this is a quick answer.

One thing that I love about Cyberpunk is that it is close enough to reality that we can live real life using the genre as a guide. I am an older biotech and business guy who Washed Out of the Program. I am Retired but still Active. So a fictional character in the genre for me might be some sort of Doc or Corporate Type who is a Mentor and a Protector to the the Younger Tech Operatives. If I were younger and more fit I would try to get into a Cybertech LARP. White Wolf Rules would be the Best Rules for that.

There is an SF novel series on China called Chung Kuo or the Middle Kingdom. I have not read the books but I own them. They are in storage. I know that it would be a huge feat, but we must have Democracy in China. We are in a dire situation. Democracy is the only possible solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo_(novel_series)

Haven't read it in years.

Canticle for Liebowitz is a good book. Who has time to read in these difficult times? I just read a piece of Desperate Sons last month, about the Sons of Liberty, germane to our current political situation. Also read a piece of Nance's book The Plot To Betray America. Tried to get into Maddow's Prequel but did not have the time or the will for it. I am turning to fiction to try and save my sanity. I am outraged. Nietzche said "We have Art So That We Do Not Die From Reality".

I just finished it. His humor is a balm for the soul. Any of his books would lift your spirits.

Thanks for the Rec Blue Flower. I will see if my City Library has it.

Any one of them will put a smile on your face. Fever Beach is about a bunch of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers rejects in Florida. It drives home the point that MAGAs are morons, destined to fail. I'm now reading a book about Einstein's spirituality. Called I Am Part of Infinity by Kieran Fox. It's fascinating.

I am a big Jack Vance fan, and I think his Lyonesse trilogy is one on the best fantasy books ever. Suldrun's Garden. The Green Pearl, and Maduoc. His Sci Fi books are great too.

I appreciate all of your posts but doesn't anyone have anything to say about the politics?

All billionaires are sociopaths. Even billionaires who recognize they are sociopaths later on in life and try to reform themselves will not be of any help to your resistance. They will drag you into their world and your soul will be lost.

Most Science Fiction is pure fantasy, especially the sorts that involve faster-than-light travel or time travel, which is simply not possible in this universe.

Furthermore I don't expect natural-born humans will ever have a significant presence in space beyond low earth orbit. Were just too damned fragile and the immense resources required to keep humans alive and functional in space are all for naught. Any practical thing humans can do in space machines can do better, and that gap is getting wider. If our unsustainable world industrial civilization survives just a little longer we'll probably send a few more humans to the moon, some of whom may come back alive, and that will be that.

I've read Dune three times in my life, once as a teen, once in middle age, and then again in my sixties. I still don't get it. Who are all these horrible people and why should I care? As the author of that fictional universe I would have dropped a giant rock on that fictional human civilization before it left its home planet. Maybe that's what happened to the dinosaurs. Maybe that's what will happen to us.

I read a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy and subscribe to Analog, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, sometimes others. I usually read them cover to cover except for a few authors I find especially irritating, especially those who are still writing apocalyptic fiction. The genre of apocalyptic science fiction reached its peak with A Canticle for Leibowitz and its been downhill ever since. Now it's just plain lazy.

One of the things my wife and I had in common before we met was that we'd spent some time hanging out with various Science Fiction authors (some before they were famous) and we both already had rather large collections of Science Fiction books, magazines, and poorly xeroxed slash.

I have no interest in horror. I've seen enough of that shit in real life, even the supernatural sorts of horror which may not have been real to others but definitely were to me at the time. Meds are helpful but the PTSD doesn't go away.

I started college as an engineering major and attended a few of the original West Coast Computer Faires. I'd already built my own computers by then.

I remember thinking at the third Faire, in Los Angeles, 1978, "Uh, oh, this isn't going to turn out well..."

And it didn't. Guys like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and a lot of people behind the scenes burned down the Utopia that might have been. They tore down the electric trolley lines and replaced them with busses belching diesel fumes. They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.

That was about the time I was changing my major from engineering to biology. My then-girlfriend rode the waves of the microprocessor and personal computer revolution. After we broke up she was buying a house in La Jolla while I was living in the garden shed of a Viet Nam war veteran, studying evolutionary biology, running long distances, and spending a lot of my free time in the university computer lab.

The internet and computers we suffer today were the Science Fiction of my youth. I was there at the birth of these monstrous industries and do not regret walking away from them.

Thanks for the reply. I just disagree that all billionaires are sociopaths. Some are good people and are responsible stewards of their fortunes. I believe that they should be taxed reasonably, not taxed out of existence. We might have to agree to disagree on some points. I am open to further discussion.

Sorry about the PTSD. I have Trauma Issues too. Meds help. I hope that you are recovering.

I need to note that I am not a Horror fan either. It is a genre for actual sociopaths and those that have to deal with them (family, survivors of sociopathic abuse, etc.). Some casual fans exist but I am concerned about some of the people that are drawn to the genre.

I will add that I like Gothic Horror like Edgar Allen Poe. I intended to write a Vampire Trilogy similar to Anne Rice's work except more Masculine and History and War Oriented. The Trilogy Titles are -- Immortal Blood (I believe this title has been taken. I have had this title for decades), Eternal Night, and Infinite Darkness. After the Trilogy was concluded I intended to Open up the Immortal Blood world to other Authors through an Antholgy Book or Series. I really would have liked to have met Ann Rice. She is one of the people that made me want to write.