Religion and Cyberpunk

 

Fervent by cantis5 (Deviant Art)

Religion and cyberpunk is, of course, close to my heart. My first published novels (the AngeLINK series) are largely about a dystopia where America has officially become a theocracy. Your access to social media (and all other online services) is dependent on being officially registered as a member of a number of "acceptable" religions. Those, of course, include the big three, if you will: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, but also goes all the way down to things like Wicca, etc. Our main character is an ex-communicated Catholic who lost all her online priviledges... and is trying to make a living as a privite eye, a detective.

All of my AngeLINK books were out of print until recently when Wizard's Tower Press re-issued them. So, they're very dated in the way of twenty-five plus year old books, but feel free to check them out if you're at all interested. 

The short story inspiring this nostaglic little trip is:

“Terms of Enlightenment” by Patrick Hurley (Lightspeed, March 2026) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/default/terms-of-enlightenment/

This story is fairly straight-forwardly cyberpunk, in my opinion, as our antihero, Jay, has been sentenced to "VSIM" (virtual simulation) rehabilitation by a judge and what follows is kind of classic Buddhist story of redemption and tigers, but with hackers. Like, "Should you kill Buddha on the road?" with the answer being, "Maybe, if it was simulated reality!" (except not, because our antihero does, in fact, have empathy and mercy.)

Listening to this was interesting because the narrator has a British accent and that (to my easily influenced American ears) made the story seem grittier and more anchored in a cyberpunk world, for some reason. It also cast the Buddhism in a more surprising light, because the voice talking to me was decidedly "Western." 

Buddhist images are commonly associated with cyberpunk, thanks to the fact that so many of early cyberpunk writers set their stories in Japan and, of course, Japan has its own very strong cyberpunk movement. But, people have extended this to other religions as well. There are Jewish cyberpunk stories that involve mechanical/technological reimagings of the golem folklore, as well as books like He, She and It by Marge Percy and the comic book character Rueben Flagg from American Flagg by Howard Chaykin. Islam had its cyberpunk in the Buyadeen Cycle series by George Alec Effinger and a short story that I haven't read yet by Bruce Sterling called "Compassionate, the Digital" (which you can read here: https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1560380883100.pdf) among others. I'm sure there are books beyond my own that feature various sects or branchs of Christianity and cyberpunk... and not just in a Christian Literature kind of way. 

I suspect that the reason for all of this has to do with what I have been referring to as "the questions of cyberpunk." These are the themes that you tend to see a lot in early cyberpunk as well as some of the more recent iterations and those are things like, "What is our relationship to the digital world and what does it do to our sense of empathy, our 'soul,' our basic  humanity, if you will?" It's not surprising that religion finds its way into these stories from time to time because religion also answers (or tries to) very similar questions like "What does it mean to be human? Do I exist beyond my body?" etc. 

Also, some of the big three as they are practiced today, in the modern world, stand largely in opposition to the digital experience that allows for trans and queer existance. For a writer, the conflict basically presents itself easily when you want to explore things like "What does gender even mean if I am a brain in a jar?" since religions (or at least some branches as they are interpretted today by the more conservative elements in our society) have a very strong feeling about what it means to inhabit gender n a "traditional" way. 

The Irony of Cyberpunk Youth Culture

“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!

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/

Sex Work anc Cyberpunk

 

I've already talked a little about the short-lived cyberpunk podcast that I was involved with called Mona Lisa Overpod, https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-mona-lisa-overpod-182995443/

I was the person who ended our run for reasons of my own, but I do regret the fact that we were never able to tackle some of the more interesting proposed episode subjects, like the one of the title of this post. 

Possibly the first time I ran across sex work and sex workers in cyberpunk as more than just background noise was in the independently published American comic book American Flagg, where the hero was an ex-porn star turned cop. The main character, Rueben Flagg, lost his job because he was AI copied and replaced in the films, a problem that might soon be facing any number of Hollywood actors for real, in this, The Worst Timeline.

The cyberpunk of that early era mostly treated sex workers like they did queer folks--as evidence that the world had gone to crap. The background underworld that our hero moved through was DANGEROUS and thus filled with hos and homos, if you will. It was rough as a young queer (with friends who did sex work) in the late 1980s to finally be seeing representation, only to have it be a sign of the impending dystopian apocalypse. 

It's interesting to me that queer (especially trans) protags are still often found in cyberpunk. More often now-a-days, as the story I talked about not long ago "Charlotte Incorporated," when we see LGBTQIA+ characters, they stand in for "the everyman." (<--ironic use here.) So, even though queerness seems to still be intrinsict to dytopian futures, that queerness is at least now centered often in positive ways.

I'm not sure sex workers have yet had their day.

And I say this as someone who has written a cyberpunk story abotu a sex worker (which you can find in the anthology, The Reinvented Detective, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW569BR1?lv)  

However, tht might be changing...

***

“The Girlfriend Experience” by C. Z. Tacks (Lightspeed, September 2025) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-girlfriend-experience/

 ***

This story should probably, however, come with some content warnings. The absolutely incredibly crafted opening paragraph does give you a clear picture of what to expect, however:

The company man’s smile showed off his perfect teeth. Evie hated that smile; it meant he was going to kill her again.

What follows is a cyberpunk murder mystery, with the lovely twist that the victim isn't, given this opening, who you might expect... though because of this opening, I did spend much of the story absolutely worried for Evie (a great way to infuse tension and conflict, for those of you out there who are studying the craft of writing.) 

I won't go into the murder mystery too much because I don't want to spoil the exprience for anyone who decides to pick this story up. It is also a new enough story that even regular fans of Lightspeed Magazine might not have had a chance to read it yet. 

Instead, what I found most fascinating is the techological advances proposed for the "oldest profession." A lot of other authors and creators have forseen dolls or skins or holographic projections that sex workers might don in order to become the person you most crave. This is not the first time, I've come across tech that inables a specific kink, but this is possibly the first time that I've seen the enhancement be a non-virtual. This is physical, very hardcore tech.

And you get introduced to it right away. Very viscerally.

I might, in some future post, talk about graphic violence/descriptions in cyberpunk because, in someway, I do think they are part of the aesthetic. I blame, as one must, Blade Runner for this trend/trope. I actually walked out of Blade Runner in the theater because I couldn't take the graphic violence. I later saw the whole movie? But, I missed my chance to be super-cool and be able to say that I first saw it in the theater... because Pris's (speaking of "basic pleasure models") death did me in. To be fair to me, I was underage for an R rated film, not that people much cared back in those days, and I had been stood up on a date. So, I wasn't in the best of moods!

I do have to wonder, however, how much the two are linked, particularly in cyberpunk. 

I mean, sex and violence are obviously a Thing.

Sex is a messy physical process and so is physical violence. Both are considered base instincts--not something that fancy, well-heeled people admit to doing. So, again, in order for a dystopia to feel gritty, dark, and rough sex and violence need to be present, on stage, and as graphic as possible, perhaps?

I don't know. I'm not sure I'm writing these blogs because I have any real answers. I'm mostly writing them to scratch the itch of wanting to explore both cyberpunk and the things I'm currently reading. So, I guess that's all I'll say for now. I did really enjoy "The Girlfriend Experience" particularly for the cleverness of the murder mystery and the resolution therein. So, since I won't spoil that, you'll have to go read it for yourself!