Scion

The world of Scion is deeply rooted in the traditions of cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction that typically features the juxtaposition of advanced technology and urban social decay. This classification of speculative literature emerged in the 1960s and 1970s with the New Wave science fiction movement led by Michael Moorcock, editor of the magazine New Worlds. In reaction to the utopian societies that characterized science fiction in the previous decades, writers in this movement imagined interactions between technology and contemporary cultural changes such as the sexual revolution and drug culture, in ways that resulted in the formation of dystopian cityscapes. 

Forerunners of the cyberpunk genre include Samuel R. Delaney’s Nova and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, both published in 1968. Where Delaney’s novel featured the integration of technology into biological processes, Dick’s novel explored the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. The latter would eventually be adapted into film as Blade Runner (1982), itself considered a foundational work that brought cyberpunk into the mainstream. By 1984, the tropes of cyberpunk were formalized with the publication of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, which featured a rogue group of computer hackers navigating virtual reality and cyberspace to execute a high-stakes heist.