Sightseer: An Interview with Author Dean Vale

Nosetouch Press: We’re so excited to see a new Dean Vale science fiction novel from Nosetouch Press! Tell us a little about SIGHTSEER, Book One of The Plastic Fantastic Trilogy.

Dean Vale: I’ve been a big fan of cyberpunk since I was a teenager. In fact, the first short stories I ever sent out were cyberpunk stories, to venues like OMNI and PLAYBOY, etc., which reflects how long ago that was (they were, of course, rejected, but that was a case of my exuberance exceeding my writerly ability at the time). I read William Gibson’s NEUROMANCER when I was 17 years old, and it blew me away. His whole Sprawl Trilogy hit me that way, at a very impressionable age.

SIGHTSEER is my homage to those formative years. I had an idea several years ago for a cyberpunk story centered around a particular protagonist (Cam Sexton, a so-on-point character name if you’re paying attention), and it just worked. I initially wrote SIGHTSEER as a novella, and let it sit while I worked on other projects. Then I had the idea of creating The Plastic Fantastic as my own nod to cyberpunk.

SIGHTSEER follows Cam, a Looker by profession (basically, a professional eyewitness, which is a blend of being a social media influencer, a spy, and walking, talking voyeur). That idea just worked so well with the character, off it flew. I rewrote SIGHTSEER as a novel, and there it was. One of the fun things for me was retooling cyberpunk for our dystopian days. The original cyberpunks were getting stories out there in the 1980s, and the world they depicted reflects that.

What I do with SIGHTSEER is keep to many of the tropes and fun things of the whole “high tech, low life” aesthetic of cyberpunk while bringing it into the literal 21^st century.

NP: What is The Plastic Fantastic?

DV: In the world I’ve created, it’s a posh nightclub where players and hustlers meet (either physically or virtually) to do business. It’s a kind of cyber-Casablanca, a place where bizzos and giggers (world-slang for people conducting business) do their thing. I liked having the Plastic Fantastic as a nexus for that activity.

My original plan was to introduce new characters with each book, with the continuity being the Plastic Fantastic as the anchor that holds it together, but I scrapped that, keeping the focus on Cam. Not because other characters didn’t deserve a turn at bat, but because I felt like Cam deserved a multi-book journey.

NP: The world of SIGHTSEER seems very Chicago-centered.

DV: Can you blame me? I love Chicago so much and can point to various cyberpunk stories that have a clear coastal bias. When I crafted Shytown as the proxy for Chicago in this dystopian future, it was what I needed. In my world, the coasts are a mess—global warming has drowned New York City, and a blend of global warming, earthquakes, wildfires, and volcanoes have demolished the West Coast. Both coasts are hurting, so the Midwest is where the action is. Not that there isn’t coastal action, but it’s a different vibe.

NP: You play rough with the Midwest. Places like “the Shambles” and so forth.

DV: Yeah. I recast the entire Rust Belt as “the Shambles” by design—it’s a rough place, desperate and deadly. People from the Shambles (sometimes derisively referred to as “Shamblers”) are tough. One of the supporting characters in the series, Moxie Monocle, hails from the Shambles. She’s Cam’s agent and sometime lover. They have a strong partnership. Moxie’s Shambler roots means she’s no slouch.

NP: SIGHTSEER starts with Cam getting a new pair of cybereyes.

DV: Yeah. That was the hook for me, how casual Cam is about shopping for new eyes. The idea of him having traded his own biological eyes for cybereyes is so forcefully cyberpunk, I couldn’t resist that. And him “trading up” for better eyes, that’s another box ticked for cyberpunk. I enjoyed exploring that process for Cam, like him thinking of staying relevant and competitive in the Looker marketplace, wanting to deliver for his audience/fan base/benefactors/patrons.

NP: Speaking of patrons, the Yakuza boss, Oniyaki, is a curious addition.

DV: The Yakuza (or “Yaks” as the locals call them) are a wink-and-nod to classic cyberpunk. Back in the 1980s, it seemed like Japan was going to take over the world, so the stories of that time showed that to varying degrees. In my case, it was a bit of an easter egg in that it’s clear that in Shytown, the Yakuza are dealing with two things: 1) they are in decline; and 2) they are operating in the States because that’s where they can still have some pull, owing to the dystopian corruption here. What might not fly in Chiba Prefecture can run the table in Shytown. That said, the Yaks deal with Russian mobsters and the Chinese Triads among others. Oniyaki is, in his way, seeking to diversify or die (it’s their version of “publish or perish” I suppose).

