Islands in the Net

(Schismatrix, 59). Thus, it is clear that in Schismatrix man is also regarded as a kind computer whose brain is the only important part, and this can also be modified or open to process.

Rizome organizes a conference between itself and the data havens “EFT Commerzbank of Luxemburg”, “The Yung Soo Chim Islamic Bank and Grenada United Bank” (p.19/259) at the Lodge. The Representative of Grenada, Winston Stubbs, is assassinated after first day of the conference. The organization of Free Army of Counter-Terrorism (F.A.C.T.) admits that they have organized the assassination. Rizome decides to send Laura and her family to Grenada to show that Rizome does not share the intentions of the terrorist group.

They witness the quite interesting experiments on the island done by “mad-doctors”. The ruling party of Grenada is the New Millennium Movement and its Prime Minister is Eric Louison, who uses voodoo tradition as a means of keeping order in the country. This use of voodoo, as that of Gibson‟s in the Trilogy, is worthy of consideration. It not only adds an exotic tone to the works, but it also creates a vague atmosphere between reality and imagination, which is a common feature of postmodern Cyberpunk. Since simulation becomes more important in the postmodern age as Baudrillard pointed out, voodoo creates the opportunity to present an ambiguous atmosphere of simulations in the works.

Laura spends two years in prison gets involved in The Young Soo Chim Islamic Bank, F.A.C.T. and Inadin Cultural revolutionists and goes through a series of adventures to complete her mission. She travels to Mali and South Africa, faces assassinations, revolutions, atom bombs, relief camps and she gets involved in a romantic relationship with an American journalist. She uses the “Net” all through her adventures for communication with the rest of the world. She is trapped whenever she is cut off from the Net. Sterling combines exotic settings and ordinary characters with ultra advanced technology.

In Islands in the Net, Sterling presents discussions about daily life and expectations of future life. “The new-millennium” in the work not only means new opportunities but also new popular tricks and senseless ideas and images for Sterling.

For instance, there is a conversation on “Optimal Persona” between Laura and David. This speech also provides an idea about the future Sterling presumes through his work:

“I dreamed I saw my Optimal Persona last night.”

… No. Seeing your O.P. – it‟s a fad. Like folks used to see UFO‟s, you know? Some weirdo in Oregon says he had an encounter with his personal archetype. Pretty soon, everybody and his brother‟s having visions. Mass hysteria, collective unconscious or some such. Stupid.

But modern at least. It‟s very new-millennium.” He seemed obscurely pleased.

“It‟s mystic bullshit,” Laura told him (Islands in the Net, 3).

Later this subject of “Optimal Persona” reappears in Grenada during a conversation between Carlotta and Laura. Carlotta tells Laura that the Prime Minister of Grenada uses “Optimal Persona”. When Laura asks about it, she gathers information about “outlaw technology”:

Don‟t you know what an Optimal Persona is? It‟s got no substance, time and distance mean nothing to it. It can look and listen…spy on you…Or maybe walk right

through your body! And two days later you drop dead without a mark on you (Islands of the Net, 105).

The references to a new type of social life and culture, and illegal technology in Islands of the Net can be seen as a mirror to Jameson‟s comments on “the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture”

(Jameson, 1988:2). The world presented in the work of Sterling is the stage for

“multinational capitalism” as referred to by Jameson and the new social life is the result of the new economic order (Jameson, 1998).

Genetics is yet another subject matter utilized frequently in Cyberpunk novels and Sterling also deals with it in the Islands in the Net. Laura tells how genetics is advanced and how man turns into a toy in the hands of science-men: “Genetics, Laura thought. You pass them on to the next generation. Then they relax and start to crumble on you. They do it anyway. You just have to pay a little extra for using the copyright” (Islands in the Net, 7).

Mind-altering drugs are presented as one of the ways of controlling individuals in the work. Andrei Tarkovsky, the technician David and Laura meet in Grenada, gives Laura synthetic THC, but she does not want to take it and argues that drugs are a way of invading people‟s freedom. However, Andrei says that drugs only trap people if they have nothing better in their lives and makes an interesting comment on the American life style: “If America suffers from drugs, perhaps you should ask what America is lacking” (Islands in the Net, 102).

The artificial world or the cyber world is the central motif in the work, in that people gain power through their ability to use it. Advancement in technology is a major point of emphasis in the work:

Every year of her life, Laura thought, the Net had been growing more expansive and seamless. Computers did it. Computers melted other machines, fusing them together. Television-telephone-telex. Tape recorder-VCR-laser disc. Broadcast tower linked to microwave dish linked to satellite. Phone line, cable TV, fiber-obtic cords hissing out words and pictures in torrent of pure light. All netted together in a web over the world, a global nervous system, an octopus of data (Islands in the Net, 17).

