Hosts in the Shell Cyberpunk Podcast

 

HOSTS IN THE SHELL: HOW WE JACKED INTO CYBERPUNK AND ENDED UP TALKING TO RICHARD K. MORGAN

Matt Adcock (@cleric20)

"The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Okay, yes, obligatory Gibson quote deployed. We can begin.

There are moments when you look at the increasingly improbable sequence of events that constitutes your creative life and wonder whether somebody has accidentally loaded the wrong save file.

Interviewing Richard K. Morgan is one of the latest of those moments.

This week, Hosts in the Shell, the cyberpunk podcast I co-host with fellow author and professional dystopian enthusiast Jon Richter, hit Episode 70. And sitting virtually across the table from us was the man who gave the world Takeshi Kovacs.

Richard. K. Freaking. Morgan.

Yes, author of Altered Carbon. Broken Angels. Woken Furies. Black Man/Thirteen. Market Forces. Thin Air. The A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy. And now No Man's Land.

Somehow, he agreed to come onto our slightly feral little cyberpunk podcast.

Even better, he was brilliant.

So brilliant, in fact, that our conversation became a two-parter. Part One is now loose on the network: 40 minutes and 59 seconds of Morgan talking cyberpunk, writing and the worlds he has created, with Jon and me attempting to maintain the pretence that this is all perfectly normal. Buzzsprout's official description calls him a literary hero, “cyberpunk royalty”, a fascinating interviewee and a lovely bloke. Having now interviewed him, I'm not going to argue with any of those.

 Listen to Richard K. Morgan on Hosts in the Shell – Part One

But the really weird thing is tracing the fun data trail backwards to see how we got here.

ORIGIN STORY // TWO WRITERS WALK INTO A DYSTOPIA

Jon and I originally collided through the Neo Cyberpunk writing scene.

We were both contributors to Neo Cyberpunk: The Anthology, alongside a suitably dangerous collection of writers including Anna Mocikat, Matthew A. Goodwin, Nik Whittaker, Mark Everglade, James L. Graetz and others. Jon contributed Cleaners; I unleashed Buzz Kill 2.0 (now a comic too)!? Get a copy here: NEO CYBERPUNK

It was one of those gloriously indie projects where you suddenly discover that there are other people out there whose brains have apparently been damaged by the same combination of William Gibson, Blade Runner, black leather, neon, corporate dystopia and an unhealthy suspicion of technology. Yeah we’re still getting the 

The actual moment Jon and I properly met came when he invited me onto his Dark Natter podcast in 2021. Dark Natter was Jon and Liam Martin's show dissecting works of dark fiction, and I naturally responded to this opportunity by choosing Richard Stanley's magnificently grubby 1990 cyberpunk killer-robot movie Hardware.

We talked. And talked. And wandered off-topic. And came back. And wandered off again.

In other words, all the essential ingredients of Hosts in the Shell were already present.

We got on so ridiculously well that afterwards Jon floated an idea:

What if we did a podcast together?

Specifically, what if two cyberpunk writers spent unreasonable amounts of time talking about the films, books, games, comics, anime, technology and assorted cultural detritus that had infected our imaginations?

Reader, we jacked in.

That original Dark Natter encounter was eventually smuggled back into the Hosts feed as Episode 52, appropriately subtitled “the first time Jon and Matt met!” 

WELCOME TO THE SHELL

Hosts in the Shell launched in February 2022 with Akira, The Matrix Resurrections and, inevitably, Ghost in the Shell.

The basic operating system hasn't changed much since.

Jon and I pick something vaguely cyberpunk. Sometimes actually cyberpunk. Occasionally something whose cyberpunk credentials would not survive even cursory peer review. We watch/read/play it. We hit record. Then we see where the conversation takes us.

The official description remains pleasingly straightforward: we're “writers and cyberpunk fans” discussing the genre's greatest works and interviewing other cyberpunk creators. 

The guest list, however, has become increasingly surreal.

We've talked Luther Arkwright with Bryan Talbot, Altered Carbon with T R Napper, Peruvian cyberpunk with Gustaffo Vargas, Silo with Hugh Howey, non-human intelligence and considerably more with Adrian Tchaikovsky, and actually interviewed Bruce Bethke, the bloke who coined the word cyberpunk.

