Schismatrix

social and cultural expectations of the period in which it was written. The use of the word “artificial” in the title and the in the name of the protagonist becomes emblematic indicating the power of technology in the futuristic setting. Sterling combines low life with advanced technology by employing prominent cyberpunk themes in The Artificial Kid.

created for the work. The protagonist of Schismatrix, Abelard Lindsay was born in the ancient lunar colony Mare Serenitatis Circumlunar Corporate Republic, (a name that will be analysed later in the chapter). Although, he comes from an aristocratic family, he commits himself to the Shapers. He leads a rebellion against the rulers of the republic with his best Shaper protégé, Philip Constantine and Preservationist Vera Kelland. They oppose the “Mechanists” who use technology in order to have longer lives. They turn out to be idols for the younger generation in their pursuit of Preservationism which is a movement that aims to preserve earth-bound human culture. Kelland and Lindsay agree to commit suicide in order to have an influence on society. Kelland dies but Lindsay cannot kill himself. Constantine attempts to kill Lindsay but he kills a Mechanist instead of him and this creates a scandal. Lindsay is exiled to the Mare Tranquilitatis Circumlunar People's Zaibatsu, but Constantine is allowed to stay in the Republic because of his knowledge and skills.

The colony that he is exiled to has become a place for “sundogs”, all types of criminals and refugees after its environmental collapse. Lindsay meets Kitsune, a woman modified by the Shapers to be an ideal prostitute in this colony. Kitsune is a servant of the Geisha Bank, which is a powerful money centre; however, she in fact rules the bank through the remotely operated body of her now brain-dead ancestor.

Lindsay uses his diplomatic talents to reorganize Zaibatzu. The adventures continue as he abandons Preservationism, escapes from assasination with a group of Mechanist pirates, and in the process helps Kitsune to openly take power of the Geisha Bank. This presentation of the character of Kitsune and the Geisha Bank is quite remarkable in that Kitsune‟s genetically modified body and her control over an

important money centre appear of considerable importance in terms of power relations in the Cyberpunk world.

In spite of Lindsay and a fellow diplomat Nora‟s efforts to promote a peaceful relationship between the Shapers and the Mechanists, an open fight starts, due to conflicts and sabotage. The atmosphere created by Sterling in the work carries all the characteristics of a Cyberpunk work, since it is full of crime and violence that become ordinary. Nora and Lindsay, who become lovers, eventually murder their companions to save one another. Before the asteroid's life system dies in the battle, the alien investors arrive.

Sterling adds aliens to his work, which separates this novel from the works so farexamined in the thesis. Peace finally comes to the Schismatrix when the aliens arrive. Sterling depicts the alien Investors as obsessed with trade and wealth. The Investors encourage humanity to focus on business instead of war. Trade flourishes and the Shapers and Mechanists put their differences aside for the sake of profit.

Lindsay and Mavrides become powerful Shaper leaders, but the Investor peace does not last long and chaos comes back again. After this event, Philip Constantine takes control of the Ring Council. Nora decides to stay in the Rings, while Lindsay escapes to the Mechanist cartels in the asteroid belt, where Kitsune has again secretly taken power. Lindsay starts to work to bring about the détente he believes will reunite him with Nora Mavrides a long time. Meanwhile Lindsay seeks to bring Nora to the new colony. However, Constantine discovers Mavride's plan to defect and forces her to kill herself. Later, Constantine and Lindsay are left catatonic in an Arena after a duel.

Lindsay wakes up in his old house, which became the Neotenic Cultural Republic years after the duel. The wars between those who want to keep unmodified human

form and those who are searching for new possibilities for mankind continue. As part of the treatment that restored Lindsay's mind, his original Shaper diplomatic training has been removed. Lindsay decides to break with his past and start a new life. He becomes a post-humanist and turns back and attempts to create an abyssal ecology on Europa. Finally, after many other adventures, Lindsay is transformed into a bodiless existence, to explore the infinite mysteries of the universe. He becomes eternal.

Therefore, as the plot presents, Sterling discusses the possibilities of a future world in it extreme form in the work. The main themes and concerns of this complicated plot are: an economically and socially changed world under the influence of advanced technology, genetic modification of the human body and the subject‟s alienation in an ultra technological future. This work may also be regarded as an experiment to depict the future as well as revealing the author‟s consciousness of the present, as being the past the unknown future. Sterling carries discussions to a step further by presenting people as divided into two who argue different hard sciences to be more important than the other. Hence, he points out that future will not be a scene for the debates on favouring technology or not, but it will be a time in which people should take decisions on supporting different types of technological improvements.

