“Dad Died on Discord” by Andrew Dana Hudson (Lightspeed, April 2026) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dad-died-on-discord/
When I listened to this story, I was reminded of the comedian who used to talk about how, in the geriatric homes our generation is all going to be begging the staff to turn up Duran Duran's "Hungry Like a Wolf." The "dad" in this story would be me if there's a version of this where I go on to Tumblr or AO3 and die while RPG shitposting or fanfic writing.
Argueably, this story isn't cyberpunk. The background worldbuilding is of a hopeful, recovering Earth. The vibe of the son's life if fully solarpunk. Meanwhile, dad is World of Warcrafting his last days with his online friends in a very cyberpunkish end.
The story probably isn't much more than "what's on the tin." But, I spent a lot of time afterward thinking about how so many of the early cyberpunk stories were hyper-focused on the youth culture, the young. For obvious reasons, of course. The kids were the early adopters. The young were the ones falling into video games, learning to code, cracking and hacking into places only the wild and foolish would go. The Old didn't get it. They were square, The Man, the corporate stooges.
Now, cyberpunk is old. Solarpunk is the hip new scene where all the kids are.
A friend of mine recently asked me if there were children in cyberpunk. They were specifically wondering about this in terms of family. Were there mothers with children in stories like this? I'm sure I'll run across one, but I couldn't immediately conjure an answer. The general impression is that if there are kids, they're orphans who are hard-scrabbling on the mean streets of CyberTown. Or they are masquerading in games as someone older, etc. This is kind of an antedote to that. There's a familial realtionship where dad is cyberpunk and son is solarpunk.
I'm going to be on the lookout for cyberpunk stories with families with children in it. If you know of any, feel free to recommend them!
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