Neon Leviathan

A collection of stories about the outsiders – the criminals, the soldiers, the addicts, the mathematicians, the gamblers and the cage fighters, the refugees and the rebels. From the battlefield to alternate realities to the mean streets of the dark city, we walk in the shoes of those who struggle to survive in a neon-saturated, tech-noir future.



Twelve hard-edged stories from the dark, often violent, sometimes strange heart of cyberpunk, this collection – as with all the best science fiction – is an exploration of who were are now. In the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Philip K Dick, and David Mitchell, Neon Leviathan is a remarkable debut collection from a breakout new author.

"Haunting and iridescent—combines the paranoid weirdness of the best Philip K Dick, the chilly but cool-as-fuck future gleam of cyberpunk, and an achingly beautiful literary inflection reminiscent of mainstream heavyweights like Murakami or Ishiguro. T. R. Napper’s futures feel at once gritty and vertiginous and close-focus human in the way only the best SF can manage. Whatever roadmap he’s working from, I can’t wait to see where he’s taking us next.”

Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon



“It is easier to write about violence than to write about the aftermath—the grief, the guilt, the long-held trauma. It’s easier to write about the shouted argument than the taut silence which follows it. It’s easier to write about dreamlike unreality than it is to invest a reader in the mundane and the everyday. And yet the stories within Neon Leviathan balance all these competing demands with a deft and masterful hand.”

Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time



“Heartbreaking… it evokes the depth of Chinese history, the successive wars, the poetry that expresses both the love of the landscape and the pain of the soldier leaving home, perhaps never to return.” (for Dark on a Darkling Earth)

Lois Tilton, Locus Magazine



“T. R. Napper’s cyberpunk story is a standout [in the collection], featuring a download with the tension of a high-speed chase” (for Twelve Minutes to Vinh Quang)

Publisher’s Weekly



“The story is by turns blackly funny, speculatively impressive, and bleakly moving.” (for A Strange Loop)

Rich Horton, Locus Magazine



“Wonderfully strange” (for An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extra-Terrestrial Betting Markets)

Sci Fi Review



“Darkly gonzoid” (for An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extra-Terrestrial Betting Markets)

Lois Tilton, Locus Magazine



“Thrilling and Moving” (for Ghosts of a Neon God)

Rocket Stack Rank



“The whole reads like a fever dream” (for Great Buddhist Monk Beat Down)

Tangent Online