And now Richard K. Morgan.

If William Gibson turns up next week asking whether we've got a spare microphone, I am assuming reality has finally developed a buffer overflow.

THE COMPLETE HOSTS IN THE SHELL ARCHIVE

Because looking back through it is actually quite alarming, here is the whole glorious, malfunctioning machine so far, reconstructed from the show feed. Buzzsprout currently lists 71 releases including the original unnumbered trailer. 

TRAILER – Hosts In The Shell trailer!

S1/

E1 – Akira
E2 – The Matrix Resurrections
E3 – Ghost In The Shell
E4 – Johnny Mnemonic
E5 – Cyberpunk indie books
E6 – Total Recall
E7 – Cyberpunk philosophy
E8 – Snow Crash
E9 – Robocop
E10 – The underclass in cyberpunk
E11 – Upgrade
E12 – Luther Arkwright with creator Bryan Talbot
E13 – Batman Beyond and cyberpunk/superhero crossovers
E14 – Blade Runner
E15 – Escape From New York
E16 – Avalon: bonus episode mashup with the L0wl1f3 podcast!!
E17 – The Terminator
E18 – Cyberpunk (and psychedelic) music with Kavus Torabi of The Utopia Strong!
E19 – Neuromancer, the Sprawl Trilogy, & William Gibson
E20 – Quake
E21 – Minority Report
E22 – Cyberpunk Day special!!!
E23 – Cyberpunk body horror
E24 – Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
E25 – Christmas special: best cyberpunk of 2022!!!
E26 – Judge Dredd (vs Dredd!)
E27 – Cyberpunk 2077 (season finale!)
E28 – Bonus episode! Neo Cyberpunk: Volume 3 trailer
E29 – Audio trailer for DARK FICTION by Jon Richter
E30 – Hosts' big night out! (Plus Fanatical's Cyberpunk Dystopia Bundle)

S2/

E31 – Pluto
E32 – The Peripheral (with Tim Standish)
E33 – Audio extract from Scarred by co-Host Jon Richter
E34 – Fallout
E35 – Cowboy Bebop (with Killtopia creator Dave Cook)
E36 – Red Dwarf
E37 – Demolition Man (with Matthew A Goodwin)
E38 – Iain M Banks
E39 – Gareth L Powell talks William Gibson's Burning Chrome and other influences
E40 – Larry Kuperman from Nightdive Studios talks System Shock, science fiction, and the art of video game preservation
E41 – Westworld
E42 – Christmas special with ultra-exclusive guest... err, ChatGPT
E43 – Terminator Zero (with James L Graetz)
E44 – Alita: Battle Angel
E45 – The Fifth Element (with Don Hartshorn)
E46 – Strange Days
E47 – Altered Carbon (with T R Napper)
E48 – Casshern
E49 – The Matrix trilogy (with Keith Anthony Baird)
E50 – Nemesis
E51 – Peruvian cyberpunk with Gustaffo Vargas
E52 – Hardware (bonus episode from the Dark Natter archives – the first time Jon and Matt met!)
E53 – Season finale!! Ghost In The Shell (2017 live action movie)

S3/

E54 – Hosts In The Shell season 3: a shambolic cyber-trailer!
E55 – Ghost In The Shell: Standalone Complex
E56 – Watch Dogs: Legion (with SD Miller)
E57 – Alien: Earth
E58 – Elysium (with Phil Stitelmann)
E59 – I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
E60 – Cyberpunk villains (with Tim Standish)
E61 – Short Circuit
E62 – An interview with Hugh Howey, creator of the Silo series
E63 – Mad Max
E64 – An interview with Bruce Bethke, author of 'Cyberpunk' (and inventor of the word!)
E65 – Streets of Rage
E66 – An interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time and Shadows of the Apt
E67 – Robocop (the 2014 remake)
E68 – Philip K. Dick (with multi-award-winning cyberpunk author T R Napper)
E69 – Fallout (season 2)
E70 – An interview with Richard K Morgan, author of Altered Carbon! (Part 1)

HIGH TECH. LOW LIFE. TWO CYBER-IDIOTS WITH MICROPHONES.

Looking at that list, what makes me happiest isn't really the number of episodes (there are more on the way) but rather the trajectory.

