To say that I am obsessed with Cyberpunk would be an understatement.
Since my first play through of 2077, I have been ravenously seeking out any type of memorabilia and media related to the franchise. My obsession has sent me to bizarre corners of the internet, in search of the most obscure, rare, and hard-to-find items, such as Rache Bartmoss’ Guide to the Net. At its core, my obsession is really about a love for the lore that makes up Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk world.
So, after reading the 2077 novel No Coincidence, I was hungry for more. At that point, I had believed I was aware of every CP book or sourcebook ever made, but in some strange twist of fate, I ended up stumbling upon Holo Men, a novel licensed by R. Talsorian Games (RTG) that takes place in the Cyberpunk 2020 universe, and its counterpart, The Ravengers.
It was like Christmas in July, and I had to have them.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t very much information about the novels around the net. There are a few reviews on various websites, most of which are pretty brief, but generally pretty favorable. The synopsis for both books on many of these sites didn’t tell you much, and ones written for The Ravengers wrongly states that Night City in the novel is actually Manhattan, which is not true.
I did find a Reddit discussion about CP lore, where one user brought up the novels, and was pretty critical about The Ravengers.
“I consider The Ravengers not canon,” the user argued. “Nothing in is true—even the parts that technically are. It’s that bad.”
The user also noted that they felt the book “reads as though the author is transcribing a campaign he played/ran,” and it turns out they may have been on to something.
In a tweet shared in 2019, RTG revealed that the books were “based on a high concept RPG Mike Pondsmith wrote named Cyberpunk Teal” which “used only d10s and all conflicts [were] resolved on a character’s Lifepath before play began.” (NOTE: Unfortunately, RTG was unavailable for comment about CP Teal at the time of this writing, but hopefully CNU will get more info in the near future!)
My research left me with more questions than answers, as it revealed that the two books have seemingly been cast off into oblivion. Even as the Cyberpunk franchise continues to grow, gaining more fans like me that are seeking more content to indulge in, the 2020 novels are rarely, if ever, brought up, as if the community has gotten on board with the idea that it doesn’t belong in CP cannon, despite the fact that so few people have actually read them.
I finally ordered a copy of Holo Men, and was thoroughly surprised at how much I enjoyed it, so much so that I finished the nearly 300-page book in about a day and a half.
I then set out on a quest to find out where the novels came from, why there are only two, and what was going on in the mind of the man behind them.
How Stephen Billias came to write the Cyberpunk 2020 novels
I have to admit that when I first reached out to Stephen Billias, I, for some reason, imagined he would be someone just as obsessed with Cyberpunk as I am, and others in the CNU community.
But, instead of a fellow fanatic, Billias turned out to be a down-to-earth older man with a passion for creativity and the arts, who sort of inadvertently stumbled into the role of becoming a Cyberpunk author.
The two of us recently did a nearly hour-long interview, where he began by reminiscing of how he spent his early adult life in New York City as an aspiring actor, before turning to more business-oriented gigs, as he was growing “tired of being poor.”
But the impulse to create never left him, and he eventually began writing. Miraculously, he managed to get the first novel he ever wrote published, which opened the door to more opportunities and other connections.
Sometime around 1994, he was introduced to a literary agent who served as a “middle man” (or fixer) for publishing companies who sought authors for “writing for hire” work, where writers would produce a novel that takes place within the world of an already existing franchise. That fixer landed him several related gigs, one of which was creating a novel for RTG’s Cyberpunk 2020.
By 1995, Billias had written and published The Ravengers – the tale of two street rats, who are given a job by a Digital Librarian to travel from Night City to New York City to loot old museums of their lost, classical art, and bring them back to the West Coast in an effort to “salvage civilization.”
The book was published by Warner Books, allowing it to hit bookshelves in major bookstores across the country.
Billias admitted that he never got a chance to actually play CP, but he read source material that was sent to him, and “invented my own plot and characters, and they seemed happy with it.”
The overseers were so happy, that they ordered another, and Billias produced Holo Men, which was published the following year, in 1996.
Holo Men follows the story of a netrunner named Joshua, a “broke, wasted, mutating burnout”, who has a run-in with a group called the Holo Men, who seek to control the net. Josh joins the group, only to end up going rogue, sparking a war with the group’s leader, Kilo-mega.
In reading both novels, CP fans may get the sense that aspects of the game and lore take much more of a backseat, as they are used to help bolster Billias’ story, instead of defining it. He likened the books to a band doing cover songs – “they were in someone else’s world, but I was working in them.”
Above all, both books contain so much adventure and imagination in them, that you can’t help but get the sense that Billias had a damn good time writing them. They rarely take themselves too seriously, and in moments where they do, they exhibit unexpected levels of depth.
“They were a lot of fun to do, and I’m really proud of them,” Billias reminisced, but went on to add that while he believes both books have some pretty good parts to them, he doesn’t believe they contributed much to or “have much value” in the world of Cyberpunk 2020.
Should The Ravengers and Holo Men be considered Cyberpunk cannon?
The answer to this question is unequivocally “yes.”
But who, exactly, decides what becomes cannon, and what gets tossed by the wayside? I believe there exists two tiers – the opinion of those that created the game, and the opinions of the fans of its thriving community.
Stephen Billias was given a job, and, in my opinion, he went above and beyond in completing it. He managed to create very original stories and concepts, while staying true to where the CP franchise was at that time.
When he wrote them, Cyberpunk 2020 had only been around for a few years, as it was first released in 1990, a detail worth keeping in mind when reading either books. Aspects of the story are arguably dated, which is to be expected, and it lacks the dark and brooding, super polished state of the franchise today.
While Billias’ novels may not scratch the lore itch as much as some fans would have liked, he does manage to demonstrate in both books that he had, at the very least, a fundamental understanding of CP lore.
In The Ravengers, the character bytegirl, who is easily my favorite, is a Rockergirl, and throughout the novel, she gets into situations where she uses her music to win over others.
In Holo Men, Joshua, the main character, is a netrunner, and the novel makes numerous references to the legendary Rache Bartmoss, and the state of the net after his mysterious disappearance.
These are just a few examples, but it’s clear that Billias did far more research than he is willing to give himself credit for.
While I can’t speak yet on how RTG and/or Mike Pondsmith felt about Billias’ work, they were, at the very least, impressed enough with The Ravengers that they ordered seconds, which says something. And the fact that no other novels preceded his, signal that maybe RTG abandoned the idea of CP novels, not Billias as a writer.
Billias’ books deserve, at the very least, the respect of the community, because I believe that with it, maybe, just maybe, we could create a demand, which could push RTG to consider revisiting the idea of publishing CP novels.
The concept of tabletop games or any gaming franchise producing related novels is nothing new. Two games similar to CP that come to mind are Dungeons & Dragons and Shadowrun – both of which have novel lines that have produced countless works and uplifted some great writers.
As is the case with legendary D&D fantasy writer R. A. Salvatore, the possibility also exists that these books could achieve New York Times Bestseller status, and produce iconic characters within a franchise, i.e. Drizzt Do’Urden, that themselves become almost bigger than the game they were made for.
Stephen Billias was literally at ground zero for what could have been a line of Cyberpunk novels that could have seen similar success, and he definitely deserves praise for his efforts. Some could even say, he’s something of a Night City legend.
(Stephen Billias is still writing after all these years, and soon plans to return to fantasy with a novel he is currently working on with his wife, Bela. You can follow and support their work at his website – billiasbreslauwriters.com)
