My latest book is a thriller and it is science fiction, but it is also known as what is called a genre smasher, and so I felt it was time to address the cyberpunk body hacking grinders in Cyberwar.

I hate labels, but sometimes they are necessity when it comes to easily finding information.

Without the fantastically fun sub-genre of speculative fiction known as ‘Cyberpunk’, it would be pretty damn hard to find new books that I like that in some way loosely resemble the technologically gritty woes of imagined futures or worlds or realities brought to us in stories like Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (the neighbors will have your balls if your robotic sheep proves to be impersonating a real one) or William Gibson’s unparalleled Neuromancer.

It occurs to me, right now, as the horrid commercials blare their noise at my back, while I eagerly await my Alma Mater’s first entry into the March Madness Tournament, that my book has been marketed wrong.

That is, to say, Cyberwar meets the expectations for a sci-fi thriller, but that is far short of the whole picture.

Marketing is more important than I like to acknowledge.
So let’s talk cyberpunk and grinding!

If delving into the book offers up some more insight for Eager Readers that might take an interest in its vast world, who am I to deny them that.

I wrote the damn thing, so I hope you will not mind if I make an edit to expand its description – late in the game, I know – to hit on some of the nuanced and highly researched aspects that go beyond computing technology, political revolution, and cyber warfare.

A lot of the research I put into robotics crossed over into humanoid bots, AI (artificial intelligence), and then further into android-like devices and a merging of man and machine.

The birth of the cyborg is old news.

Chipsets placed in the brain to allow for electrical impulses and thought to go wireless is tech currently being tested for human beings.

Successful cybernetic prosthetics are allowing people with artificial limbs to control their new hands and legs with nerve interaction and thought.
This is today and this is yesterday.

And this is the public news published in scientific journals.

Below the surface, the unaccepted, and often widely innovative grinders, or body hackers, are starting a movement that many feel is the next step in the human evolutionary ladder: that of the cyborg.

Grinders will place glowing chips beneath the skin of their hands to allow them a bio-chip coded to their own DNA that is the grinder’s method for waiving a hand and paying for an item, or accessing health metrics.

Some grinders are even plugging parts of their brains into physical electronic interfaces that give them abilities beyond the traditional senses.

This is the case with Neil Harbisson, a colorblind artist from Barcelona, who persuaded a doctor to implant a camera in the back of his head so that the antenna can detect the dominant color in front of him and translate it into musical notes so he is aware of the color.

He considers himself a ‘cybernetic organism’ and no longer identifies as a human.
Harbisson co-founded the Cyborg Foundation to advocate for cyborg rights.

The doctor that performed Harbisson’s surgery did so only after many other surgeons refused, and only under the condition of remaining anonymous.
Grinders are pushing the boundaries of the human-cyborg relationship all over the world, often at great personal risk of their own health.

The future of Cyberwar is torn in two.

Fifty percent of the population consider the cyborg way of life a right and have permanently altered some part of their body; many of these body hackers have cybernetic eyes that replace one of their own functioning eyes with an infrared and thermal imaging device.

The other half of the world populous remain steadfast in what they deem their birthright: the right to have no mechanized or electronic device, forced into their bodies.

This is a conflict that is ongoing in the Cyberwar Series.

Localized EMP’s can kill those with complex electronics in their skulls, but the government, in the Cyber United States in particular, is slowly pushing toward everyone getting their own bio-chipset to use for electronic currency, eliminating all cash, and all of the “off-the-books” transactions that accompany physical currency (there is more of this in my next book, which is coming soon!).

The main characters are haunted by cybernetics!
​
Grinding and androids and brash new futures are at the heart of cyberpunk, and I am proud to say Cyberwar has plenty of that in its gut as well.

If you want to check out the start of the book, please read the first few chapters in an excerpt here.


​"The Cyberpunk Body Hacking Grinders in Cyberwar" was written by R.J. Huneke.