NP: You have so many fun characters in SIGHTSEER, like Abby Normal, the Yakuza assassin.

DV: I love Abby. Her name began as an easter egg nod to YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, her own story intrigued me, because she’s devoid of cybertechnology. She’s an organic superhuman. Not sure I should throw any spoilers out, but that’s what she is. She’s a eugenicist’s dream, not unlike a replicant. She’s a clone, which lets me have any numbers of her on-tap, depending on what Oniyaki requires. Given how traditional the Yakuza are, the fact that Oniyaki has opted for a female super-assassin clone as a trusted bodyguard says a lot about him as a leader, and where he’s at. The low-tech aspect of her existence is retro-radical, oddly enough. She lives up to her name.

NP: Cam seems intrigued by her, while she seems to find him amusing at best.

DV: Their relationship cracked me up as I worked on it. Abby is so straightlaced and hardcore Yak (despite or because she’s female), while Cam is so much of a wheeler-dealer. They have a unity in contrast as characters. I can’t fully say that opposites attract, because Abby would never condescend to be with Cam (hence her “You can’t afford me” lines), but she finds his constant hustles entertaining, like watching a cyberpuppy chase its own tail.

NP: In SIGHTSEER, Cam breaks down people into his segmented personas which appear to be part of everyday slang, since others use those terms with mutual understanding. Can you tell us more about that?

DV: Yeah. As a writer, I love playing with words, and conjuring up street cyberslang was so much fun. Everybody’s just so snappy with their patter. I broke the world up into Streetside, Midtown, and Upperton—those are the broad brushstrokes of the world. There’s also Underworld and the Heights, but those are more outside of people’s everyday vantage points. Underworld is a scary place, operating much as you’d imagine, while the Heights is orbital, where the hyper-rich entertain themselves—if Underworld is Hell, then the Heights is paradise. The fact that both suck is a reflection of how much harm one must endure in a cyberpunk world.

Streetside is where so many live, where hustle culture is on overdrive. Everybody living Streetside are desperate. There are good people there, but far more neutral and evil people who’ll do absolutely anything they can to get ahead. You don’t have to squint to see the critique of late stage capitalism when you’re Streetside. The economy reflects that—like the Ghouls who pick up dead bodies and repurpose/recycle them.

Midtown is a smaller slice, people who can afford to live better than those below them. They are part of the lower executive class, people bound to the megacorporations. Midtowners are just as desperate as the Streetsiders, but they tend to have nicer abodes and toys available to them. They’re still heavily tied to the megacorp vibe and would resent being lumped in with Streetsiders. Interesting, Cam came from Midtown but has opted to “slum it” Streetside—or, one could more cynically determine that Cam parleyed his Midtown advantages into a lucrative Streetsider existence. There’s also Lower Midtown and Upper Midtown, which reflects how well-off people there might be.

Upperton is the tiniest slice of all, where the rich play. They live in the penthouses, or in heavily-guarded gated communities. I had fun with that, portraying Lower Upperton as a thing, which is a term that Upperton folks would hugely resent. The dark joke I have in the story is that if you’re still living on Earth, you’re trash. And while the denizens of Lower Upperton have lofty, cushy lives, they’re not living in the Heights. There’s still something else to aspire to.

The Heights are something I’ve referenced in SIGHTSEER, but I haven’t yet shown to the readers. It’s coming, but for now, the Heights are viewed at a distance—personal shuttles hurled skyward, and space elevators, space stations in the night’s sky. Up, up, and away. Most of the worldbound folks think about the Heights, even as most know they’ll never get there.

As such, anyone in Upperton or the Heights roughly qualifies as transhuman in my perspective. Their existence, their everyday, is way beyond what ordinary humans experience. That also makes them both pathetic and terrifying. Again, readers will learn more about them in the future novels.

NP: It’s a mad world! Tell us about the segmentations Cam has!

