Woohoo, it's finished! Confetti time~
First, let me address some questions my generous benefactors might have:
1. Huh, why not give us more postwar reckonings?
Well, here's the thing: I felt that once the war was won, the punk was over. A reckoning section would have felt like another kind of Long Aotian power fantasy, and adding it to the main story would have dragged things out too much. Better to head straight for the finish while the battle's aftertaste was still there. It would feel more cohesive that way (probably more cohesive?).
Of course, that doesn't mean I won't write it. Before I start a new book, I'll add a little now and then (maybe).
2. That's it? God freaking dammit, why not throw in a few more worlds?
Actually, this book ended up far longer than the first outline. Back then, I'd only thought up a beginning, an ending, and the broad strokes of the important events in between. Overall, it was built around the Cyberpunk setting.
Also, I expressed my personal view in the book: if humanity breaks free of Earth, the foundations that allow cyberpunk to exist become pretty unstable. In its purist sense, this genre is about self-examination and contemplating one's own worth. Scaled up to society, whether humanity breaks free of Earth is a very important turning point. In other words, I don't think cyberpunk should exist in a spacefaring civilization.
The specifics are complicated, so I won't go into them here. Put simply, I think that once the story's power levels go beyond Earth, the technology needed to break the deadlock is already available.
To take a more extreme example, suppose you brought in Hulk and had him smash Earth. That wouldn't be smashing the corporations; it would be smashing the emotional foundation