A conversation with Mark Everglade, author of the cyberpunk novel Hemispheres (RockHill Publishing) and several short stories, and member of the Cyberpunk Coalition.

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The Introduction

Mark Everglade

An avid reader of science fiction, Mark Everglade takes both its warnings and opportunities for change to heart. His first novel, Hemispheres, published through RockHill Publishing, has a 4.5-star rating on Amazon and went to number five in its category during its launch week.

Mark holds a Master’s of Science in Conflict Theory. His previous works have been featured in Expolanet Magazine and Unrealpolitik. He has appeared on numerous podcasts and newscasts for his books and social activism.

Equally serious about music, Mark has jammed with one of the Rolling Stones, met Randy Bachman, and used to have Jim Morrison’s stage equipment in his basement.

He currently resides in Florida with his wife and four children.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

So, Mark, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you, Ed, great to be here.

Great to have you. And thanks for reaching out. A lot of these podcasts are people I’ve, you know, I encounter, or I just see somebody online, and I think they’d make a good interview. But you reached out to me, and I’m glad you did because I think this should be an interesting conversation. You’re down in Florida, I understand, where spring has probably already sprung. We’re still kind of waiting for it here.

Absolutely.

I was walking around the lake this morning, which is not far from the house, and the lake is still quite frozen. I wouldn’t want to go to the ice, but the geese are still on the ice without worrying about it.

Oh, wow.

So, we’re going to start, as I always do, by taking you back into the mists of time—I don’t know how far back that is for you, it’s getting further back for me—to find out how you . . . well, first of all, where you grew up and your education and all that, but especially how you got interested in science fiction. And probably you started as a reader and then moved into the writing side of it. But how did that all work for you? Where did you grow up, and how did you get interested in writing?

Absolutely. Well, I grew up about 20 miles north of Baltimore City, Maryland, U.S. And I’m 40 now, but growing up, I was very interested in some of the books that came out in the ’80s and ’90s that were cyberpunk books that really got me involved in science fiction, science fiction such as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. And I was reading a lot of that at the time, but I was also reading a lot of philosophy,