Schismatrix differs from the other five novels analysed in this thesis, in that it covers a longer period of time, approximately 350 years in the future, from A.D.

2200 to 2550. According to Larry McCaffery, the epic sweep and space opera scale of Sterling‟s major work, does not disguise the fact that its central concerns are clearly grounded in postmodern culture (McCaffery, 1990: 221). He presents Bruce Sterling‟s own words as evidence of his discussion. To Sterling:

Schismatrix is about the technical revolution, the limits of human form in posthumanity –the conventional structure of the space opera is entirely destroyed, and what‟s left is not a novel structure (which is difficult, but not an inescapable one) but a sort of staple domain schematic that might conceivably have been turned into six conventional SF novels, each covering a period of, say twenty years” (quoted in McCaffery, 1990: 221 from Bruce Sterling).

In the work Sterling presents, humanity outside the planet Earth and human beings are shown as if they are deciding their ownevolution. They have a chance to control the way their body and mind is shaped. This results in a conflict between different political, economic and technological forces, because individuals and their choice are oppressed and influenced by the owners of power.

Sterling creates a universe with its own culture, philosophical and ideological approaches, and language in this work. As for the language, he uses his own vocabulary with many neologisms like “nongenetic” (p. 114), which is used to refer to a person who is not naturally born as a human being; or “wiretendoned” that is used for human beings who have prosthetic modifications, and who are regarded as inferior by the rest of the society. According to Bukatman, science fiction constructs a “space of accommodation” for an intensely technological existence. The shock of the new is aestheticized and examined through language, iconography and narration (Bukatman, 93: 10). This is completely true for the work of Sterling in that the narrative technique and the language he uses aim to deal with the “new” in an

aestheticized way through the dichotomy between the form and the content. What is meant by “new” here is, what technology brings, because Sterling proposes that the universe and existence in it is totally subject to change because the technology develops. For example, Sterling presents an ideological framework in the novel which covers different approaches under the names of Preservationism, Détente, Militarism, Catalysm, Zen Serotonin, Galacticism and Post-humanism. Certain groups believe in or fight against these ideologies or philosophical concerns, which are mostly distinguished by their approaches to technology. Preservationists, for instance, contend that technology is destroying the essence of humanity, and they set strict limits on anti-human technologies, while the Zen Serotonin cult uses

“biofeedback” to maintain Zen-like calm. Post-humanism, is yet another concept explained rather peculiarly by Sterling in that post-humanists believe in

“terraforming” which they consider to be a primal duty of intelligent beings.

Terraforming, which means to transform another planet to make it habitable and more like Earth, develops so much that men succeed in controlling plants, animals and bacteria: “The soil was mine tailings, held by dampness and a fine plastic mesh.

Like Shapers themselves, the plants were altered to live without bacteria”

(Schismatrix, 83). In addition, Sterling uses moving images and similes in his descriptions and depictions. For example, Lindsay‟s wife Alexandrina is described as follows: “Her pale, clear complexion showed health without vitality, as if her skin were a perfectly printed paper replica. Mummified kiss-curls adorned her forehead”

(Schismatrix, 4).

In Schismatrix, Sterling again presents the human body as a kind of machine that can be repaired or reshaped as in The Artificial Kid. Alexandrina‟s knees, for

example, are said to have been recently replaced with Teflon kneecaps that still bother her. Another example of presenting the body as a kind of machine is the case of Kitsune whose body has been modified in order to be an ideal prostitute. She is described as an “artificial creature” (p.38) and in this respect her character generates the shock effect created by the “punk” part of the Cyberpunk word. The surgical assault on her body turns a “human woman” into a blank-eyed erotic animal. She describes herself as follows: “They gave me to the surgeons… They took my womb out, and they put in brain tissue. Grafts from the pleasure center, darling. I‟m wired to the ass and the spine and the throat. And it‟s better than being God” (Schismatrix, 34). She is shown as having a pure and abstract life, a hot, distorted parody of sainthood: “Kitsune‟s world was the fantastic, seamless realm of high pornography.

