Rachel’s Blog
Growing the Apocalypse
Updated on 3/25/2021: After this article was originally published, Meguey Baker graciously provided some additional insight into the PbtA engine. The article has been updated to include those insights in the "Enter the Apocalypse" section below. One afternoon in...
Resisting the Machine: A Human Solution to the Cyber Dystopia
“Technology is not the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system.” - Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology The use (and abuse) of technology to reshape the individual, society, and the world...
Free Creators Tools for Everyone
One of the big features of the cyber dystopia is that everything has a price. Every market is eaten up by giant corporations and any scrappy underdogs who set out to make a new market quickly get gobbled up or put out of business by the corporate titans that run the...
The Kindness of Strangers
This is the story of a small act of kindness that made a difference. I was maybe seven or eight years old, living in Brussels, and I was taking the metro with my mom and little sister. We were little, so naturally, we both suddenly took off running. I don’t remember...
Prescribing the Problem
"The act of rebellion left to us in a cyber dystopia is that we give a damn about people, even if it profits us nothing. Especially when it profits us nothing." I was living in LA at the time, commuting to a cubicle job down in Irvine on the five every morning,...
In Service to Technology
Changing the way we think about technology as a solution. I spend a lot of my time researching/thinking about systems and technology and how they impact us both on a global and personal level. There’s been a lot written about what’s wrong with existing structures, but...
2018 Reflections and Award Eligibility
Award season is upon us! It's an exciting time as writers come out of the woodwork at the end of the year to list their completed works for consideration, and celebrate everything they accomplished. It’s also a time to reflect on everything that’s happened this year,...
Voting With Our Dollars – The Catch-22 of the Modern Culture War
A friend of mine and fellow writer, Matthew Edwards, recently brought the Nike controversy to my attention. “Are you following the Nike stuff?” he DM’ed me. “Is there anything more cyberpunk than turning social protest into a marketing and advertising strategy?” For...
Data Point of One: Three Lessons Three Years In
Today, Facebook reminded me that it’s been exactly three years since I quit my old cubicle job and started a new chapter of my life. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. In no particular order, three things I’ve learned in those three years: 1. Change...
The State of Cyberpunk – Adam Myhr
This post is part of the State of Cyberpunk blog series. Adam Myhr can’t recall if it was the book Neuromancer by William Gibson or the video game by the same name that first introduced to him to cyberpunk. Either way, it was Shadowrun that ultimately sealed the deal...
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