single
           81  +    story to tie them together as a single world.
           82  +
           83  +---
           84  +
           85  +[`#cyberpunk2020`](http://cyberpunkyear.com)