Hardwired

Hardwired is like a datablast straight from the cyberpunk id. Guns-and-drugs-and-sex-and-tech-and-power all tangled up and flashing with neon lights.

Cowboy is a panzerboy, the pilot of an armored hovercraft smuggling lifesaving medicine across what used to be the midwest, before the orbital corporations shattered Earth’s government in a hostile take-over preceded by meteor bombardment. Sarah is a bodyguard and assassin, hustling in Tampa to buy herself and her brother two tickets off-world. When a job and a betrayal bring the two of them together, they decide to fight back: for money, for revenge, for respect, for the sheer thrill of armored combat in the glow of the interface.

What transpires is some high-octane action in a neon hellscape, as Cowboy and Sarah slash across a damaged world writhing under the exploitation of the orbitals. There’re all the cyberpunk tropes you’d expect: Addicts, deviants, megacorps, mercenaries, operators, and that awesome mid-80s computer tech. Hardwired doesn’t aspire to high art or grand statements, but it gets what it means to be an outlaw and to fight for what you believe in against something huge and slick and inhuman in all aspects.

This is one of my new favorite books, a cyberpunk essential, and has catapulted Williams way up my ‘to read’ list.