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