DV: For sure. I had to lay out the landscapes for you to make the segmentations make sense. Rather than rehashing it, I’ll just pull directly from the book, bolded for emphasis:

In Cam’s world, there were Spliffs, Spiffs, Squiffs, Stiffs, Squids, and Strivers.

Spliffs were the hapless, hopeless wannabes who would never amount to anything, no matter how hard they tried. Spiffs were the swells, ones who had money and means, often imagined but seldom seen. Squiffs were the shaky ones, the freaks who looked ripe for a fall, whether through happenstance and/or self-medicated madness. They could be found anywhere, at any time, but were mostly Streetside. Stiffs were the workaday mundanes, overwhelmingly represented in megacorporate circles, or else they were corpses—sometimes they were both, if they messed up. Midtown was the native habitat of the Stiff. Squids were the criminal class, the ones who were mucking around in everybody else’s biz, always approached with caution. While Squids were everywhere in the underground, they could be found Streetside, in Midtown, and Upperton. The higher a Squid went, the more dangerous they were sure to be. And the Strivers were the wealthy tryhards, one cyberslip away from ignominious oblivion. Strivers were most often identified by their anxious hustling, and how many of them came to messy ends. Most everybody fell within these classifications. He had everyone he knew filed that way, for ease of use. The terms could be compliments or insults, depending on the circumstance and setting.

NP: You clearly had fun coming up with those names. Why all the “S” words?

DV: Since the book was titled SIGHTSEER, I just went wild with it. They all work. Each term has a layer of meaning to it, including a nod to TRANCERS with “Squids”—in TRANCERS (itself a 1984 toe-dip into cyberpunk, a favorite of mine from long ago), the hardboiled protagonist, Jack Deth, uses the term “Squids” for undesirables and squares. I was honoring that while giving it new meaning in the sense of them working their way into everything.

In Cam’s world, he’d see himself as a Striver who wants to become a Spiff. He’d reject the other castes. He’s not ruthless or connected enough to be a Squid, the way Oniyaki is. Had he followed his parents’ paths, he might’ve ended up a Stiff (literally and/or figuratively).

NP: What about Stabbo the Cyberclown, who’s nominally Cam’s adversary in SIGHTSEER?

DV: Ah, yes, the Cyberclowns. I name several of them in SIGHTSEER, and it’s hard to look at Stabbo without seeing the monster he’s become. I had a blast writing about Stabbo. The in-world premise behind the Cyberclowns is that they were all military and are highly-modified to the extent that they aren’t able to pass for everyday people anymore. They are living weapons, basically cyborgs. Depending on the Cyberclown, some are Squiffs, some are Strivers, some are Spiffs. I’d have to say that Stabbo’s a Striver—he’s ruthlessly pursued what advantages he can get and is so cybered up that he could take out a city block if he wanted to.

NP: And yet, he’s still retained some of his humanity through it all.

DV: That’s the funny thing about Stabbo. He’s one of those characters who has such a fearsome reputation that he can afford to be human when he needs to be. That’s a bit of the tragicomic nature of the Cyberclowns—they’re like WWE wrestlers and Special Forces cranked up to the max. They gave up their humanity in the service of war, which makes them terrifyingly cartoonish in the “real” world of the cyber-mundane. Stabbo is older (and, strangely, wiser) than Cam, and has a shred of sympathy for the situation Cam’s in. In the scene where they have their sitdown, you can see Stabbo and Serpentina (Stabbo’s agent) as down-the-road versions of Cam and Moxie, which was intentional. Once you’ve embraced the cyberhustle lifestyle and elective surgery, it’s a very slippery slope. The more you want, you more you trade to get it—in many respects, what you’re trading is your humanity.

I think the memory of that hits Stabbo when he’s dealing with Cam.

NP: You have a number of nonwhite characters in SIGHTSEER with interesting stories, like Jacquee Nimble, Lady Linnea Leadfoot, and others. They seem ripe for further development!

DV: I love Nimble—she’s like a big sister to Cam, and he doesn’t even know it, while Lady Leadfoot is sure to reappear in future books. They both are, because they’re cool and badass in their respective arenas. Nimble is a cop, and Leadfoot is a Driver.

NP: You took time to discuss Drivers in SIGHTSEER. What’s their story?

