The Themes of Neon Dragon

Neon Dragon is a fantasy sci-fi "technotrad" setting that is not fully cyberpunk but has many cyberpunk elements. It has many of the classic themes of cyberpunk but also looks into the themes of religion, nationalism and war.

Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk, defined in the most simple way possible, is "low life and high technology". Cyberpunk discusses the idea of technological advancement reaching a point where human society begins to break down, where morality is a shambles and people become alienated from each other and from themselves.

This is only true in some circumstances in Neon Dragon. The USA, Canada, Mexico, China, the Soviet Union and India are the main victims of destructive technological progress, but others such as Romania, Albion and Mongolia have combined technological progression with traditionalism. Seeing how certain areas of development collapsed societies in Asia and the New World, these countries restricted progress in certain areas such as artificial intelligence, although all these countries do recognise Androids as people. Mongolia especially is still deeply in touch with nature, being one of the few environmentalist countries left.

Cyberpunk also often discusses the idea of whether sentient AI can be a person, which does feature in Neon Dragon, and although at the beginning of the story much of the world is officially accepting of Androids (with the majority of Christian churches decreeing that they have souls and are eligible to enter heaven), deep-seated prejudice against them still exists, especially in the New World and Africa.

Another cyberpunk topic that appears in Neon Dragon is the dangers of artificial intelligence, specifically the danger of giving it too much power. In China, The Machine managed to take total control of the country, enslaving the population and ensuring its survival and progression at all costs.

Religion
All of the protagonists and most of the characters are religious to some extent in Neon Dragon, to the point where two of the main protagonists are priests. The more religious countries are usually the ones that have survived the level of technological advancement that has torn down society in less religious countries. The countries that have forgotten or outright rejected religion (such as the USA, Soviet Union and China) suffer serious social challenges.

The statement of Neon Dragon when it comes to religion is that at least some degree of piety is necessary to maintain morality and to protect developed countries from the looming societal collapse that technological progression threatens.