Abstracts Category : Other

Merging Magic and Machine: On Writing Fixing For Better Days, A Cyberpunk Fantasy

by Greig Michael Stock

The following MA thesis contains a novella, combining elements of both cyberpunk and fantasy settings and themes, along with an expository essay that delves into the creative process behind the story and the authors choice of setting. The novella itself is close to 30,000 words in length, with the exposition piece accounting for a little over 4,000 words in addition to this.The setting is one of traditional magic and myth turned on its head with the advent of the industrial revolution, and the subsequent technological upheaval that followed in its wake, creating a cyberpunk near-future akin to ours. The advances made have helped the races of this world make leaps and bounds forward in countless fields, but in turn the environmental cost has damaged the eco-system in ways that they could not have foreseen. Mana, the wellspring of magic, has begun to run out as a result of an erosion process that is slowly spreading across the world. In the fallout of this, multinational corporations gather strength to capitalize and etch out their own positions of power, creating megacorporations, while governments make ever-increasing compromises to maintain the peace and keep their populations under control. Amidst the power-struggle, ordinary people are left to fend for themselves, harrowed by unseen politics and corporate control seeping into every facet of their daily lives. All of this while trying to make sense of a system that feeds them its version of the truth, despite every facet of their own reality telling another story. With nobody to turn to but each other, local communities and neighbourhoods rely on Fixers, individuals willing to work both within and outside of the law to get results. The story follows one such Fixer as he navigates another job in a city where his life is at risk from magic and machine alike.