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My cyberpunk map. I took a few cues from B_Munro's Defunct Futures, Silas-Coldwine's Beyond the Flesh and some Cyberpunk 2020 supplements.
---
It is the year 2080. Permanent human colonies thrive on Alpha Centauri. Megacities, with hundreds of millions of citizens, cover the Earth. Anyone who's anyone, and a lot of people who aren't anything, are cyborgs. The entire world is connected through a global network of computers, now so small and powerful they can fit in a backpack unit and hold ten whole gigabytes of data. Cybercommandos, terminators and replicants fight around the world in corporate shadow wars, while hackers try in vain to bring the corporations down. It is a world where cyberspace is more important than the real world, where robots indistinguishable from humans walk among us, and not even the stars are the limit.
Japan rules the world now. A rising power a century ago, Japan has now taken the lead after the fall of the United States and China, and the weakening of the Soviet Union. Japan is the most advanced state in the world, the pioneer of just about every new piece of tech out there. The archipelago is covered in city, known throughout the world as the Tokyo Complex. Japan has the largest number of space colonies, the largest number of computers and robots, and even maintains its population through mass cloning. Of course, the true power in Japan is not the emperor, or the government, but the megacorporations. These corporations have control of almost every aspect of Japanese life, and for the average Japanese citizen, loyalty to the employer is the most important thing in life. These megacorporations have their fingers in everyone's pie, including owning almost half of the market share in the Soviet and American governments.
The British adopted the Japanese model in the early 21st century, and are now the junior partners of the new Japanese empire. The Japanese have also exported their model to the Pacific States, which is now half-Japanese both linguistically and ethnically, and dominated by Megacity Two. The Confederation of China, which arose out of the ashes of the Second Chinese Civil War, is practically another Japan on the Asian mainland.
America is a shadow of its former self. After the economic crisis of 1992, Vietnam War II, and the death of American corporations, the American government went on a crusade to regain its strength. It went on several anti-drug campaigns in Latin America, toppling governments and occupying them. But this did not stop the greater collapse in 2009, which brought down the American government itself. Many cities, dominated by what few American corporations were left, declared independence, and used their roboticized police forces to defend themselves from the aging American military. What emerged from the ashes was the Union of American Republics, a more libertarian state which is ruled by the megacorporations in their now-independent cities. Indeed, the UAR's government has "gone public," and now shares can be purchased in the UAR Congress for votes. The UAR has been trying to find its way after the war against Red Canada by exploring the stars, where their Colonial Marines are finding new signs of alien life. On Earth, they still try to put down the mutants in Canada, while fighting the Second Cold War against the European Union.
After the weakening of the Warsaw Pact, a new European Union arose in the West. This new EU, a predominantly French project, sought to create a European superpower to challenge both the United States and the Soviet Union. In a way, they succeeded. By adopting Japanese business models, the Europeans saw a rise in the early 21st century, but their economy has stagnated since the 2050s. Now the Europeans are eager to spread liberty, equality and fraternity throughout the world, challenging the Americans in Latin America. The Europeans have a modest space presence, and have curbed the power of their megacorporations somewhat.
The Soviet Union lingers on. After reforming in the 1990s and 2010s, the Soviet Union is now just as capitalistic as its neighbors, although the propaganda says otherwise. Indeed, like the UAR, the USSR is partially owned by private corporations. The CPSU is now a rubber stamp organization for the shareholders in the USSR, which include voting blocs like the dominant Yamato Faction and the Western, West Berlin-based Persephone Faction. The Soviet bloc declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but rose again when the revolutions in Latin America and Africa created more communist states. The war with China, which later provoked the Second Chinese Civil War, also destroyed Moscow's primary rival for influence in the communist world. A new "Union of Progressive States" was created in 2026, becoming a major bloc ostensibly challenging the Japanese. However, following Moscow's orders, these new communist states became privatized as well, and are just as dominated by foreign corporations.
Then there are the rogue states, which for some reason or another are not controlled by the major corporations in the Tokyo Complex or Megacity One, at least openly. A major threat in Europe is the German Democratic Republic. Now the last bastion of Stalinism on Earth, the East Germans worship Marx as a god, and maintain a massive army of genetically engineered soldiers. But apart from the improved weapons and propaganda machine, the country is practically stuck in the 1990s. in the Middle East, Iran denounces global capitalism as the Great Satan, and has cut itself off from the rest of the world. The North African Arab Republic, founded nearly a century ago by Gaddafi, is too poor and corrupt even for the megacorporations to deal with, and it is a crumbling military dictatorship powered by its hatred for Israel.
Israel, on the other hand, remains under a democratic government, albeit one controlled by Zionist parties who still refuse to give the ghettoized Palestinian population some land, even as the Palestinians use black market cybernetic enhancements to train more terrorists. They have their own megacorps, but they are far weaker than those of the Japanese. In South Africa, the opposition against apartheid was crushed through brutal repression. The megacorps do still make deals with South Africa, particularly for organs from executed dissidents, but South Africa's reputation is bad enough that not even the megacorps want to be caught dealing with them.
