Over the last week I’ve been fleshing out some new ideas for the sequel to Necrotic City. Some have asked “But what happens to the city?” and this is for them. It’s also for all the people Adrian left behind. I’m really excited about this project and I hope you will be too!
The tough part is figuring out how to turn the future of that place into a story people want to read. Necrotic City portrayed a grim future that readers rightfully noted echoes many of the problems we face today.
“What makes this book so very fascinating (besides the Dantean parallels) is the keenly observed social ills– which are clearly our very own in this day and age, taken to their natural conclusions. From social mores, to credit indenture, to social stratification, to the indifference of each level of society to any below it, to the complicit press, Lydecker has portrayed a world we can instantly identify as an offshoot of today’s trends.” –Jacqueline Simonds’ review of Necrotic City
I wanted to portray where we’re likely to wind up if we keep on the way we are, and reviews like this tell me that I succeeded. Unfortunately that kind of bleak world view doesn’t generally lend itself to sequels.
Looking at where we are and where we’ve been going, I can easily imagine a corporate-run dystopia in our future. Breaking that cycle seems less probable with every passing year. The further we’ve advanced as a society, the less likely revolution has become. We’ve built ourselves a very effective cage.
So how do you go about writing a revolution in a world where every avenue of revolt or escape has been barred?
Part progressive cyberpunk, part techno thriller, Necrotic Insurgency (working title) documents a dark new turn in the Company’s battle to permanently quell the revolt of the city’s desperately poor masses.
Kay is a smuggler who uses her connection with a rogue AI and the Company’s own communication network to evade Enforcement as she transports refugees and technology through the city’s underground.
Holt is a newly minted Enforcer with a fatal personality flaw: he feels empathy. Worse yet, he has shown signs of having a conscience.
And then there’s the Architect. Every facet of every citizen’s life is weighed, analyzed, and catalogued by her algorithms. Three-quarters of the city’s infrastructure runs on programs she built or improved. Only the Company’s senior-most executives know that she exists; fewer still know that she’s human. Only one person knows that before she sold her soul to the Company and became their Architect, her name was Yulia.
Although quite a few of the characters and concepts will be familiar to readers of Necrotic City, the events described in Insurgency take place some years after the end of the previous book. My intent is to write it in such a way that it can be enjoyed as a sequel or a stand-alone story.
Insurgency is still a ways from completion, but I’ll keep everyone updated as it progresses. Thank you all for sticking around as I work toward releasing this sequel!
