Author: Thomas J Adkins

Inside the World of Fragments of Solace: A Conversation with Thomas Adkins

Introduction:

On December 12, 2025, Goodreads sat down with Thomas Adkins, author of the acclaimed cyberpunk novel Fragments of Solace. In this revealing interview, Adkins shares the deeply personal and visual inspirations behind his work—from the neon-drenched streets of Hong Kong to the intricate layers of identity, memory, and resilience that define his characters. He opens up about crafting the dystopian city of Proxima, blending language and culture, and exploring technology’s intimate impact on the human experience. Whether you’re a fan of speculative fiction or curious about the creative process behind world-building, this conversation offers a compelling look into the mind of a writer whose story began as a sketch—and grew into a world worth remembering.

Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your journey as a writer?

My name is Thomas Adkins, and I’m the author of Fragments of Solace. My journey as a writer truly began when I arrived in Hong Kong. I was immediately struck by its iconic, neon-drenched skyline—a stunning symbol of the future. But what captivated me more was the rich, textured reality on the ground: a unique fusion of cutting-edge smart city technologies layered over a living history.

As someone who grew up in the 80s, I felt a powerful sense of nostalgia walking those streets. You’d see the last few iconic neon signs glowing beside massive digital screens, or old air-conditioning units clinging to the sides of gleaming skyscrapers. It wasn’t just a blend of old and new; it felt like two distinct periods of time had actively collided. This sensation was further charged by arriving during a period of significant political unrest, which gave me a first-hand perspective on a city in the midst of questioning and reshaping its own identity.

Every corner felt like a narrative. Hong Kong itself felt like a story being written in real time, and I was just an observer within it. That feeling crystallised when I began reading about the history of Kowloon’s Walled City—that infamous, densely packed enclave of organic chaos and layered existence. It struck me as the perfect, profound backdrop for a cyberpunk story. It became the archetype for the world of Fragments of Solace: a place where immense technological ambition coexists with intense human fragility, and where identity is constantly under construction.

What inspired you to write Fragments of Solace? Was there a particular moment or idea that sparked the story?

The inspiration for Fragments of Solace began not as a novel, but as a visual project. I initially set out to create a storyboard for an online comic, which I planned to narrate as a series on YouTube. I was excited by the visual potential of the cyberpunk world I was imagining.

However, after about a week of intense writing and sketching, I hit a creative realisation. The themes I wanted to explore—identity, sensory experience, and the layered history of a place like Hong Kong—were becoming too intricate, too internal. The narrative demanded more psychological depth and textual nuance than the comic medium could comfortably hold. The story itself seemed to resist the constraints of a primarily visual format.

So, I set the drawings aside, but the writing continued almost instinctively. The ideas kept flowing. About a month later, I had over 20,000 words. The characters and the complex, morally shaded world of the story had fully taken root, insisting on their existence as a novel. What sparked as a visual concept transformed, organically, into the literary project it was meant to be.

The setting of “Proxima” feels richly layered and dystopian yet familiar. How did you go about building this world?

The world of “Proxima” balances the eerily familiar and the unsettlingly advanced. For me, cyberpunk must feel like a possible future, not an alien one.

Hong Kong was my blueprint—it already felt like a “future city in the present.” Its vertical density, seamless tech, and pockets of analog life offered a tangible model.

Conceptually, I was sparked by Psycho-Pass and its dystopian system of quantifying psychology. It made me ask: what if such control wasn’t just imposed, but adopted by a society desperate for stability after chaos?

“Proxima” became a way to explore how a society might trade freedom for order, using hyper-connectivity and surveillance not just to police, but to redefine the social contract. In this way, the city itself became the central character.

Proxima seems heavily influenced by Hong Kong—from its geography to its cultural nuances. How did your relationship with Hong Kong shape the book?

Hong Kong provided the soul and central conflict for the book. The initial spark was the historical Kowloon Walled City—I wanted to project its dense, communal chaos into a future setting.

To avoid a simple old-versus-new binary, I created the Lantern District, where traditional values and analog tech persist within the futuristic city, woven into its fabric.

Ultimately, Proxima’s three districts—the corporate Spires, chaotic Warrens, and cultural Lantern District—directly mirror Hong Kong’s own continuous negotiation between legacy, global ambition, and local identity. The city is a portrait of that on-going struggle.