Crime is a major problem in the megacities, and the megacorps are dealing with this by kidnapping criminals and "criminals" for their organs, or for experimentation. Luckily, war is unlikely between the great powers, because their corporate masters prefer low-level warfare in cyberspace and in factory complexes.
Cloning has become commonplace, to the point that some "families" are actually just generations of clones, and genetic engineering has gotten good enough so that people can create their "ideal" selves and raise them as their "children." The Japanese use cloning most extensively, but they aren't the only ones. Cloning has become so ubiquitous that there are laws on the books throughout the world preventing people from stealing hair or other genetic material from others without their permission, because there was an issue with people being cloned without their consent by people who snip off hair on public transit or dig through trash to get saliva samples. There are many unauthorized clones of celebrities in Megacity Two. And let's not even get to grave robbing; there are Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones still starring in cheesy action flicks[1], even though they died decades before cloning was a fad. That being said, the laws aren't exactly enforced, if you're paying the right people.
AIs have also advanced, although most of them require a secure connection to a cyber network to work properly. Anthropomorphic Japanese AIs have full citizenship, because they really are difficult to tell apart from regular humans, particularly since the humans themselves are a little machine-like thanks to cybernetic implants and the high-tech society replacing a lot of regular human interaction. There are some AIs which do not have citizenship or rights, and these are AIs built for some specific task, not to be a companion or something. This does not have a direct correlation with the "body" the AI is using; a waiter or waitress may be a dumb AI that looks indistinguishable from humans, and a starship may have the personality of a human.
In orbit, America's aging Star Wars defenses are starting to deorbit, but newer stations from around the world replaced them long ago. Space travel is so cheap that practically anyone can go to space if they wanted to, but most people are content to go into life-consuming virtual reality sims or take mind-altering neurodrugs to help with the pain of cheap cybernetic enhancements. The Solar System is dotted with permanent colonies, and the Moon even has a city of ten thousand.
Humanity's expansion into space is good, because Earth is dying. The oceans and skies have been polluted for centuries, and now the sea levels are finally starting to rise as Japan's "Frosty" drones, which reflect "excess" sunlight back into space, are incapable of handling the stress. Lung augments are starting to become popular again, as pollution levels in the megacities become worse than they have been since the 2010s. As the world chokes and drowns, the rich and powerful already plan their new homes in the Alpha Centauri system. Anyone with enough money can join them, but they understand that most people will be left behind, and they don't care. After all, only the best of mankind should be saved.
[1] If you thought OTL Hollywood was bad with sequels, you haven't seen Terminator 30: Jurassic Judgment.
---
It is the year 2080. Permanent human colonies thrive on Alpha Centauri. Megacities, with hundreds of millions of citizens, cover the Earth. Anyone who's anyone, and a lot of people who aren't anything, are cyborgs. The entire world is connected through a global network of computers, now so small and powerful they can fit in a backpack unit and hold ten whole gigabytes of data. Cybercommandos, terminators and replicants fight around the world in corporate shadow wars, while hackers try in vain to bring the corporations down. It is a world where cyberspace is more important than the real world, where robots indistinguishable from humans walk among us, and not even the stars are the limit.
Japan rules the world now. A rising power a century ago, Japan has now taken the lead after the fall of the United States and China, and the weakening of the Soviet Union. Japan is the most advanced state in the world, the pioneer of just about every new piece of tech out there. The archipelago is covered in city, known throughout the world as the Tokyo Complex. Japan has the largest number of space colonies, the largest number of computers and robots, and even maintains its population through mass cloning. Of course, the true power in Japan is not the emperor, or the government, but the megacorporations. These corporations have control of almost every aspect of Japanese life, and for the average Japanese citizen, loyalty to the employer is the most important thing in life. These megacorporations have their fingers in everyone's pie, including owning almost half of the market share in the Soviet and American governments.
The British adopted the Japanese model in the early 21st century, and are now the junior partners of the new Japanese empire. The Japanese have also exported their model to the Pacific States, which is now half-Japanese both linguistically and ethnically, and dominated by Megacity Two. The Confederation of China, which arose out of the ashes of the Second Chinese Civil War, is practically another Japan on the Asian mainland.
America is a shadow of its former self. After the economic crisis of 1992, Vietnam War II, and the death of American corporations, the American government went on a crusade to regain its strength. It went on several anti-drug campaigns in Latin America, toppling governments and occupying them. But this did not stop the greater collapse in 2009, which brought down the American government itself. Many cities, dominated by what few American corporations were left, declared independence, and used their roboticized police forces to defend themselves from the aging American military. What emerged from the ashes was the Union of American Republics, a more libertarian state which is ruled by the megacorporations in their now-independent cities. Indeed, the UAR's government has "gone public," and now shares can be purchased in the UAR Congress for votes. The UAR has been trying to find its way after the war against Red Canada by exploring the stars, where their Colonial Marines are finding new signs of alien life. On Earth, they still try to put down the mutants in Canada, while fighting the Second Cold War against the European Union.
