Moss is disconnected, despite being around his co-workers all day in tight surroundings, as illustrated when Moss is attracted to another employee. Points are deducted for doing things like cursing and rewarded for working hard or just for submitting to company inspections that would be illegal in most societies without probable cause. Get enough points and you level up, gaining access to new transportation options and larger homes. The line also serves as foreshadowing.” A TV displays Moss’s work productivity points each morning. As such, ThutoCo’s monopoly of power and food in the western world puts them in a dangerous position of power. In a corporate controlled world, the companies are governed by their own internal logic rather than the laws to which we are accustomed. ‍ I asked Matthew, “How does death is the price of life sum up the corporation’s viewpoints on the world and how it uses resources and control?” He replied, “Due to the relative luxury which ThutoCo provides its employees, I needed to establish early that the company had a dark side and was willing to put the bottom line over human lives. The company feeds the world, but its slogan is death is the price of life. ThutoCo tracks his movements and communications throughout the day to ensure he’s working. He is amazed by the natural world and I liked the dichotomy of a name based in nature with the sterile and mechanized world he inhabits at the onset of Into Neon.” Moss lives in a hex, a corporate-controlled apartment tightly nested into surrounding units like a hive, and indeed that is how the corporation perceives him – as a common worker bee. But I wanted his name to evoke nature as well. Moss has spent his whole life sheltered, doing little more than working and even his name indicates that. As you say, moss is slow to grow but it also denotes a sedentary lifestyle. I asked Matthew, “How does Moss’s name relate to his character? I think moss and I think something slow to grow, slow to spread out, in the bottom rungs of society.” He replied, “The second book in the series explains why Moss was given the name by his parents but I liked the name for many reasons.

Though he had to admit to himself, the sample size was small. He had asked his friends if they felt the same way, but none did. A cautious, analytical individual, he has limited social connections as illustrated, ‍ His implant’s irritating him. Moss lives a very sheltered life, with limited understanding as to how people lived outside his building since he never left it. It begins with Moss, an employee working for ThutoCo, experiencing the ocean in VR, even though he’s never been to it in real life. Into Neon is the new cyberpunk book by Matthew A.

Into Neon by Matthew A. Goodwin