DV: They’re people who have rigged themselves up to be able to merge with and/or remote-pilot vehicles. Again, I’ll throw in a section from SIGHTSEER that lays it out in detail:

All-Purpose Drivers (APDs): As comfortable with any vehicles they drove, whether by land, sea, or air. Very often post-military specialists. Could be counted on to keep cool in dicey situations, and their versatility was a key selling point.

Hotrodders: Largely land-based, could drive cars or trucks. Often in the racing business, with a penchant for speed and steadiness, in it for the thrill of the chase. Given their fast-and-furious lifestyle, Hotrodders were very often looking for work, and could be hired on the fly with a desire to get a passenger where they needed to go in return for some ready scrip.

Fly Grrls & Fly Guys: Air and space, always post-military. They were the real speed freaks among the drivers, tended toward high-end gigs, not so much Streetside. Most of them were employed by Upperton Swankers and couldn’t be bothered with land-based work, and worked through talent brokers and fixers, never getting their hands dirty with off-the-shelf work.

Tankers: Ground- and sea-based heavy rig operators. Either post-industrial and/or post-military, they traded in a hardcore “get you there” kind of mentality, relying on durability over speed. Tankers were employed Streetside around the world and took a certain pride in their stubborn drive to get where they set about going. Tankers were good road-fighters, as many of them were hired in rural Hinterland routes that required stoic ferocity.

Re-Cyclers: Specialists among the Streetsiders, these motorcyclists were their own brand of speedsters, liked to pretend that they were flying through the city streets. With the highest body count among the drivers, Re-Cyclers earned their name because of their knack for ending up scooped off the streets by Ghouls and processed for parts. Still, if one was suitably desperate, a Re-Cycler at the right time could be just the speeding ticket.

Drone Jockeys: While the other drivers might look down on them because they were remote from their vehicles of choice, Drone Jockeys were always thirsting for gigs and many of them were as good (or better) as direct drivers, which was a sort of dirty secret among the driver set. A primed Jockey could pilot multiple vehicles simultaneously, with the best of them running gigs with three or more vehicles under their control. Those commanded the highest fees, and often Jockeys piggybacked with other drivers on gigs, with plenty of them moonlighting with combat drones and/or gun turrets. Most often post-military.

 

NP: The Drivers sound intense.

DV: Oh, they are. They are a class unto themselves, because only those who virtually fuse their consciousness with vehicles could hope to relate to that experience. And Drivers have to walk that line of being rock-steady but also crazy enough to throw themselves into real danger for good money. A solid Driver is a true commodity in the world of The Plastic Fantastic. You’ll see more of them in the next two books of the trilogy, including some types not mentioned above. Particularly in Book Two, where Drivers play an even bigger role than they did in SIGHTSEER. They’re fun characters to write!

NP: Have you seen CYBERPUNK 2077: EDGERUNNERS?

DV: Oh, yes. Loved it! I watched that while I was revising SIGHTSEER, and it revved me up, made me feel like I was doing this book at the right time! There’s just something compelling about cyberpunk, and for an old fan like me, I think EDGERUNNERS nailed so much good stuff within the subgenre!

NP: Lucy or Rebecca?

DV: Oh, come on! I love Lucy, but Rebecca’s such a scene stealer! Loved her exuberantly insane character. I have figurines of them both on my writing desk—they keep watch while I work. One thing I love about Rebecca is how she gets recoil-compensating cyberarms as a reaction to the death of Pilar, he lecherous big brother who gets killed. When she tries to avenge him, the recoil on Maine’s rifle knocks her off her feet. That she reacted to that setback by later getting those Ben Grimm/Thing-style cybermitts is profanely hilarious. That’s the kind of stuff you can do in cyberpunk that makes it so much fun. I do hope they do more seasons of that show!

NP: That’s so fun! Speaking of that, what are the next two books titled, if you don’t mind sharing?

DV: Book Two is WHEN IN CHROME, and Book Three is THREE-WAY MIRROR. I’m guardedly confident that when I finish them, I’ll have wrapped up Cam’s journey to my satisfaction, and, hopefully, to the satisfaction of the readers! Also, I can’t rule out more Plastic Fantastic stories—the world is packed with possibilities, and if I can get the audience I need for them, I’ll definitely write more books in that world!

NP: Until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with SIGHTSEER, which comes out May 27!

DV: See you there, Spiffs!