Okay so I'm only at like the first chapter but I honestly can't tell if the stupid little bildrungsroman bit about the midwestern tech bro turned feudal lord is intended as satire.
Choice bits:
...(he) found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behaviors were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly.
...while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others.
Honestlt I'd assume satire but coming from what I know about Stephenson I'm really not sure.
So Shadowrun game books being shopping catalogs for defining your character by what brand of laser rifle he operates and barely even caring that you can't improve the society you're fighting for... is totally in line with the very roots of cyberpunk. Great.
Has there ever been a single kernel of hope in the genre, or has it always been a sham?
William Gibson wrote some foundational pieces of cyberpunk that are a lot more savory and have significantly less of Stephenson's libertarian ideological baggage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson
that's more like it...
I like his work enough that I quote him on one of my own books' chapter headers, specifically "The future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed."
Just don't follow him on Twitter unless you want concentrated libbery.
I did say more savory, not really a comrade. :soviet-huff: