No, Sarah doesn't look like this.
Hardwired is a 1986 cyberpunk science fiction novel by American writer Walter Jon Williams. It has two sequels in Voice of the Whirlwind (1987) and Solip: System (1989).
The Earth went to war with its orbital colonies and lost. The Orbital Corporations dropped large numbers of rocks on humanity and have reduced the majority of nations to third world countries dependent on their economies. The Earth has become a dystopian world where the United States has balkanized into a myriad of regions. Smugglers exist at the fringes of society, using neural implants to increase their chances of survival while they look for an opportunity to permanently move into orbit.
The book was a major influence on Mike Pondsmith and was an inspiration for Cyberpunk 2020 and its own spin-off, Cyberpunk 2077. Mike Pondsmith even helped write and publish an RPG based on the Hardwired world that used Cyberpunk 2020's rules.
This novel contains the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Sarah and Daud's father was an abusive drunk that they forced to live with after their mother was killed in Atlanta's destruction.
- After the End: Earth has been reduced to a shadow of its former self due to having mass drivers used on it by its own space colonies during the Rock War.
- A God Am I: Roon believes that being born in space has made Orbitals into a new species and that they shall be able to use their wealth as well as technology to guide humanity on Earth like parents to children. He even says that Orbitals have conquered Heaven that all religion aimed to reach. He's also a pedophile.
- All for Nothing: This for Sarah's actions. She successfully seduces her target and kills her before completing her mission. However, her employers betray her and try to kill her. Her brother also ODs and it will wipe out her payment to make sure he doesn't die. Thankfully, the story continues after this realization.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Arkady and Cunningham. Arkady is killed roughly halfway through, leaving Cunningham as the remaining baddy. Notably, both are more like The Dragon to Temple Pharmaceuticals. The role is then usurped by Roon at the end.
- Category Traitor:
- Cunningham was born a dirtboy but has since become an agent for the corpos. Sarah's use of this on him doesn't work because she's trying to work for them as well.
- Arkady is also accused of this since it is obvious (at least to Cowboy) that he's getting his drugs to smuggle from the Orbitals.
- Cyberpunk: One of the defining works of the genre. A bunch of gritty street level criminals in a science fiction Dystopia try to get ahead.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: A person who replaces too much of their brain-matter with implants becomes "white-brained", detached from the world and other people, obsessed with mathematical abstractions, and losing much of their emotions in the process. However, it only happens to those who are inclined towards abstract thinking to begin with - those who use their cybernetic implants to interact with physical objects like vehicles, and expand their abilities in the realms of physical talent like martial arts rarely suffer from these effects.
- Divided States of America: The setting is the heavily balkanized territory formerly known as the USA, in which Hovertank jockeys make a fortune flying contraband across fortified state borders.
- Dystopia: Earth is a shattered mess on the losing end of a war with its own space colonies. It is economically dependent on its victors as well.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Roon gets subject to a Grand Theft Me, which puts a better man in charge of Temple Pharmaseuticals. The protagonists are insanely rich. Arkady and Cunningham are also dead. Oh and the United States will be allowed to reincorporate. Unfortunately, the heroes' old way of life is destroyed by these changing economic conditions.
- Femme Fatale: Sarah is an interesting example of this as she's also a Hooker with a Heart of Gold that is driven to do what she does by desperation.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Rather than a transgender woman, Princess is an old man who adopts a young woman's body to fulfill the ultimate in this fantasy.
- Grand Theft Me: The heroes manage to put an end to Roon and his ambitions by having Reno possess him using top secret government technology he stole. This means he's now in charge of the corporation that is our heroes' greatest enemy.
- Hover Tank: One of the iconic elements of the series is the Panzers that are used for smuggling goods across the Divided States of America.The panzer, she decides, is a place only a junkie could love. A cozy cybernetic womb of masculine scent, soft blinking lights, the studs that feed one's addiction.
- Incompatible Orientation: Sarah is straight but is hired to seduce Princess, who is a 80 year old man in a young woman's body that still lusts after young women.
- Karmic Death: Frequent in the book.
- Arkady is shot done in his favorite plane by Cowboy.
- Cunningham dies, unmourned, in the middle of the desert by suicide to avoid being captured by the people he's betrayed.
- Roon suffers one when Reno hits him with the Black Mind program. This after he's just told Cowboy and Sarah that they can't be allowed to live after what they've done.
- Kiss of Death: "The Weasel", a mechanical weapon that shoots out of your mouth.
- The Load: Daud serves this to Sarah, constantly being a drain on their finances and deluded about their prospects. He's also a drug addict who steals Sarahs to fuel his habit while being in love with his pimp. He has the Freudian Excuse of being even more mentally and emotionally broken than Sarah. Ultimately, Cowboy tells Sarah that if he ever comes back to Earth he'll kill him and won't be alone after one too many betrayals. Sarah reluctantly agrees.
- The Man Behind the Man: Temple Pharmaceuticals I.G. is behind Cunningham and Arkady.
- Megacorp: The Orbital Corporations are one of the earliest examples of this in a cyberpunk context. They control all the economies of Earth due to their victory in the Rock War.
- No New Fashions in the Future: Pretty much 1986 for Sarah's look.Her sculpted face is pale, the Florida tan gone, her eyes black-rimmed. Her almost-black hair is short on the sides and brushy on top, her nape hair falling in two thin braids down her back. Chrome steel earrings brush her shoulders. Firebud has broadened her already-broad shoulders and pared down the width of her pelvis; her face is sharp and pointed beneath a widow’s peak, looking like a succession of arrowheads, the shaped-charge that Cunningham demands. She wears black dancing slippers laced over the ankles and dark purple stretch overalls with suspenders that frame her breasts, stretching the fabric over the nipples that Firebud has made more prominent. Her shirt is gauze spangled with silver; her neck scarf, black silk.
- Not Quite Dead: One character, Reno, is killed when his home is the target of a missile attack. He later makes a series of telephone calls to the hero. Turns out that he was a wirehead and was "jacked into the net" when the missiles struck. He spends pretty much the rest of the book as a disembodied mind, wandering around the equivalent of the Internet, looking at everyone's most secret files.
- Spotting the Thread: Cowboy picks up the fact that the Orbitals are supplying their medicine due to the amount of drugs they have, which never could have been stolen without someone noticing. This is so the Orbitals can corner the Black Market as well as the legitimate one.
- Unproblematic Prostitution: Zig-zagged. Sarah thinks of her time as a prostitute as the least horrible time of her life and is quite proud of her work there. However, when she's hired to seduce Princess, she's disgusted by every minute of it. Partially due to working for Orbitals, partially due to Incompatible Orientation, and partially because it's also an assassination mission.
- White-Collar Crime:
- The setting is rife with this. It's pretty violent, though; one episode of corporate sabotage involves murdering an executive to get access to the company's intranet.
- One hilarious moment is the heroes have been plotting a massive scheme for chapters only to reveal it's an attempt at stock market manipulation and short selling to get their candidate elected to their enemy corporation's board..