We started because two writers discovered they could happily enjoy an hour arguing about cyberpunk. Since then we've talked to indie writers, filmmakers, comic creators, musicians, game people, award winners, bestselling authors and some genuine architects of the genre.

And yet it still basically feels like Jon and me having the a fun conversation just like we had that first time on Dark Natter.

Only now, occasionally, Richard K. Morgan is sitting there too.

Which is frankly flipping ridiculous but wonderful!?

So if your idea of a good time involves replicants, cyborgs, megacorps, murderous artificial intelligences, dystopian wastelands, questionable 1990s straight-to-video action movies, cybernetic existential crises and two middle-aged British authors arguing about whether something is actually cyberpunk...

You have found your people.

Welcome to the Shell.

We have such sights to show you.

Jack into Hosts In The Shell on Buzzsprout

Read my last post about the podcast HERE

>>> Imagine a cyberpunk world where the Earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope... This is high tech / low life meeting the forces of hell!?

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...

HOSTS IN THE SHELL A cyberpunk podcast

HOSTS IN THE SHELL

A cyberpunk podcast by Matt (@cleric20) Adcock & Jon (@RichterWrites) Richter

@cleric20 🦾 #HostsintheShell ♬ original sound - Matt Adcock

 IT’S JUDGEMENT DAY…

No, not because Skynet has finally gone online (give it time), but because Hosts In The Shell Season 3 is almost here.

What started as two cyberpunk obsessives talking about movies, books, games, AI, transhumanism and whatever shiny dystopian nightmare had caught our attention that week has somehow evolved into something rather special.

Over the first two seasons we’ve racked up 54 episodes exploring the very best (and occasionally gloriously worst) that cyberpunk has to offer. We’ve jacked into classics including Blade Runner, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix, Strange Days, Altered Carbon, Casshern and Nemesis, while also venturing down stranger side streets of the genre. 

Along the way we’ve been lucky enough to chat with some fantastic guests, including cyberpunk author T.R. Napper, sci-fi author Gareth L Powell, graphic novelists Gustaffo Vargas, Bryan Talbot, S C Jensen and Dave Cook, and a ‘host’ of creators such as Tim Standish, T R Napper, James L Graetz, Anna Mocikat, C.T Phipps etc helping to shape the future of speculative fiction.

'Jon Richter poses for his close up'

Last year we were delighted to receive our 10,000 downloads badge, proof that there are at least ten thousand occasions when somebody somewhere thought: 

“You know what I need right now? Two middle-aged nerds talking about cyberpunk.”

Yeah - we are as surprised as anyone!?

Now we’re back. (click this image to hear the podcast):

Season 3 promises our biggest and most exciting guest line-up yet, including Hugh Howey (Silo), Bruce Bethke (the man who coined the term cyberpunk), and Adrian Tchaikovsky, one of the most imaginative science-fiction writers working today.

Expect deep dives into cyberpunk culture, future tech, artificial intelligence, science fiction, gaming, movies, literature and all the weird places where humanity and technology collide. There will be insight. There will be enthusiasm. There will almost certainly be tangents.

Whether you’ve been with us since episode one or you’re preparing to jack in for the first time, Season 3 is shaping up to be our biggest yet.

So charge your neural implants, polish your chrome and prepare your audio receptors for maximum stimulation.

Hosts In The Shell Season 3 >>> launching soon.

The future isn’t evenly distributed, but apparently it does now have a podcast.

>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope...

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...

Neon Shocks & Nic Parker Interview

Neon Shocks 

Nic Parker (https://www.facebook.com/nic.parker007)

Reviewed by Matt (@Cleric20) Adcock

This book is less a collection and more a grab-bag of nightmares, an eclectic run of horror shorts that refuse to sit neatly in one coffin, if you will.

This isn’t about one flavour of fear. Parker skips between supernatural chillers, grotesque body horror, strange little reality fractures and straight-up unsettling weirdness with the confidence of someone who knows the genre inside out. The result is unpredictable in the best way, you’re never quite sure what kind of darkness you’re about to step into next.

What holds it together is tone, Nic writes with heart and style. There’s a consistent undercurrent of unease, like the world itself is slightly out of joint. Some stories hit fast and hard, others linger, but there’s always that sense that something isn’t right, much like those classic Pan horror anthologies I grew up reading. 

