Now That the War is Over, the Cyberpunk Edition

 

“Mother’s Hip” by Corey Jae White (Lightspeed, January 2026) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/mothers-hip/

“Seb Dreams of Reincarnation,” by Aimee Ogden (Escape Pod, August 2017) https://escapepod.org/2017/08/17/ep589-seb-dreams-of-reincarnation/

When I listened to "Mother's Hip" it put me in mind of "Seb Dreams of Reincarnation" (as well as "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"), so I thought I'd talk about them all in that vague way that I've been doing.

"Mother's Hip" really felt to me almost like an attempt to redeem "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter." It's very much a trans story about a woman who was previously embodied as a kind of drone birthing helicopter in a future where the Amazon-analog is at war with the on-the-ground Anarchists. 

The part of it that reminded me of "Seb Dreams of Reincarnation" is the haunting sense that sometimes when you're freed of 'service' (even something detrimental, like war,) you miss it. In the case of both Seb and Hynd (from "Mother's Hip"), they both miss some parts of the physicality and community/family of their previous embodiments as machines. Hynd is still looking for community by the end of the story, whereas Seb has a new made-family that has fully adopted him.

I had a conversation over lunch yesterday with a friend about cyberpunk and, to me, this is what cyberpunk does at its best. It imagines this kind of transhuman state--one where we are embodied in machines or otherwise brained-mapped onto something fully alien and still exist... as something. Of course the question is: as what? Can we still be called human? What essential humanity still exists? What part of humanity is, perhaps, bettered or improved in such a non-bodied state?

These are the questions that I tune into cyberpunk for, you know? I was telling my friend that I'm sort of an optimist, generally, and if there is some kind of umbrella label I always go for the most expansive version. So, I tend to be fully onboard for stories that ask me to imagine even the most disembodied version of a person as a person. And in both of these stories, they do a reverse, if you will. The people were once disembodied and now are back in their "meat sack" trying to deal with the fact that their sense of sense is limited now by the stupid things that the stupid human body can do. 

Good stuff. I recommend both stories, though "Seb Dreams of Reincarnation" left me feeling more hope as it had a more traditional happy ending. (A some point, I may try to do a deep dive about endings.)