Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Cyberpunk and ecofiction might be genres made for each other. Jason Pchajek wrote a Canadian (!!!) book that combines both, so we had to have him here to tell us about it. Jason, take it away!

Jason: Bounty is my debut novel, a climate fiction and cyberpunk thriller set in 2120s Winnipeg where a bounty hunter works to save his city from ecological collapse. The best way to explain it is through the blurb: 

Nikos Wulf is at the top of his game. Within the sublevels of 2120 Winnipeg, he is the undisputed king of bounty hunters, working for the elite Bounty Commission Eco-Terror Taskforce. The job: maintain the delicate ecological balance in a city holding back climate collapse. But when a series of bounties go wrong, Nikos finds himself on the trail of a troubling new player among the city’s anti-establishment. Bound to a sense of duty to the city that made him, Nikos finds himself in a deadly game of catch-up with an insidious enemy bent on bringing down everything he’s fought so hard to protect.

Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?

Jason: The main inspiration for writing this book was to represent my city and country in the cyberpunk genre. Quite often stories in this genre, and science fiction in general, even when written by Canadians, never seems to take place in Canada. So, I approached it with the goal of representing what I think my hometown of Winnipeg would look like 100 years in the future.

To accomplish this, I tried to imagine everything. How the city, country, and world would evolve technologically, economically, politically, and socially. A reviewer lauded my “innate understanding of how to build believable and credible worlds geographically, materially, and sociologically” and she called it an “immersive experience”, so I think I did a good job haha.

Zilla: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Jason: Since the science of climate change and other major technological advancements play a central role to the story, I had to do a lot of research. I had to understand how different areas of the globe would be impacted by climate disaster over time, how resource shortages and land loss would lead to conflict and displacement, how societies will respond differently to climate disaster, and so much more.

It was a lot of work to try and get it all as accurate as possible to create a feasible world.

One of the biggest questions was in climate recapture technology and how it could be used to create new building material. In Bounty the central megacorp, Argo, creates a new super-strong material called “argite” through captured carbon from the air and oceans. I reached out to a few geologists to ask if inserting carbon into the porous rock prevalent under Winnipeg could create denser and more durable material, and I was told that yes, it’s theoretically possible!

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Jason: The Night Beats community can find me on most social media sites under the @jasonpchajek handle (Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok), but I am most active on Bluesky (@jasonpchajek.bsky.social). If you want to check out Bounty, it is available through most major booksellers, but you can find easy links on my website.