Parker is a twisted, sick bunny and some of her very personal likes and fears flow through the stories which bite with sharp, nasty, and often lingering imagery...

Short, strange, and enjoyably unhinged, Neon Shocks feels like flipping through a stack of cursed horror anthologies where every few pages something genuinely disturbing slips through and punches you in the face!

Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:

ööööö

(5 - Nobody Trusts Anybody Now, And We're All Very Tired.)

'The Return of the Living Nic Parker' 

I got to ask Nic some questions - so read on if you want a bit of an insight into her dark mind…

Matt: Neon Shocks feels like a mixtape of nightmares, what kind of mental jukebox are you pulling from when you decide what goes in?

Nic: Hah, good question. Probably my lifetime of nightmares read and watched since childhood. I started with horror comics as a kid, watched movies like Bava's Black Sunday and Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another Planet, then moved on to hunt down the infamous video nasties of the 80s (which were still cut over here in Germany when you managed to track a fifth copy down) in my teens. Add a lot of Stephen King and Clive Barker and the fabulous horror films I managed to catch at genre festivals during the decades. So Neon Shocks is the amalgamation of the horror that dwells inside of me ;-)

Matt: If one story in the collection is secretly “the most you,” which one is it and should we be worried?

Nic: With me you should alway be worried - only thing that keeps me behaving: I'm too cute for jail! I can't actually pick one story I like most as they're all me - that's why I don't have a favourite sub genre in horror. Slasher, ghost story, sci-fi horror, psychological - I adore all aspects of the genre and that love spawns all the stories.

Matt: Your horror swings between the grotesque and the quietly unsettling which scares you more as a writer?

Nic: I don't scare easily at all. I think you can have an absolute ball with the grotesque and - like we say in German - really hit the shit. You can be insidious and let the fear fester inside the reader going the quieter way until the 'whack across the head' revelation.

Matt: There’s a real love of old-school horror DNA in here, what are your top 3 horror films?

Nic: Ever since I first saw it as a kid my favourite film is and will always be Carpenter's The Thing. And I will always love Re-Animator and Fulci's The Beyond.

Matt: You’re in a strange town and someone is out to kill you - who is it most likely to be?

Nic: Ha - whoever it is; I hope he brought the bazooka!

Matt: Be honest: have you ever had to stop writing one of these stories because it got under your own skin?

Nic: Not really. Whatever I can come up with - more terrible things are probably happening somewhere in the real world without anyone knowing.

Matt: Horror often says something sideways about the real world, are we doomed?

Nic: Seeing the incredible amount of creativity and originality in the genre during the last years and the new wave of passionate horror directors that emerged in the genre I'd say there's enough hope for all of us. And speaking of a new hope - as a Star Wars Fan I'd have never thought I'd be so excited about a Star Wars film again as I'm for The Mandalorian And Grogu, John Favreau put his fan heart and soul into this. Also, I firmly believe everything comes in waves. Having lived through the iron curtain age and the fear of nukes and the Chernobyl catastrophe I know things usually become better again after a while. I'm a horrible optimist.

Matt: If one of your stories escaped into the real world, which would cause the most chaos… and which would you secretly want to witness?

Nic: Most surely Careful What You Wish For, the Devil himself doing wages with people would be cool but also wreak a lot of havoc! And this story becoming real would mean Freddie Mercury being alive and back on stage again. So win win for all of us.

Matt: What’s the line you won’t cross or is that line basically a suggestion at this point?

Nic: Well, let me put it this way, I always loved graphic effects and violence in movies, nothing like a flying head and a good disembowelment. But I have a bit of a blockage when it comes to torture porn that's gone way beyond Hostel. Violence should always support the story and I'm not a fan of exaggerated rape/torture scenes just to serve certain tastes.

Matt: What would you like written on your grave?

Nic: It was one hell of a fun ride - and there were cats!

GET YOUR COPY OF NEON SHOCKS: HERE

>>> Imagine a world where the earth is becoming hell? One man with powers and his robot sidekick might be our only hope...

Click banner below to hear a FREE 5 mins sample of my audiobook which is becoming a graphic novel too)...