The Bleak Environmental Future of Cyberpunk

 

I continue to listen to short stories in lieu of my usual podcasts. I listened to one last night that's been sticking with me called "Dreamweavers" by Alexander Weinstein (Lightspeed, September 2026) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dreamweavers/. It's a story that's metaphorically cyberpunk, I would say. What do I mean by that? Well, the people who are the dreamweavers are a fairly obvious metaphor for Generative AI, right down to the line that basically says "We knew we were destroying our world with what we were building." But, what they are doing/building is a kind of coded, virtual experience for the hyper-rich to escape into--which is classic cyberpunk. The ending of the story, too, reads better as metaphor? I won't spoil it as the story is brand-new, but the ending might read as somewhat out of the blue as and entirely too brutal if taken at face-value. Especially if you believe the two men in the story are actually friends, which I had no reason to doubt as a reader until the end. That being said, I was able to read it at the metaphorical level and so found the conclusion to be the right call, if you will.

The imagry and the world that Weinstein envisions feels far too possible and that's been a large part of why this story has been sticking with me. We basically continue the trajectory we're on and fuck up Earth. The rich make saving the planet almost impossible by hoarding and trading seed bank seeds like some kind of commodity they'll never use, but which is a status symbol to own a lot of. That was hard for me because the environment is one of thost things that I feel desperately helpless to save, since the problem can't be solved by individuals. It must be done collectively, world-wide, and must include the corporations who are the biggest polluters. The global pandemic broke my ability to believe that people can come together to save ourselves, so I often just dissolve into grief and helplessness.

I hate this timeline.

But, so that's my trigger warning for that one. If you want to listen to a story where a planet actually rejects human stupidity, you should check out: "Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds" by Trae Hawkins (Escape Pod, September 3, 2026) https://escapepod.org/2026/09/03/escape-pod-1061-pigeons-and-robots-and-pensive-worlds/ Despite being on the same theme and far, far more hopeful, I was weirdly less moved by this one--even though it is exactly the antedote to what ails me. I don't know what to say because I did enjoy a lot about it. Lots of the ideas in it are awesome and I am always down for fiction involving pigeons.