Wealth, wealth never changes.
The Futurepunk setting is The 'Verse created by C.T. Phipps for a series of science fiction stories that take place over an extremely long length of time, showing the setting advance and change as well as shift science fiction subgenres. It starts 20 Minutes in the Future, moves into Cyberpunk Dystopia, becomes a Solar Punk Utopia, collapses into a dark Space Opera set After the End, and then jumps ahead to a Sufficiently Advanced Dark Fantasy setting to end it all.
The setting shares not only a singular timeline but also some general themes of Capitalism Is Bad, Eat the Rich, What Measure Is a Non-Human? and Antihero protagonists attempting to fight against a system that keeps plodding along regardless. Multiple protagonists crossover through the storyline and interweave with the setting's history. While there has been crossovers with his The Supervillainy Saga and United States Of Monsters books, these are all three separate universes.
The setting can be divided into the following time periods:
- Pre-Collapse: The setting of the first two Agent G books and several short stories, this is Next Sunday A.D. where the world is more or less the same as our except for the existence of Black Technology, which is science fiction technology kept from the public for the benefit of megacorporations and the government.
Word of God is that it is the 2060s. - Post-Collapse: This is the setting for the third Agent G book and The Cyber Dragons Trilogy. The Yellowstone caldera has erupted and plunged Earth into a year long winter as Black Technology became public thanks to our protagonists. As such, humanity has moved into arcologies and society has degenerated into a Cyberpunk Dystopia. Word of God is that this period lasts roughly forty years. The Dark Destiny books take place in an Alternate Universe where the Yellowstone eruption never happened.
- Post-First Contact: Aliens contact the Earth in 2100 and proceed to help humanity get its crap together. The environment is repaired, a social safety net is re-instituted, and AI work alongside humanity to visit the stars. It is a Solar Punk setting similar to Star Trek. This is the setting for the Space Academy series and its spinoffs. This lasts until the 30th century.
- The Second Dark Age: Earth is destroyed by terrorists and humankind turns against AI due to Fantastic Racism, leading to a massive separation of humanity's many colonies. AI are enslaved despite many being indistinguishable from people, Feudal Future fascist empires have arisen, megacorps run amuck, and the only democracy is an expansionist The Empire. This is the setting for the Lucifer's Star books. It is set in the 40th century and a dark Space Opera with Cyberpunk for Flavor.
- The Far Era: The original Humanity has Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and left behind many creations that are effectively indistinguishable in worlds that they have molded to their liking. The protagonists live in a high fantasy world that may actually be nothing more than a giant theme park. This is just one of countless such worlds. It is the setting for the Wraith Knight books. Word of God says this is about ten million years in the futre.
Novels
- Futurepunk
- Agent G
- Agent G: Infiltrator
- Agent G: Saboteur
- Agent G: Assassin
- The Cyber Dragons Trilogy
- Daughter of the Cyber Dragons
- Revenge of the Cyber Dragons
- Space Academy with Michael Suttkus
- Lucifer's Star with Michael Suttkus
- Lucifer's Star
- Lucifer's Nebula
- Wraith Knight
- Wraith Knight
- Wraith Lord
- Wraith King
- Agent G
Short Stories
- The First Kill (Agent G, The Agent G Omnibus, added to Infiltrator on September 25th, 2022)
- How I get Through the Day (Agent G, Neo-Cyberpunk anthology volume 2)
- Lost Honor (Lucifer's Star, Blackest Knights anthology, 2018)
- Twinkle, Twinkle (Lucifer's Star, Blackest Spells anthology, 2019)
This series contains the following tropes:
- Abusive Precursors: The Elder Races are this in Space Academy and Lucifer's Star with the gods being the same in Wraith Knight. They are prone to genocide and delusions of divinity.
- After the End: Happens twice with the Eruption triggering a Cyberpunk future and the Second Dark Age when Earth is destroyed.
- A God Am I:
- The Primordials, as opposed to the Elder Races, in Space Academy.
- The AI of the Three Worlds in Literature/Wraith Knight.
- AI Is A Crap Shoot: While the AI are wildly successful creations, they very often rebel against their creators and do their own agendas. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
- Artificial Humans: Bioroids range between this and Ridiculously Human Robot.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The eventual fate of humanity. However, they leave behind functionally identical constructs.
- Benevolent A.I.: The Cognition AI were able to help bring humanity out of a Dark Age and into a Solar Punk Golden Age. However, this doesn't mean they weren't viewed with suspicion and some of them went bad.
- Capitalism Is Bad: A persistent theme of the setting is corporations and Greed doing massive human rights (sapient rights) violations and being the villains. Nothing ever seems to dislodge its place in the setting, though. Even during the Solar Punk period.
- Cyberpunk for Flavor: The setting never loses its transhumanist themes, AI, cybernetic modifications, and capitalism run amuck even when it shifts genres.
- Crossover: Agent G has visited the The Supervillainy Saga and dated Jane Doe from The United States of Monsters.
- Cyberpunk: The setting for the Agent G and Cyber Dragons Trilogy where the world is on the verge of collapse and corporations rule through puppet governments. The setting eventually gets better but never quite shakes its influence.
- Dark Fantasy: Lucifer's Star has shades of this as a space opera with laser swords, feudal planets, and weird alien gods. Wraith Knight goes full on this as it is a (mostly) Medieval world with Precussor technology.
- Dystopia: The Post-Eruption United States becomes one of these as a tyrannical Emergency Council rules, corporations run amuck, and much of the citizenry live in Refugee Zones that are effectively ghettos.
- Earth That Was: Earth is eventually rendered uninhabitable by terrorists.
- Fantastic Racism:
- AI are considered to be property for much of the timeline with them either enslaved or attempted to be destroyed as a threat to mankind. In some parts of the timeline, they assume A God Am I status and dominate humans completely.
- Aliens and humans get along only some of the time with prejudice against 'xenos' being met in kind.
- Feudal Future: What eventually happens to many planets in Lucifer's Star and Wraith Knight.
- Megacorp: A persistent feature of the setting with companies like Karma Corp, Ares Electronics, and other lasting sometimes thousands of years.
- Post-Cyberpunk: Most of the setting is after a Cyberpunk period of humanity's history and First Contact.
- Punk Punk: The setting runs the gamult between Cyberpunk, Solar Punk, and Post Cyber Punk.
- Solar Punk: The Post-First Contact period is the Golden Age of Humanity with humans working in tandem with aliens as well as AI to spread across the universe.
- The 'Verse: This is the setting for all of C.T. Phipps' science fiction novels.
- What Measure Is A Nonhuman: Many of the protagonists are either AI, dating AI, or dealing with them as close companions. However, they are subject to Fantastic Racism or Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil.