According to Sterling “where people go, politics follow” (Sterling, 1992: xiv) and since cyberspace is filled with people from every layer of life from journalists, doctors, lawyers, artists, civil servants, students, police, spies etc. to hackers and thieves, the political importance of the “Net” or “Matrix” is also growing quickly.

Sterling explains his concern in cyberspace in this way and he adds that: “The way we live in cyberspace is a funhouse mirror of the way we live in the real world. We take both our advantages and our troubles with us” (Sterling, 1992: xiii).

As seen in the study of Gibson‟s works in the Second Chapter and the previous two novels in this chapter, the Cyberpunk world is introduced as governed by huge companies or corporations. Traditional wars for power among the governments are replaced by high-tech data wars between corporations. “ „This is a war. Governments run wars. Not corporations.‟ „That‟s premillenium talk,‟ Laura said. „The world‟s different now‟ ” (Islands in the Net, 173).

The Net, or the Matrix, as the new scene where wars take place among those who want to have control over data is not a safe place as Yoshio comments: “the Net has too many holes. All these criminals-Singapore, Cyprus, Granada, even Mali itself, which we created-must be crushed. It had to happen. It is happening today.

The Third World War is here” (Islands in the Net, 176). Information turns out to be the most important entity in the Cyberpunk world. The free circulation of all information becomes the main purpose, however there are still limits: passwords and inaccessible data storages. Because of having the limits, the developed world (or the North), is referred to as boring by Andrei Tarkovsky. He says that “predictable life includes no action and this has nothing to do with the New-Millennium Movement”

(Islands in the Net, 185). He thinks that all information should be free.

As in the current world, economic power is also closely related to expertise in information technologies in the Cyberpunk world, since all the banking procedures are followed in the virtual world through computers. Thus, data-hackers are the pirates of the modern world who can control power relations in the world more than governments:

The killers exploited the nature of data-heaven banking –that the coded files are totally secure, even against the haven pirates themselves. Only a haven would turn a haven‟s strength against itself in this humiliating way.

(Islands in the Net, 65).

Only hackers and the corporations that hire these hackers are close to power in that sense. They can influence economic and military relations.

The first decade of the twenty first century has witnessed the realization of this prophesy. One of the features of Cyberpunk literature is that it is concerned with the near future. The works of Sterling analysed in this thesis, were written during and through the end of the 1980‟s and early 1990‟s, and their futuristic descriptions are already familiar with us in the first decade of the twenty first century, since the virtual world became an important part of social and economic lives.

Although the Internet was not so widespread when the novel was written Sterling‟s comment about the power of shared network in his novel is quite straight-forward. He presents the “Net” as armour. When Laura decides to go to Grenada, representing Rizome, she carries “Vienna glasses” (Islands in the Net, 73) that are able to record everything and able to connect to the Net all the time. In spite of not carrying guns, these glasses protect her, like a kind of “armor of the Net” (Islands in the Net, 73). Thus it is possible to say that, the Net equals is an important weapon which is equal to power in the Cyberpunk world.

The human body and the human brain are referred to as machines or parts of machines from time to time. Laura‟s brain is mentioned as a personal computer, for example, when she is wired: “With her eyes and ears wired on separate realities, her brain felt divided on invisible seams, everything going slightly waxy and unreal. She was getting Net-burned” (Islands in the Net, 95).

Islands in the Net differs from the rest of the novels also in with the character traits of its protagonist. Laura, as opposed to all other protagonists like Case, Bobby, Kid or Mona, is a successful businesswoman who has her own job and family. She is also a mother, but this does not keep her from setting out on a dangerous voyage for Rizome for her people. Thus, she is not an anti-hero like Case, nor is she an ignorant

person like Kid. Sterling himself comments thus on his own choice of characterization in his interview with McCaffery. He thinks that:

People like Laura and David Webster are the ones who make the decisions in society. They‟re the people with money to spend; the people who read magazines and newspapers, actually vote in elections; the people who try to control their own lives and think in the long term.

There are issues they don‟t like to confront, but I don‟t believe they‟re evil because they‟re bourgeoisie (quoted in McCaffery, 1990: 220).

Even if the characters are ordinary middle class people, still they are influenced by technology and the new economic system established by its influence.

