Literature / Moon Cops on the Moon

Welcome to the Moon

MOON COPS is a series by C.T. Phipps set in the Future Punk shared universe of his Agent G, The Cyber Dragons Trilogy, Space Academy, and Lucifer's Star series. It is an Affectionate Parody of Cyberpunk police procedurals like Robocop and Blade Runner.

Neal Stephenson Gordon is a Martian Detective who turned against his fellow cops and was exiled from Antactica (literally). However, he's recently been transferred and now has a job waiting for him on an even worse Wretched Hive: the moon. Meeting a beautiful ex-TV starlet and a talking dog, he finds an unusual set of police working against the violent corporate-dominated cyberpunk settlement.

Neal may have been a slightly tarnished cop with a "flexible" morality but he had his rules and was very good at his job. However, the past is not something that's easily left behind. The Slaver's Guild and corporate conspiracy still dominates the future of the world. There's also The Remnant of the former tyrannical government of Earth, called the Neo-Militarists, that constantly schemes to regain power. What's a detective to do? Whatever it is, it will be done with a lot of wiseass commentary.

• Moon Cops on the Moon (2023)
• Moon City Vice (2023)

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For the series as a whole

• Action Girl:
  • Lucy Westenra is a monowire whip wielding heroine that is just as badass as Neal, if not more so.
  • The Knights are an all-female group of ex-Special Forces transhuman hyperpunk singers. Yes, really.
• Affectionate Parody: Moon Cops is one to the Cyberpunk genre and Hard Boiled Detective stories in general, being set on a dystopian corporate-run Wretched Hive where robots as well as humans interact but its protagonists are all By-the-Book Cop types trying to do good.
• Archenemy: Neal's worst enemy is his evil former partner, Nigel Blackwood, who is heavily involved with the Slaver's Guild.
• Benevolent A.I.:
  • Armstrong is the questionably sane AI who runs the moon's life support among other functions as well as the partial owner of Ares Electronics. However, it primarily has the function of protecting humans and is attempting to be an Internal Reformist to save humanity as a whole.
  • Barksley is also a Canine Companion and an AI corgi that serves as one of the nicest people on the moon.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: What happens to someone who is turned into one of the Hollowed. They can keep their own wills but are incapable of disobeying the commands of their Willed masters and will rationalize anything ordered to do, no matter how against their values or beliefs.
• Company Town: The Moon is 80% owned by either Atlas Security or Karma Corp with very little owned by the people themselves. Furthermore, an equal number of the public work for one or the other company.
• Cop Show: The book series is framed like this, with episodic conflicts in chapters and a larger overarching plot.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Karma Corp is implied to be almost exclusively populated by these along with all of their subsidiaries. Their rival company, Atlas Security, is stated to be better but only marginally.
• Cyborg: Cybernetic enhancements are very common with an entire gang (The Cyberpunks) being built around them. However, nanotechnology enhanced soldiers (called Posthumans) are now available and have made the majority of cybernetics obsolete.
• Crapsack World: Zig-zagged. The Earth is actually leaving a Cyberpunk Dark Age where megacorporations ruled along with a brutal group called the Neo-Militarists. However, that hasn't reached the Moon that is a crime ridden hellhole of violence, corruption, and wealth disparity.
• Crooks Are Better Armed: Due to the incredibly loose laws regarding weapons on the moon and constant smuggling, criminals are better armed than the civilian cops who generally choose not to engage them.
• Cyberpunk: The Moon is the last part of the setting that is still under this as it remains under the control of greedy corporations, a corrupt military dictatorship, and ruthless crime syndicates. It's also full of bio-enhancements, AI, and incredibly advanced technology. The rest of the setting has entered into a state of recovery with it eventually becoming a Space Opera setting as seen in Space Academy and Lucifer's Star.
• Deadpan Snarker: Neal constantly makes wise cracks about everyone and everything around him and wonders why everyone is annoyed with him.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Food Prohibition is designed to resemble the War on Drugs. A (mostly) harmless vice that, nevertheless, has caused no end of violence as well as ruined lives due to the fact is illegal as well as a lucrative source of wealth due to said illegality.
• Dirty Cop: Every cop on the moon to the point that the police don't get measured by whether they're dirty or not but just how dirty they are. Neal is actually listed as relatively honest by the fact he only takes bribes to ignore what he doesn't think should be illegal in the first place.
• Everyone Is Armed: The Moon, being settled in part by Americans, has a liberal Second Amendment equivalent and a ridiculously large number of its citizens have guns or can buy them easily. This is shown to cause exactly the problems you'd expect.
