Tim Maughan's excellent Paintwork (2011) focuses on the meaning of artistry in a near-future cyberpunk landscape.
The titular story focuses on a subversive graffiti artist, the second on a documentary journalist and the award-nominated third story, "Havana Augmented", tells the tale of a pair of Cuban gamers. Gaming might not seem like artistry, but Paul and Marcus, our protagonists, take it to that magnificent level. Mr. Maughan's Cuba is a proud island, but one crippled by economic sanctions and a dying tourist trade. Marcus is a computer nut - a genius programmer who cobbles together his own games from the fragments of code he can buy through the black market. Paul isn't a computer whiz, but he's a gifted virtual athlete. Marcus builds the games; Paul wins them.
The most popular game in Cuba is Street Iron, a Marcus-hacked version of the popular global mecha game Rolling Iron. Marcus has taken the rather banal foundation and converted it to augmented reality genius. The players zip around the city on motorcycles and wearing VR 'spex'. Their giant robots follow them and battle to the death. Entire robot wars are fought without anyone ever noticing. Marcus' variant soon eclipses the real thing, and, as videos are leaked around the internet, the game's corporate owners are keen to cash in.
"Havana Augmented" follows two streams of conflict. Paul and Kim battle with enormous robots which is, frankly, awesome. Mr. Maughan knows how to write an action sequence without letting it take over. The battles are short, streamlined, vicious and very, very fun. The story's true conflict, however, is within Paul. Initially pleased (and stunned) to be out of the shadows, he's suddenly faced with the full force of Global Corporate Decadence (tm). Paul's a fierce Cuban patriot, but one with open eyes. He sees what Sakura could do for his homeland, but can also sees what Sakura could do to it. I'm a sucker for sports movies, especially when the game or match has some sort of Great Significance. Mr. Maughan tugs at my heartstrings with "Havana Augmented" - a giant robot smackdown with a country's future on the line.
The other two stories aren't shabby. "Paintwork" serves as an excellent introduction to the near-future landscape and introduces the theme of struggling artistic integrity in a corporate-owned world. The protagonist of the second story, journalist John Smith, has probably the darkest tale. He's using his documentary skills to explore the (surprisingly seedy) underworld of the gaming clans, and what begins as an innocent assignment turns into something much more conspiratorial. It is, perhaps, the most didactic and least fun of the three stories, but it does connect nicely with "Havana Augmented".