Honolulu Hottie: a Hawaiian Cyberpunk story
In 1989 I read my first cyberpunk novel, William Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive. That novel got me reading science fiction again. Until then, I’d been on a Fantasy bender for the six years, and yes, you can get drunk on fantasy. My apologies to my brother and sister, for making them dress like hobbits and forcing them to call me The Great One. They partied like ewoks on Endor when I moved out for college.
Cyberpunk is considered an old genre (the cool kids are doing steampunk) but it appeals to the mundane science fiction reader in me. It’s mundane because Cyberpunk has similarities to reality, such as the absence of spaceships flitting from star to star at speeds faster than light (at least OUR spaceships). Cyberpunk stories are near future and filled with high-tech lowlifes. It’s a good genre for tales of “warning” because it’s mundane enough to see how our day-to-day life contributes to the tale’s vision.
What’s Hawaiian cyberpunk? Sunglasses and surfboards with datajacks? (Might as well do something with that leash around surfer’s leg.) Honolulu Hottie is my take on it. It’s a novelette which is like a novel but a third of the size because I only kept the good parts. The story’s about Nafi, a world champion surfer who got a regular job but get’s seduced by a political activist. She gets him in trouble, he loses his job, and they’re on the run from a corporate coverup that requires them dead. Surfboards, datajacks, crime, and poy. You know, Hawaiian cyberpunk.
Honolulu Hottie is live on the Kindle for $3.00 to the worldwide public.
Available in the Kindle Store
I’ll close with a surfer’s farewell: if you decide to ride that giant swell cresting the horizon, remember to keep the waxy side of the board up, the fin side down, and your datajacks rust free.