Lust was ever present, amplified and tireless, broken only by spasms of superhuman intensity” (Schismatrix, 38). Female characters like Kitsune and Molly from Gibson‟s Trilogy are the heroines of the Cyberpunk world that appears to be male-centred. Both of them are described as young, beautiful, lascivious, and biologically modified to be strong in a power dominated world. However, Molly‟s speech on prostitution given below is quite ironic, and can be seen as presenting the view of women in Cyberpunk works, that could be the subject for another thesis: “cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money…Renting the goods, is all. You aren‟t in, when it‟s all happening” (Neuromancer, 147).

As was also mentioned in the previous chapter, Sterling also refers to Japanese culture and terms since Japan was regarded as a byword for technological development. He uses the term “Zaibatsu” frequently in the work. This was originally a Japanese term referring to industrial and financial business

conglomerates whose influence and dominance on Japanese economy were considerable from the nineteenth century to World War II. Zaibatsus were large family-controlled vertical monopolies, like Mitsubishi, which dominated finance markets. The Cyberpunk world in Schismatrix is also governed and dominated by Zaibatsus like the “Mare Tranquillitatis Circumlunar Zaibatsu” (Schismatrix, 9).

Besides, the Zaibatsu establishes a system like Orwell‟s Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell, 1949), in which people are controlled not only through being watched all the time by cameras but also by drugs that influence their psychology and physiology. When Lindsay sees signals from Constantine, for example, he wants to shout, but he cannot, because he knows that “he was watched” (Schismatrix, 4).

People are under total control:

A drip-feed cable was plugged into the Crook of his right arm, reviving him. Black adhesive disks, biomonitors, dotted his naked skin. He shared the room with a camera drone. The free-fall video system had two pairs of piston-driven cybernetic arms (Schismatrix, 10).

When Lindsay asks for political asylum from the Zaibatsu, he accepts this total control. They ask if he carries biologically active materials in his baggage or implanted in his body or if he carries any software attack systems, then they change his intestinal flora to sterilize him and replace it with Zaibatsu standard microbes.

Today, the world is facing new microbes or viruses every day such as swine flue or bird flu and travellers are facing similar controls at airports. Therefore it may be said

that the author‟s predictions about the future are not unperceivable to the reader of the twenty-first century.

Another topic familiar to the reader of the end of the twentieth century was the length of human life, which is still a frequently debated concern in media. In Artificial Kid and Schismatrix, this concern of human beings for a longer life span is referred to in many different parts of the novel. Second Justice in Schismatrix, for example, is depicted as an older woman “maybe close to a century…her constant abuse of hormone treatments had made her metabolism a patchwork of anomalies”

(Schismatrix, 52). In this novel, Sterling continues to bring up his discussions about life expectancy and life standards which he had started in his earlier works. The influence of science and technology on the lifespan of human beings is vaticinated in various cases in which the ages of people are referred to. Alexandrina, for instance, is fifty year older than Lindsay but she still looks very young and beautiful. Therefore, inborn or natural elements lose their importance in such a world. Beauty and intelligence become obtainable features if one can afford them: “The Shaper woman floated closer. Lindsay saw that she was beautiful. It meant very little. Beauty was cheap among Shapers” (Schismatrix, 70). The Mechanists as opposed to the Shapers use different ways for longer lives. They keep their elders in a matrix of life-support tubes, eyes wired to a video input, in a sterile suite flooded with oxygen at nights.

Likewise, learning, in Schismatrix, turns out to be a short mechanic process through which the brain is loaded like the memory of a personal computer: “ „How many language do you speak?‟ „Four, normally. With memory enhancement I can manage seven‟ ” (Schismatrix, 20).

Human life becomes longer and easier for some people in the universe of Schismatrix, but on the other hand it is limited and over-controlled for some others who want to survive away from their own world. For example, strict rules are defined for those who want to pass to Zaibatzu‟s side.

The Zaibatsu recognizes one civil right: the right to death. You may claim your right at any time, under any circumstances…If you claim your right you will be immediately and painlessly terminated…Termination is also enforced for certain other behaviours… If you physically threaten the habitat, you will be killed. If you interfere with our monitoring devices, you will be killed. If you cross the sterilized zone, you will be killed. You will also be killed for crimes against humanity (Schismatrix, 10).

The work of Sterling appears to be warning readers of the danger of biological wars which the world has started to discuss seriously nowadays.

Biological war is a military technique in which biological agents are used to create disease causing viruses or toxins and the development of technology allows the creation of various viruses, fungi or bacteria in the work. Biological weapons (often referred to as bioweapons) are living organisms and they can annihilate the existence on a planet easily as is seen in Schismatrix.