The influence of the Net on life during the Cyberpunk age and the power it gives to its users is revealed during the conversation between Carlotta and Laura:

“All this ocean tech-they can jackleg way out into international waters, where the Man just can‟t reach.”

“The „Man‟?” Laura said.

“The Man, the Combine, the Conspiracy. You know.

The Patriarchy. The Law, the Heat, the Straights. The Net. Them.” “Oh,” Laura said. “You mean „us‟ ” (Islands in the Net, 97).

Although, it is widely thought that Cyberpunk is a sub-genre dominated by male authors, dealing with young male characters and addressing a limited audience who are made up of young males, it is significant that two among the six novels

(Islands in the Net and Mona Lisa Overdrive) take female characters as their protagonists (Mona and Laura). They are presented as brave, strong and competent characters. Besides, apart from being novels written to address the young readers who are interested in all forms of aesthetic creations having the elements of Cyberpunk, it appears that both Gibson‟s and Sterling‟s works are full of short-term and long-term predictions, which have partly came true, as in the case of the

“Internet” as a kind of “global nervous system” combining the whole world; the novels also present predictions which might come true in a few decades.

To Sterling, Islands is based on the cultural logic of the „80s underground, or the „60s underground: a group of angry rejectionists are eventually won over by the mere logic of commodification, the logic of subsuming” (quoted in McCaffery, 1990:

220). Sterling defines David and Laura as the enemies of terrorism and instability, the agents of integration.

Although Cyberpunk novels do not take the remote future as their setting, the writers appear to reflect change not only in technology but also in culture. For example, Laura‟s mother‟s comment shows the changing values of youth. “Young people these days, maybe they don‟t hanker after a Mercedes or Jacuzzi. But they‟ll brag like sixty about their data access” Islands in the Net, 26). As understood from the quotation, the writer assumes that, reaching data will be a matter of pride in the future. The speed of technology changes the view of time as well, in that even the 1890s are referred to as the Stone Age. This is what Paul Virilio calls “dromology”, one of the outcomes of the late capitalist or postmodern world.

The change in the world order is reflected by a conversation between Yoshio and Laura in the Islands of the Net. They argue about whether corporations can sign

diplomatic treaties or not. While Laura, as a person who became successful in the old order, is advocating that they cannot, Yoshio says that a treaty is only a contract and it can be signed by corporations. The idea of having a government or getting rid of governments is also discussed during the same conversation by Laura, David, Yoshio and Mika. Laura criticizes Yoshio‟s approach about F.A.C.T., the group that attacked Rizome. Yoshio confesses that they paid F.A.C.T. in order to be protected by them against the pirates. Thus, F.A.C.T is used as a kind of free army by Kymeria, in spite of being regarded as a kind of terrorist group by the rest of the world. This debate results in a long conversation on global security. Yoshio comes to the conclusion that all the barriers (that happen to be governments), should be removed for the flow of the Net. An interesting comment on modern governments is uttered by Yoshio at this point: “Modern governments are weak. We have made them weak. Why pretend otherwise? We can play them against one another. They need us worse than we need them” (Islands of the Net, 179). The idea that the world is governed by huge companies or rich groups behind these companies appears as a recurrent topic in the Cyberpunk novels.

These huge companies control all the elements of power in Islands in the Net.

Sterling, in a way summarizes the whole Cyberpunk world in one sentence; “Power is where action is” (Islands in the Net, 28), and the Net or the virtual world is exactly the place where the action takes place in Cyberpunk novels. Sterling‟s novels suggest a foresight into the future of the world. For instance he puts forward what will become of the poor in Islands in the Net: “Low-grade scop [edibles], fresh from the vats and dried like cornmeal, cost only a few cents a pound. Everyone in the ghetto suburbs ate scop, single-cell protein. The national food of the Third World” (Islands

in the Net, 30). In addition, in another case the consumption of single-cell protein is explained as inevitable for the whole world due to changing agricultural production.

“The Retreat had been a working farm once, before single-cell protein came in and kicked the props out of agriculture” Islands in the Net, 75).

Although Sterling had wrote Islands in the Net nearly twenty years ago and technology has advanced a lot since then, Sterling appears to expose the problems of current times such as software theft and invasion of people‟s privacy in the virtual world:

don‟t underestimate the havens. So far, as you say, they‟re only parasites. They steal software, they bootleg records and videos, they invade people‟s privacy. They are annoyances, but it‟s not yet more than the system can bare. But what about the potential? There are potential black markets for genetic engineering, organ transplants, neurochemicals… a whole galaxy of modern high-tech products. Hackers loose in the Net are trouble enough (Islands in the Net, 38).

