What Happens at the end of Cyberpunk?

TL:DR - I’m seeking submissions of up to 3,000 words for a Cyberpunk Horror anthology set in the same universe as my next novel (though I’m not being overly strict about the universe). It’s paid at a rate of AUD$10/500 words, and I will be accepting between two and four stories (hopefully four). Submissions close August 16 2025, so you’ve got a month and a half from when this substack post goes live.

Click here to learn more and to submit your story

I have a fascination with Cyberpunk and I’ve had it ever since I helped curate an exhibition based on Blade Runner at uni in 2013. There’s something that intrigues me about the way its critique of capital processes, its lurid and overbearing colour scheme, and its retroactive postmodern rejection of sci-fi utopias has apparently become something to aspire to. To me, it’s the ur-example of the power of protagonism.

Life for cyberpunks kinda sucks. The first chapter of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, as he’s codifying the genre’s aesthetic in literature, is the story of desperate street rat Henry Case being hunted by an unknown agent, as he bludgeons his mind in a self-destructive drug rampage. Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, two years earlier, is an always angry, often drunk, bigoted cop who learns about the inherent humanity of consciousness through murder.

These guys are not having a good time. But to look at the vast majority of cyberpunk literature that comes out these days you’d be forgiven for believing that being bombarded with neon 24-7 and having your limbs ripped off and replaced with a gun totally fucking ruled. The fact that a not insignificant number of cyberpunk artists flog their wares off via the libertarian wet dream of NFT marketplaces tells me that a lot of the population didn’t realise that a glowing dystopia is still a dystopia.

I do like the aesthetic, I really do. And cyberpunk movies and novels kick ass. For example, the Matrix has got more cool shit in it than anything I’ve ever seen. A guy gets kung fu loaded into his head?! And then he goes and kicks a bunch of guys? Hell yeah brother. Deckard watching a dove fly away after the tears in rain speech? Hell yeah brother. That interlude in Ghost in the Shell where they’re just looking at the buildings? Hell yeah, brother.

But I wouldn’t want to live in this world. God no.

Cyberpunk is a hard genre to write in these days, because so much of our existence is kinda already Cyberpunk. We’re already hackers, but with sleek phones instead of netdecks, and it’s algorithms we’re trying to break instead of security systems. We rail against corpos, but not for access to the mainfraim, it’s because our printer is out of cyan. Overbearing ads are everywhere but it’s fine because… actually no that still sucks. I consider living in Melbourne as I do to be an existence filled with the most boring and frustrating parts of what cyberpunk promised.

But if we live in cyberpunk now, and we’ve seen what cyberpunk was before it turned into reality… what happens next?

That’s what my next novel is about. It explores a world where the neon has shattered. There’s functionally only one corporation left, and if you aren’t able to use its services, you’re shut out of society. Climate change has run amok, and humanity is grasping onto itself to stay warm, only to become more and more disconnected.

I’ve written a series of stories set in the same universe, and I want to hear about other people’s nightmare future scenarios as well. This will form a companion anthology to the novel, and will be part of the same kickstarter campaign.

So, think about it. What happens in a world that was already one of sharp contrasts, of desperation between haves and have nots? What happens when the have nots lose what scant nothings they had? Where do we end up if profits over people is allowed to go to its logical end point?

I’m seeking between two and four stories of up to 3,000 words. They are set in the same universe as the novel, but I’m not being hard and fast with this at all. If you have something that fits into the genre of “Late Stage Cyberpunk Horror” please send something in!

I want to hear the stories of the disconnected.

Here’s the link again. Godspeed.

If you have questions, reach out in the comments, message me on instagram or email me at huntingsunrise@gmail.com