The book blends Cantonese, English, and Hindi seamlessly. What was your approach to crafting the language of this world?

The language of the world evolved naturally with its setting. Early drafts used Spanish and Jamaican Patois, reflecting my personal experiences. But as the setting focused on a Hong Kong-inspired city, the linguistic palette shifted for authenticity.

Hong Kong’s layered history—from British colonialism to Indian influences—made the inclusion of Hindi both accurate and personal, as it’s also common in my hometown, Birmingham. The final blend of Cantonese, English, and Hindi became central to Proxima’s identity. It mirrors real historical currents and functions as a core system of identity and navigation for the characters, grounding the world in a lived-in history.

In your cyberpunk setting, “fusion” limbs move beyond pure strength, focusing instead on heightened sensory reception. What commentary were you aiming to make about how such intimate technology could reshape a person’s identity and experience of the world?

I wanted to challenge the standard cyberpunk trope where augmentation is solely for power or efficiency. By focusing on sensory receptors—making limbs sensitive to atmospheric pressure, microscopic textures, or electromagnetic fields—I aimed to explore how technology doesn’t just change what we can do, but how we perceive reality itself.

This was directly inspired by my work with autistic children, who often experience hypersensitivity to their environment. For them, a heightened sensory experience can be both a profound advantage—noticing details others miss—and an overwhelming intrusion. I applied that duality to my characters: their “fusion” limbs grant them incredible, nuanced awareness of the world, but at the cost of their sensory autonomy. The commentary is about technology’s double-edged sword; it can deepen our connection to the world while simultaneously making it more difficult to navigate on a fundamental human level. Identity becomes intertwined with this forced, technological sensitivity, blurring the line between enhancement and vulnerability.

Kimoni is a complex protagonist, marked by trauma and augmentation. How did you develop his character, especially his physical and emotional scars?

Kimoni’s scars are his story. I wanted his fused arm and wounded soul to feel like two halves of the same truth—his body remembers what his mind tries to forget. The graft doesn’t make him stronger; it makes him lonelier, sensing every detail but unable to feel true comfort.

His trauma isn’t something he “overcomes.” It’s the weight he carries. I wrote him not as a hero, but as a man learning how to breathe again in a world that tried to erase him. His physical pain and emotional numbness mirror each other—both are quiet, constant, and deeply human.

In the end, Kimoni’s journey isn’t about healing perfectly. It’s about learning to live with broken pieces, and still finding the courage to care. His scars don’t define him, but they tell the story of how he survived—and why he keeps searching for light, even in Proxima’s darkest corners.

What was your process for weaving together so many narrative threads—personal grief, corporate conspiracy, drug epidemics, and political revolt?

I treated the narrative threads as interconnected systems. The foundation is personal grief—the human entry point. This vulnerability is exploited, connecting it directly to the manufactured drug epidemic. That crisis is in turn orchestrated by a corporate conspiracy, which profits from the despair and suppresses dissent. From this oppression, the political revolt organically emerges, woven from all those who are suffering.

The weaving was guided by the core dynamics of a stratified city: class and access. Every thread answers who can afford escape, who cannot, who must make a terrible trade, and who holds the power to exploit that desperation. In the end, a character’s personal grief is never just personal; it is a point of corporate leverage, a political catalyst, and a symptom of the city’s deepest fractures.

The “Pingshu” and “Eunuch” traditions add a layer of mysticism and ritual. How did you develop these cultural elements?

I developed these elements to connect Proxima’s future to China’s past. The Pingshu (storytelling) tradition serves as the city’s living memory, echoing the historical role of oral historians in preserving culture and knowledge. The Eunuchs are reimagined as mystical administrators, channelling the historical complexity of imperial court eunuchs. Together, they add a layer of ancient ritual and enduring power structures beneath the city’s high-tech surface.

The book doesn’t shy away from dark themes—Con-Cuffs, Shinigami, Vitalis addiction. How do you balance storytelling with such heavy subject matter?

Balancing these heavy themes requires treating them with integrity, not just as plot devices. The key is to always root them in character perspective and human consequence.