In such a world, governments lose control of information technologies and multinational corporations find a way to continue as they like: “Regulation is a burden, and multinationals are always tempted to move out from under it” (Islands in the Net, 38). David, Emerson and Laura discuss what will become of the world at this point. An important question is asked by Laura about the future of the world.

There are deeper questions that affect the whole structure of the modern world. What happens when

tomorrow‟s industries are pioneered by criminals? We live on a crowded planet and we need controls, but they have to be tight. Otherwise corruption seeps in like black water... But history never stops. Modern society faces a new central crisis. Are we going to control the path of development for sane, human ends? Or is it going to be laissez-faire anarchy?” (Islands in the Net, 38).

In conclusion they decide that people will have to fight for the privilege of the innocence and the life style in the old sense should be protected, which would be something worthwhile. When the current web-sites such as Facebook that limit private life more and more everyday are examined, it appears that Sterling‟s comment in Islands in the Net is true even today.

Advanced technology is used in every layer of life in the worlds created by Sterling. For instance, Laura is interviewed by the Vienna spook, Voroshilov. The way he is depicted presents the use of high-technology: “A long fiber optic cord trailed the earpiece down into the vest of his suit. Laura saw now that the sunglasses were videocams, the new bit-mapped kind with a million little pixel lenses. He was filming her” (Islands in the Net, 62). Of course, today this appearance is not surprising, since even children have mobile phones, with huge memory systems and cameras of millions of pixels; but for the readers of twenty years ago this sounded quite inspiring.

The Cyberpunk world which is about the activities that take place inside computers and over telephone lines is led by hackers and crackers, as Sterling

mentions in his work titled The Hacker Crackdown (1992). The characters of the cyberpunk world escape from their imperfect “real” lives in which they are not satisfied with the conditions, into the virtual world, to establish a new life or to have different values and standards that they can play with . Carlotta, who helps Laura in Granada, is appears as an example of this kind of a failure in real life. She describes herself as a cracker:

look at me. I‟m a cracker. Ugly. No family. Daddy used to beat me up. I never finished school-I can‟t hardly read and write. I‟m diselxic, or what ever they call it.

You ever wonder what happens to people who can‟t read and write? In your fucking beautiful Net world with all its fucking data? No, you never told thought of that, did you? If I found a place for my self, it was in the teeth of people like you (Islands in the Net, 170).

Drugs and voodoo are yet other topics that both of the writers employ in different ways. While in Gibson‟s works, “wiz”, a type of anodyne, appears as a painkiller or something that keeps the characters away from reality as in the case of Mona: “Just go with it, she thought, the wiz giving her a sweet second boost that tripped her into the river of pretty people without even having to think about it”.

(Mona Lisa Overdrive, 77), in Sterling‟s novels drugs appear as a sort of medium to control people. For example, Kid uses drugs as suppressants to change his hormonal system: “You don‟t want to go with me, Anne. My suppressants have worn off.

Hormones are turning me into an animal. I don‟t know what is happening to me”

(The Artificial Kid, 217). In the Cyberpunk world human beings have control over

most natural and chemical substances that influence the human body. Turning a normal person into a killing machine is just a matter of a few drugs. For instance, the body of Sticky in Islands in the Net is described as a “drug factory”: “He‟s not an

„acceptable person‟- He‟s like an armed warhead! You wondered about drug factories- Sticky Thompson is a drug factory” (Islands in the Net, 170).

All of the six novels studied in this thesis include similar plot developments in that a protagonist, mostly an anti-hero finds himself or herself in a great struggle, first to survive, then to save the world. They all make use of advanced technology in an efficient way, or there is a team helping them with their knowledge and equipment of advanced technology to reach their goal.

It is noteworthy that both of the authors are from the Western world and are white males, who employ figures from the east as the source of threat or danger. For instance, Yakuza or Japanese business men in Gibson‟s works or the Islamic republic or business men from Singapore in Sterling‟s novels are introduced as either the enemy or dangerous characters that should be struggled with or avoided. Having an advanced technology and a self-enclosed culture, the Easterner and the East turns out to be the opponent in Cyberpunk novels, like machines or artificial intelligence(s) which also appear as common enemies:

They had that tight-stretched, spotty vampire look that came from years of Singapore‟s half-baked longevity treatments. Blood filtering, hormone therapy, vitamin-E, electric acupuncture, God new what kind of insane black-market bullshit. Maybe they had stretched a few extra years out of their expensive meddling, but now