After the weakening of the Warsaw Pact, a new European Union arose in the West. This new EU, a predominantly French project, sought to create a European superpower to challenge both the United States and the Soviet Union. In a way, they succeeded. By adopting Japanese business models, the Europeans saw a rise in the early 21st century, but their economy has stagnated since the 2050s. Now the Europeans are eager to spread liberty, equality and fraternity throughout the world, challenging the Americans in Latin America. The Europeans have a modest space presence, and have curbed the power of their megacorporations somewhat.
The Soviet Union lingers on. After reforming in the 1990s and 2010s, the Soviet Union is now just as capitalistic as its neighbors, although the propaganda says otherwise. Indeed, like the UAR, the USSR is partially owned by private corporations. The CPSU is now a rubber stamp organization for the shareholders in the USSR, which include voting blocs like the dominant Yamato Faction and the Western, West Berlin-based Persephone Faction. The Soviet bloc declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but rose again when the revolutions in Latin America and Africa created more communist states. The war with China, which later provoked the Second Chinese Civil War, also destroyed Moscow's primary rival for influence in the communist world. A new "Union of Progressive States" was created in 2026, becoming a major bloc ostensibly challenging the Japanese. However, following Moscow's orders, these new communist states became privatized as well, and are just as dominated by foreign corporations.
Then there are the rogue states, which for some reason or another are not controlled by the major corporations in the Tokyo Complex or Megacity One, at least openly. A major threat in Europe is the German Democratic Republic. Now the last bastion of Stalinism on Earth, the East Germans worship Marx as a god, and maintain a massive army of genetically engineered soldiers. But apart from the improved weapons and propaganda machine, the country is practically stuck in the 1990s. in the Middle East, Iran denounces global capitalism as the Great Satan, and has cut itself off from the rest of the world. The North African Arab Republic, founded nearly a century ago by Gaddafi, is too poor and corrupt even for the megacorporations to deal with, and it is a crumbling military dictatorship powered by its hatred for Israel.
Israel, on the other hand, remains under a democratic government, albeit one controlled by Zionist parties who still refuse to give the ghettoized Palestinian population some land, even as the Palestinians use black market cybernetic enhancements to train more terrorists. They have their own megacorps, but they are far weaker than those of the Japanese. In South Africa, the opposition against apartheid was crushed through brutal repression. The megacorps do still make deals with South Africa, particularly for organs from executed dissidents, but South Africa's reputation is bad enough that not even the megacorps want to be caught dealing with them.
Crime is a major problem in the megacities, and the megacorps are dealing with this by kidnapping criminals and "criminals" for their organs, or for experimentation. Luckily, war is unlikely between the great powers, because their corporate masters prefer low-level warfare in cyberspace and in factory complexes.
Cloning has become commonplace, to the point that some "families" are actually just generations of clones, and genetic engineering has gotten good enough so that people can create their "ideal" selves and raise them as their "children." The Japanese use cloning most extensively, but they aren't the only ones. Cloning has become so ubiquitous that there are laws on the books throughout the world preventing people from stealing hair or other genetic material from others without their permission, because there was an issue with people being cloned without their consent by people who snip off hair on public transit or dig through trash to get saliva samples. There are many unauthorized clones of celebrities in Megacity Two. And let's not even get to grave robbing; there are Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones still starring in cheesy action flicks[1], even though they died decades before cloning was a fad. That being said, the laws aren't exactly enforced, if you're paying the right people.
AIs have also advanced, although most of them require a secure connection to a cyber network to work properly. Anthropomorphic Japanese AIs have full citizenship, because they really are difficult to tell apart from regular humans, particularly since the humans themselves are a little machine-like thanks to cybernetic implants and the high-tech society replacing a lot of regular human interaction. There are some AIs which do not have citizenship or rights, and these are AIs built for some specific task, not to be a companion or something. This does not have a direct correlation with the "body" the AI is using; a waiter or waitress may be a dumb AI that looks indistinguishable from humans, and a starship may have the personality of a human.
In orbit, America's aging Star Wars defenses are starting to deorbit, but newer stations from around the world replaced them long ago. Space travel is so cheap that practically anyone can go to space if they wanted to, but most people are content to go into life-consuming virtual reality sims or take mind-altering neurodrugs to help with the pain of cheap cybernetic enhancements. The Solar System is dotted with permanent colonies, and the Moon even has a city of ten thousand.
Humanity's expansion into space is good, because Earth is dying. The oceans and skies have been polluted for centuries, and now the sea levels are finally starting to rise as Japan's "Frosty" drones, which reflect "excess" sunlight back into space, are incapable of handling the stress. Lung augments are starting to become popular again, as pollution levels in the megacities become worse than they have been since the 2010s. As the world chokes and drowns, the rich and powerful already plan their new homes in the Alpha Centauri system. Anyone with enough money can join them, but they understand that most people will be left behind, and they don't care. After all, only the best of mankind should be saved.
[1] If you thought OTL Hollywood was bad with sequels, you haven't seen Terminator 30: Jurassic Judgment.
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what do the megacities look like?