Hardwired features high-tech thrills and unforgettable heroes in the great tradition of William Gibson's Neuromancer. According to Locus, Hardwired is Walter Jon Williams' "best book to date". Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.

They call it Black Mind. Using this covert technology, Reno has written his own consciousness over that of Albrecht Roon, one of Earth’s greatest enemies. A saboteur surrounded by enemies, he must act quickly, and without giving himself away, in order to turn the Orbital oppressors against each other and bring down their entire system. He’s living in a labyrinth of paranoia, surrounded by bodyguards and treacherous rivals. And then he discovers that Black Mind is not a complete success—- Roon still lives inside him, and Roon is mad. This novella is the long-awaited sequel to Walter Jon Williams’ classic novel Hardwired.

Steward, a clone fifteen years overdue for a brain-scan update, has no idea that the Orbital Policorp which held his allegiance collapsed, dozens of his friends perished in interstellar combat, an alien race established relations with humanity, and two wives divorced him.