Stevo’s Book Reviews On the Internet has been growing steam on Goodreads, Listopia, and book reader forums where librarians and bibliophiles alike gather, and we are proud to announce that R.J. Huneke's Cyberwar has made the January 2016 Recommended Reading List!

​You can download the list here.

​You can also vote on Goodreads to make Cyberwar one of the Best of the Best titles on Stevo’s Book Reviews On the Internet for February 2016 here.

Stevo’s Book Reviews On the Internet collects the Best of the Best titles in a monthly Listopia entry (and on the page for each book) at Goodreads.com: https://www.goodreads.com/list/user_votes/41770671-stevo-brock.

As of September, Stevo started a “Business Book of the Week” feature, on his site and on Goodreads. As the former manager of Microsoft Network’s Books and Reading Community, he has a large following of book fans who read the monthly list of recommended books on my Delphiforums.com website (the most recent list is at http://forums.delphiforums.com/stevo1/start). The list has proven to be a valuable resource to not only book lovers, but by the acquisitions departments at academic and public libraries, and bookstores (both online and brick-and-mortar).  Pageviews are running at over 250,000/month.

He is currently concentrating on the list, which will include sections for nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books.  Each will be preceded by a section for best books in each category.   

Cyberwar is a book from Pentian, an imprint of Lantia, is in stores! Get it in hardcover, as well as softcover, and eBook (Kindle, Nook,iBooks) wherever books are sold.

When hackers seize the world governments everything changed for all of humanity. A new sense of hope arrived in the streets and young people everywhere embraced the new world order. However, what appeared to be a new found freedom soon turned out to be a new tyranny far worse than anything they imagined. 

William Waltz formed part of the new elite that guarded the regime, that is, until the regime turned on him.

R.J. Huneke has spent years researching for his latest sci-fi thriller Cyberwar. A longtime writer and columnist, Huneke has interviewed cyber security professionals, carefully examined advances in science (including robotics and artificial intelligence) and compiled modern day speculations on technology and spun them into an electrifying journey into a dystopian society dominated by cybernetic hackers. His extensive knowledge on cyber warfare, robotics, and political protest, as well as his strong female protagonist are what set the riveting story apart.

I am compelled to talk to you about some of the fun I have been having recently involving inventing not-so-subliminal messages in binary code for chapter breaks and typing the infamous words “[THE END]” on my next novel’s manuscript.

It has been sometime since I have opened up to you, Eager Readers, and that is why I felt the need to get in touch today to catch up.

I should have said more of myself, but I did not.

A bad car accident has had me in disarray over the last year and a half plus, but my health is improving and so too, I hope, my writing going forward.

It is not an excuse, but it was difficult to write my thoughts down and hard to get them out in the world.

What has been incredibly frustrating is a drastically altered ability to read, to see in general, and subsequently to write and edit.

All kinds of quality of life issues have stricken me down, but the acts of reading, writing and editing, which have been second nature for as long as I can remember, were crippled.

Fear not! Things should improve for me in the not too distant future.

I will get back to making art at a high level, and I am working oh so hard to get back there, and to a healthy state, every day.

But back to the fun I figured you would enjoy hearing about.

Reading and rereading some fascinating articles on translating binary code – and just where the hell those numbers come to have meaning – had me inspired.

This is one of the articles I read from math.grin.edu.

It is called “The Binary System: A pretty damn clear guide to a quite confusing concept by Christine R. Wright with some help from Samuel A. Rebelsky” (and it is quite fun, even for one who tries to ignore math regularly, as I am wont to do).

I will never be able to grasp the sheer math of it all, and the geniuses using this method and other in-depth ways for creating myriad works of art in the Cyberverse continue to have my utmost respect.

But trying to wrap my head around just what those numbers mean and how does so much meaning and information pass through them in the world today, invisible and yet visible at all times through the digitally dependent society that circumvents much of the globe.

