Hardwired

Author: Walter Jon Williams

Cowboy used to be a Delta pilot, up till the Soviet Orbital took out his business. Now he is a smuggler ridin' around in a tricked out hovertank that he calls a Panzer - smuggling goods across insane borders on the soil of what used to be the US of A. He has advantages in that he can plug himself directly into his ride, making him one hell of a pilot with anything that he can jack into. During the course of a delivery that goes badly wrong he meets Sarah, a prostitute/assassin who has had some pretty invasive cybernetic surgery to trick her out as the ultimate weapon, and the most desirable creature for her target. Together they find that, perhaps, there is a way to beat the oppressive Soviet Orbital that so cruelly governs their existence. So it's a bit dated these days (at the time we thought the Soviets un-assailable), and occasionally our hero 'Cowboy' doesn't quite hang together consistently as a character, and maybe the main female protagonist is a bit two-dimensional, but despite the flaws Walter Jon managed an interesting offering anyway. Born in the fallout from Neuromancer, the work is somewhat derivative. Something I do quite like (pure nostalgia) is the feel and flavour that pervades the book of those crappy westerns I used to read as a kid, back before I developed taste. There really is this sense of dust and lonesome cowboys riding under an eternally hot plains sky - only their 'horses' mount cannon and they drive them by direct interface. Perhaps we should call this one Cowboypunk, and see if anyone feels like making a real sub-genre with it.