One of the themes that distinguish Schismatrix from the other five Cyberpunk novels analysed in the thesis is contact with extraterrestrial life forms, called,

“aliens”, depicted in Schismatrix as “Investors”, who are obsessed with trade and

wealth, and encourage humanity to focus on business instead of war. This appears as reflection of Western history, the “Investors” being drawn very much like the Western Countries who had colonised many parts of the world and enslaved human beings for their own profit and welfare. However, the people of the Schismatrix universe are faced with uninhabitable space and they have to reshape the planets for their needs. This is explained in detail in the work:

It was cold. With the glass so filthy, so cracked, with daylight reduced to a smeared twilight, they would have to run the place around the clock simply to keep it from freezing. Night was so dangerous; it couldn‟t be risked. Night was not allowed (Schismatrix, 12).

Sterling depicts the Earth and the other inhabited parts of the universe as ruined or destroyed and this appears as a kind of warning to humanity about what the result of the advanced technology may be. The conditions become so risky that human beings have no choice but to control everything:

Every Concatenate world faced biological problems as the habitat aged.

Fertile soil required a minimum of ten million bacterial cells per cubic centimetre. This invisible swarm formed the basic of everything fruitful. Humanity carried it into space. But humanity and its symbionts had thrown aside the blanket of atmosphere. Radiation levels soared…Dead vegetation was attacked by rot. The soil

grew dry, the air grew damp, and mildew blossomed on dying fields and orchards… (Schismatrix, 12).

“Control” appears as a kind of key word in this world. There are two extremes in terms of control, the first extreme is using power to rule others or the world (s) or even not having control over one‟s own body and life. The first extreme is the aforementioned control of the worlds and the second one is total submission to others as in the case of Lindsay‟s obeying Zaibatsu: “He would never know when they were watching. At any moment, unseen fingers might close a switch, and he would fall”

(Schismatrix, 14). Likewise, in the planet of Schismatrix, people may also be taken under control through drugs as in the case of Kid in The Artificial Kid “Is it true that when you‟re fully operational, you yourself don‟t know if you are speaking the truth?

That they used psychodrugs to destroy your capacity for sincerity?” (Schismatrix, 20).

The Cyberpunk world presented by Sterling is in many ways a universe of combinations in extreme. Combinations of man and machine, nature and technology, reality and virtual world or fantasy, combinations of various cultures blended together all appear in Sterling‟s novels. His sentence in Schismatrix is like a short summary of the worlds he created: “hundreds of habitats, an explosion of cultures”

(Schismatrix, 42). The combination of man and machine, one of the features that make Cyberpunk a mirror of postmodernist discussions is especially highlighted in the Schismatrix. For instance Mr. Dze tells Lindsay that space is filled with hundreds and millions of people “most of them are the bourgeoisie…Maybe technology eventually turns them into something you wouldn‟t call human” (Schismatrix, 42).

The developments in aesthetic surgery support the increase of paranoia in the society.

Not only in the virtual world but also in the real world everything may be a subject of doubt. As it is seen in the novel, people may change their faces through simple surgery: “ „What‟s in the bag? State? Ice-cold drugs? Hot software?‟ „No,‟ Lindsay said. „It can wait. First we have to check everyone‟s face. Make sure it‟s their own‟”

(Schismatrix, 20).

As it is explained in the first chapter, cultural complexity is in the centre of discussions on Postmodern culture. In a planet where technology is improved to the level described in Sterling‟s novels, homogeneous cultural development is no longer possible. Likewise, in Schismatrix, a complexity of cultures is presented, as stated in the quotation about millions of habitats and cultures together.

In Schismatrix Sterling especially focuses on playing with genetics. He presents a future world where people are capable of changing their genetic structure and playing with DNA. Thus, the natural loses its triumph over the technological:

“Her sinuous movements, the ominous perfection of her features, and the sharp, somehow over-attentive intensity of her gaze all told him that she was Reshaped”

(Schismatrix, 54).

Every kind of contemporary fear and paranoia appears in the novels of Sterling. For example, biological weapons as mentioned above that have become a hot issue in the twenty-first century are also a matter of concern for Sterling. One instance is, in Lindsay‟s nightmare, Constantine‟s breeding of moths for stings and poison as weapons for the Revolution (Schismatrix, 59). In Schismatrix, Sterling deals with one of the greatest fears of modern man, to become defeated by machines or biological weapons, which is also felt in the previous Cyberpunk examples:

“Mankind is a dead issue, now cousin. There are no more souls. Only states of mind”

(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.