Do not get me wrong: I simultaneously love and hate the digital Cyberverse that has infused itself into modern civilization; as much as I am fascinated and utilize the tech, I wish we were not so completely dependent on it.

But I digress, back to fun.

Being moved by the complexity and yet utter simplicity of binary, I decided it would be fun to make a different interconnecting message in binary code as a chapter break at the end of each section in the latest novel I have been writing to follow-up Cyberwar.

I am afraid I do not have a title to reveal just yet, but the book, which was largely complete before my car accident is inching nearer to its culmination.

The binary serves as a great visual break between parts of the book’s words, but also allows me to add in some of my own views on a level, a fun level, that requires a little research on the part of the reader to find the meaning hid in the 1’s and 0’s.

You may also be interested to know that this very week, I typed the words, “[THE END]” onto the ms.

Now there is a good deal of words on the page after those, and that will have to be addressed.

And there are numerous sections that need to be expanded upon, some that need to be chopped down to timbers, and others that no doubt need transplanting, either to other sections of this book or into another book entirely.

That will be the fun as the editing and the writing continues.

I can give no timeline, but want to say a hearty “Hello” to you all and hope that 2016 is a healthy and magical new year for us all.
 
Sincerely,
 
R.J. Huneke 


​"FUN: I wrote [THE END] and binary chapter breaks" was written by R.J. Huneke

Get signed copies of CYBERWAR in NY's Book Revue now by the author R.J. Huneke!

That's right, signed books of the R.J. Huneke sci-fi thriller are being sold exclusively at the Book Revue in Huntington; look for them on the Local Author tables near the front of the famous Long Island bookstore.

R.J. Huneke has spent years researching for his latest sci-fi thriller Cyberwar. A longtime writer and columnist, Huneke has interviewed cyber security professionals, carefully examined advances in science (including robotics and artificial intelligence) and compiled modern day speculations on technology and spun them into an electrifying journey into a dystopian society dominated by cybernetic hackers. His extensive knowledge on cyber warfare, robotics, and political protest, as well as his strong female protagonist are what set the riveting story apart.  

If you cannot meet R.J. on his Cyberwar Book Tour, be sure to grab a rare signed copy of the work - there are very limited quantities on hand in the world's greatest independent bookstore, the Book Revue of Huntington, New York.

R.J. will attend the New York Comic Con 2015, the 10 annual Mecca of pop culture and science conventions, with a table # 1061 at Rune Works Productions / Pentian Publishing and will be meeting Eager Readers in person. 

Rune Works Productions & Pentian will have the booth all four days at # 1061 from October 8-11, and you can meet R.J. Huneke as he signs copies of his novel Cyberwar and the comic he's working on, by creator Ivan O'Neill, the very first issue of Blackwood State from POWkabam Comics! You can also meet colorist and artist Kara Zisa there as well and all will be singing the Blackwood State # 1 issue! 

​The first official publication of POWkabam will be a graphic novel titled Blackwood State, by author/artist Ivan O'Neill, colorist Kara Zisa, and editor R.J. Huneke, and it will be released in serialized form with three 24-25 page issues in the coming months of 2015. We sold out of the Preview comic, Issue # 0, at the Rune Works booth 1061 at the 2014 New York Comic Con and had rave reviews. We are looking fora larger publisher to partner with to bring this series to readers regularly.

For Blackwood State, O'Neill calls on a notorious state college and the life of a young lady struggling to live in a world that has no idea how not to crap on those that value the study of English writing. Alongside her fellow literary comrades, Guinevere Katz must attempt to keep her sanity and her grade as she survives one of the most obnoxious experiences of her academic career . . . and her professional career . . . and her life as a sentient being. 

Calling on father Bill Shakespeare, as her god, and Falstaff as her inner muse and bartender, Gwen's deteriorative, drunken English career is a journey that seems perennially poised on the brink of disaster. Just how the hell does one make a living with a degree in English anyway?