• Gangbangers: There's several thousand gangs on the Moon and they often have thousands of members as well. Most of these are related to the larger criminal syndicates or do work for the megacorps.
  • The Cyberpunks are a Transhuman Treachery bunch of cyborgs that forego their humanity to become dangerous murderous thugs.
  • The Fleur de Lis are a French-Algerian gang that are now aligned with The Syndicate and run drugs as well as prostitution.
  • The Golden Tigers are a gang involved in human trafficking as well as heavily involved in the trade from the moon to Mars.
• Hard Boiled Detective: In addition to parodying Cyberpunk this is what the series parodies most with Neal coming off as a 1970s (or Eighties) private detective transplanted to the distant future. He regularly ignores the rules, is surrounded by corruption, wears a hat and trench coat, and is a Deadpan Snarker.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Much of the humor is from Neal and Barksley's close friendship.
• Layered Metropolis: The moon is one of these with Luna City being the richest and most prosperous part on the surface (with a protective dome), the much-less successful Crater Town underneath it, and the Depths that are a Wretched Hive.
• The Mafia: The Syndicates are the most powerful group on the Moon, controlled by a group called the Five.
• Megacorp: The megacorporations of Karma Corp and Atlas Security are the most powerful corporations in the solar system with monopolies on their particular production values. They also have representatives in the global government as well as diplomatic immunity for their executives.
• Police Are Useless: The "civi police" are shown to be utterly uninterested in doing anything about the rampant crime, corruption, or injuries around the city. Amusingly, the corporate police actually bother to do their job and have a better reputation despite answering to Megacorp masters.
• Post-Cyberpunk: This series is about how the end of the Cyberpunk Age transitions into a Space Opera setting. The moon is the last place where the Megacorp and crime syndicates rule, serving as a Wretched Hive compared to the rest of the Sol system.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy:
  • Barksley is pretty fly for a corgi, listening to reggae and hip hop while driving a tricked out car.
    "Is he aware he's white and gold not black?"
  • Less sympathetically played by Reggie "Iceman" Reynolds, who is an infonet streamer who attempts to be street despite the fact he's an absolutely terrible cop.
• Private Detective: Technically, Neal and Lucy are this as employees of Cyberlife. It has the authority of being actual police but they're contracted detectives to Atlas Security. Barksley makes a backhanded comparison to the Pinkertons when they were working for the US government, which Neal does not take kindly.
• Private Eye Monologue: Neal as a 1st person Hardboiled Detective protagonist engages in a large amount of this.
• Private Military Contractors: Atlas Security employs these as part of their business model but all of the megacorps have their own mercenary groups with Karma Corp having the Black Briar PMC. Neal used to be a Space Marine working for Atlas Security.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Cyberlife is chosen from individuals that are judged to be emotionally off-kilter but extremely good at their job. This is something that Armstrong deliberately chose to do because he prefers people who work in unconventional ways and don't have many options.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Neal was assigned to Antarctica, literally, after he turned against his fellow cops on Mars to stop their slavery ring. Later, he's assigned to the moon, which he views as a step down from Antarctica.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Armstrong, the AI that controls the moon's life support and infrastructure is also the CEO of Cyberlife as well as a large investor in Atlas Security.
• Shout-Out: As a C.T. Phipps book, there's tons of these.
  • Neal Stephenson Gordon is a reference to Neal Stephenson.
  • Charles Barksley is a reference to the basketball player.
  • Lucy Westenra is an in-universe reference to Dracula as she changed her name (Allayah Brea II) to the character because of a TV role she had.
  • Priss and the Replicants is both a reference to Bladerunner and Bubblegum Crisis.
  • Barksley listens to music by N.W.A, Chamillionaire, and Inner Circle.
  • Barksley's car is called the Purple Rain.
  • Ayanna Breeze is a reference to Parasite Eve and her movies references to Milla Jovavich's career.
  • The moon's national anthem is Frank Sinatra's "Fly me to the Moon."
  • The moon's culture is compared to Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Slaver's Guild is a group that Neal has an especial hatred for and wants, more than anything, to shut down despite how powerful they are.
• Urban Hellscape: The Moon is a barely habitable bunch of domes and underground communities that are full of crime, poverty, as well as extreme violence.
• Weird Moon: The moon is one of the colonies of Earth but it is jam packed with refugees and is actually something that had been terraformed by the alien Community so they could uplift Earth. It has domes and underground communities.
• Wretched Hive: The moon is a place with so much crime that they can't even hope to investigate even a majority of them but just have to pick and choose the most violent as well as public.

