One of the major themes of the story is a rebellion against the Orbitals which have seized power through the Rock War. Hardwired is a much more politically charged novel than Neuromancer was. I don’t think that is true, although they do share many of the same tropes. First, a friend brought to my attention the similarities the novel shares with Neuromancer, claiming that it is a Neuromancer clone. I had a number of biases going into this novel. All of this is set against the backdrop of the Rock War, which ended a conflict between orbital colonies and Earth with the Orbitals (read orbital based mega-corporations) dropping small asteroids on major cities, causing the fragmentation of the US government. Together, Cowboy and Sarah embark on a quest to discover who is trying to kill them, who is trying to subvert the Jockeys, and who is making a power play for the Earth. Cowboy (note that he is not a console cowboy) is a Deltajock, who runs goods across state lines in a fragmented United States, teams up with Sarah, a mud girl (a woman who lives on Earth in disadvantaged conditions rather than on the Orbitals) who is trying to make a better life for her drug and youth obsessed brother. The plot of this excellent novel also hit the spot, bringing excellent world building for our characters to live in and a story that had me hooked from chapter two. In Hardwired they were Mud Girls, Thirdmen, and Deltajocks. Many of his characters helped to further cement the archetypes that we have come to know in cyberpunk, such as the Razor Girl, Fixer, and Rigger, all by different names of course. Walter Jon Williams, the author of Hardwired, was even one of the original game testers for Cyberpunk 2020. Hard-edged outlaws living in an oppressed world, just trying to survive and maybe do a little good along the way. Outside of Neuromancer this is one of the best examples of classic cyberpunk. Those of you who had the opportunity to read our interview with Mike Pondsmith, already know that one of the major inspirations for the classic cyberpunk game, Cyberpunk 2020, was the novel Hardwired.

Hardwired by walter jon williams