For example, the Con-Cuff isn’t just a piece of tech; it’s shown through the experience of shame and disconnection. Vitalis addiction is framed not as a sensationalised downfall, but as a response to despair, grief, or systemic pressure. The cyberpunk genre provides a necessary lens—it allows these themes to be examined as systemic issues, the logical extreme of a society built on surveillance, control, and scarcity.

Ultimately, the story doesn’t linger on darkness for its own sake. These elements exist to ask a question: what does such a world do to the human spirit? The balance comes from focusing on resilience, choice, and the flickers of connection that persist even within the darkest systems. The heaviness is purposeful—it gives weight to the characters’ struggles and meaning to their resistance.

Were there any real-life stories that particularly influenced the tone or themes of this novel?

While most characters are fictional, several were inspired by real life. For instance, the character of Ms. Lin is loosely based on a local community figure—an older woman who collects cardboard and sometimes wears a neck brace. I wanted to include her resilient, everyday presence in the story.

Themes and social structures in the book also draw from real history. For example, the “Rule of Two” directly parallels China’s former one-child policy. Other elements, like the “Con-Cuff” device and the associated family shame, reflect concepts of collective punishment and social ostracisation. In Proxima, conviction means losing your communication links and having your family cut ties—a system that mirrors historical and cultural attitudes toward guilt and communal responsibility.

The ending leaves several mysteries unresolved. Was this always the plan, and can readers expect a sequel?

Yes, leaving certain mysteries unresolved was always part of the plan. Once I decided to write a novel, I envisioned a sequel to further explore the world and its individual stories. However, it was equally important that Fragments of Solace could stand firmly on its own.

The unresolved elements are a direct result of the protagonist Kimoni’s journey. He is consumed by a personal crisis and the urgent mission to prevent another murder. Given the severity of his situation, it felt true to his character—and to real life—that he wouldn’t be able to resolve every single thread. He is forced to prioritise, and some larger systemic problems and secondary narratives are necessarily pushed aside. The ending reflects this: it is shaped more by personal trauma and institutional failure than by neat closure, leaving room for the future while completing Kimoni’s core arc in this book.

What was the most challenging scene or chapter to write, and why?

The most significant challenge had two distinct layers: a structural one for the series, and a creative one for the book’s conclusion.

Structurally, the hardest task was balancing the narrative to serve both this book and the larger story. Several scenes required careful calibration—providing enough logic and closure to satisfy this novel as a standalone experience, while consciously leaving certain threads and motivations to be explored more deeply in a sequel. It was a constant effort to make an action feel justified in the moment, yet hint at a larger, unfolding truth.

The greatest creative hurdle, however, was the ending. It underwent countless revisions. Up until two months before the planned release, it was headed in a completely different direction. Then, in a single moment of clarity, everything clicked. I found the final scene that properly wove together the characters’ personal motives with the systemic forces at play, creating an ending that felt both inevitable and authentically grounded in the world I’d built.

What do you hope readers take away from this story—emotionally, intellectually, or socially?

Emotionally, I want readers to feel the quiet resilience in broken worlds—how people cling to small, fragile moments of connection even when systems try to erase their humanity.

The story is about uncovering truths that power obscures—whether corporate, political, or social. It’s about empathy in a dehumanising world. It asks what we hold onto when society treats people as data, products, or problems. The real solace isn’t in fixing everything, but in choosing to see and care for one another—especially when the system calls that a weakness.

In the end, Fragments of Solace is about finding humanity not in perfection, but in the persistent, broken act of remembering and reaching out.

Finally, what’s next for you? Are you working on another project, and if so, can you share a little about it?

I have a few interconnected projects currently in development, all cantered on expanding the world of Fragments of Solace.

First, I’m writing ‘Short Stories of Proxima,’ a collection that delves into the backstories of several supporting characters from the novel. This is an opportunity to deepen the lore and explore the corners of the city that the main narrative could only hint at.

This collection directly fuels my second project: launching a dedicated YouTube channel. My initial vision for this world was always visual, so the plan is to narrate these short stories accompanied by comic-book-style artwork. It’s a chance to return to the story’s creative roots and bring Proxima to life in a new, immersive format.

Finally, I am in the early, exploratory stages of developing the sequel. Right now, multiple narrative possibilities are on the table. My focus is weaving these threads into a cohesive and compelling direction that does justice to the world and its characters.