Moon Cops on the Moon

• Anti-Police Song: Barksley the Police Dog is a big fan of these and plays them constantly.
• Big Bad: Reggie "Iceman" Reynolds turns out to be the leader of the Posthuman Legion as a way to make money.
• Brain Upload: Alex Murphy is the father of Lucy Westenra and had his consciousness uploaded into the KILL-bot series. Lucy hates whenever they break free because she has to deal with losing her father over and over again.
• The Cavalry: The Knights arrive to try to stop Reggie Reynolds from detonating a nuke at their charity concert. Them being all ex-Special Operations soldiers certainly makes this better than nothing.
• The Conspiracy: The Posthuman Legion is meant to cover up a slavery ring where human beings are traded to the Community's underworld in exchange for advanced technology that humanitydoesn't have access to. Trying to cover it up by assassinating the ambassador's son, though, results in Disproportionate Retribution from the Community.
• Cool Car: The Purple Rain is a tricked out flying car that takes all of its decorations from the popular image of the Seventies. Barksley thinks its awesome while Neal says the car is flying probable cause.
• Cool Old Lady: Gladys Nitrate is a bounty hunter who is over a hundred years old and talks about her grandchildren.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Community promises to wipe out the Moon and its entire population if the culprits for assassinating its ambassador and its ambassador's son aren't turned over.
• False Flag Operation: The plan of Reggie "Iceman" Reynolds planned to frame the Knights for the assassination of the ambassador's son and throw his fellow Posthuman Legion members under the sun as well as hacking Armstrong to back up his claims.
• False Friend: Ms. White seduces Neal and leads him to the Cyberpunks' base only to betray him, having planned to cover up her role in the plot.
• Fish out of Water: Neal struggles to acclimate to the ultraviolent and corporate dominated society of the moon.
• Honey Pot: Ms. White seduces Neal in order to get him to go along with her plan to attack the Cyberpunks' base and erase her information from their servers that implicate her in the Slavers Guild's plot.
• The Man Behind the Man: Governor Barnum turns out to have been one of the major players in the Slaver's Guild.
• Never Mess with Granny: Gladys Nitrate is a bounty hunter who loves toting shotguns and getting into fights with people tougher than her.
• Shout-Out: Alex Murphy has the same name as the protagonist of Robocop.

Moon City Vice

• Bittersweet Ending: There's a very good question whether or not Neal and company managed to do much to mitigate the virus or bring any of the most important people involved in its spread to justice. The heroes still did their very best and managed to enact a small measure of vengeance.
• Corrupt Church: The Church of Money is outrageously so, teaching a Gospel based on prosperity and hefty donations. They were also allied to the Neo-Militarists when Earth was under their tyranny. The Church turns out to be catpaws for Albion intelligence.
• Dead All Along: Kate turns out to have died a long time ago and had her consciousness uploaded to multiple bioroids that Neal has been dealing with.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Red Fever has many similarities to Covid-19 including government mismanagement, quarantine, and exploitation by grifters.
• The Don: Tommy "The Razor" Calivari is one of the big bosses of the moon's drug businesses.
• Gambit Pile Up: The Sons of Mithras, Church of Money, Watchers, Earth Gov, and others are all trying to use the Red Fever outbreak to their own ends.
• Government Conspiracy: There's several competing ones over the Red Fever outbreak and attempts to profit from it. The Albion government wants to force Earth to give up its claim on multiple habitable worlds for expansion, Earth wants to force the Community to give relief supplies that will up their access to technology, and the moon forces just want to save as many people as possible.
• Meaningful Name: Penny Cash is one of the heads of the Church of Money.
• The Missus and the Ex: Neal expects this to happen with Kate Roeback and Lucy Westenra but it never quite happens with both women remaining professional.
• The Mole: Steve Rogers Soldiers is actually Mr. Smiles and an agent of the Church of Money.
• The Plague: Red Fever is a genetically engineered version of smallpox that is spread across the moon by the Sons of Mithras.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The Albion intelligence service, called the Watchers, claims that the agents who helped the Sons of Mithras and Church of Money spread Red Fever were this.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: A rare sci-fi example as the Sons of Mithras are reactionary transplanted humans against Earth expansionism. They're also The Pawn of the Albionese government and the Church of Money.
• Scam Religion: Almost everyone believes this about the Church of Money but they're much much worse.
• Transplanted Humans: The Albionese are descended from Roman and Britons abducted by aliens millenium before the modern era.

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