#cyberpunkNOW and the Dystopian Moment

"If you had any pity for dystopian, banker-addled, Brexit-afflicted London you'd probably try reading this." -Bruce Sterling // The economy and climate are collapsing. Borders are being built up. Yet everyone is connected moreso than ever before. CEOs and squatters with smartphones are conjoined in the consensual mass hallucination. Relationships are right-swiped, and exes hack each other's accounts. Cryptocurrencies buy research chemicals on the darkweb. Social media pages become memorials to the dead. Hashtags spark revolutions. Mass surveillance is both the business model of the internet and business as usual in the perpetual war on terror. Is this cyberpunk? Is this dystopia? Who cares? This is #cyberpunkNOW // Volume One of the London Reader focuses on short stories, minifiction, and poetry that explores the deep-reaching personal, social, and political implications of technology on our lives and the world around us, re-examining society through the lenses of cyberpunk and science fiction. It features interviews with the founders of cyberpunk, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, as well as sci-fi great Kim Stanley Robinson. The three are joined by fiction and poetry from Ike Hamill, Lena Ng, Will Cerbone, Dann Was, Francine Brewer, Zak Kain, Benn Ward, Reishi Rousseau, George Bartlett, and others, as well as artwork by Shinji Toya and Core246.

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The London Reader brings you a diverse range of thought-provoking voices in contemporary creative writing. Featuring both up-and-coming and established authors, the fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry in each volume engages and entertains readers around a single topic. In this fashion, the London Reader is unique among literary magazines. Each volume, like a gallery, is curated by a guest editor around a central genre or theme.

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