T.C.
ANKARA ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ BATI DİLLERİ VE EDEBİYATLARI
(İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI) ANABİLİM DALI
CYBERPUNK FICTION:
THE WORKS OF WILLIAM GIBSON AND BRUCE STERLING AS EXAMPLES OF THE POST-1980s
SCIENCE FICTION TRADITION
Doktora Tezi
ÖZLEM ŞAHİN SOY
Ankara-2012
T.C.
ANKARA ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ BATI DİLLERİ VE EDEBİYATLARI
(İNGİLİZ DİLİ VE EDEBİYATI) ANABİLİM DALI
CYBERPUNK FICTION:
THE WORKS OF WILLIAM GIBSON AND BRUCE STERLING AS EXAMPLES OF THE POST-1980s
SCIENCE FICTION TRADITION
Doktora Tezi
ÖZLEM ŞAHİN SOY
Tez Danışmanı Prof. Dr. Sema E. EGE
Ankara-2012
TÜRKİYE CUMHURİYETİ ANKARA ÜNİVERSİTESİ
SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ MÜDÜRLÜĞÜNE
Bu belge ile, bu tezdeki bütün bilgilerin akademik kurallara ve etik davranış ilkelerine uygun olarak toplanıp sunulduğunu beyan ederim. Bu kural ve ilkelerin gereği olarak, çalışmada bana ait olmayan tüm veri, düşünce ve sonuçları andığımı ve kaynağını gösterdiğimi ayrıca beyan ederim.(24/01/2012)
Tezi Hazırlayan Öğrencinin Adı ve Soyadı
ÖZLEM ŞAHİN SOY
İmzası
PREFACE
This thesis aims to discuss and clarify the literary Cyberpunk Science Fiction sub-genre and the movement, which appears to be a cultural outcome of the 1980s.
This is a period that combines fast technological improvements with changing social structure in the United States of America and England. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling‟s six novels are to be studied as examples of Cyberpunk science fiction in this context.
The study consists of five parts, including a brief introduction, a descriptive chapter in which the necessary definitions of and arguments concerning the sub- genre are given, two chapters that study three novels from each of the writers and a concluding chapter.
Cyberpunk Science Fiction authors reflect their anxiety about the possible outcomes of current technological developments while writing about their assumptions about technology in the near future. They describe a world where man cannot stay away from technology, even if it causes the end of humanity. The works of Gibson and Sterling are accepted as the outcomes of the social and cultural atmosphere of the late-twentieth century and this thesis aims to provide a detailed descriptive study on the subgenre and the works of these authors.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Professor Oya Batum Menteşe, Professor Belgin Elbir and Professor Berrin Aksoy whose support and advice were invaluable. I especially would like to express my gratitude to Professor Gülsen Canlı and Assoc. Prof. A Lerzan Gültekin, who encouraged me all through this process and helped me with substantial advice. I also thank the members of the Atilim University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the helpful and friendly atmosphere they have created while I was writing this dissertation. I am indebted to my colleagues Asist. Prof. Dr. Gökşen Aras, Dr. Kuğu Tekin and Dr. Barış Emre Alkım for their support, this thesis would not have been possible without their encouragement.
Last but not the least; I would like to show my gratitude to my family who have provided every kind of support and, more important still, light relief. I would like to thank my husband Hilmi Soy not only for encouragement but also for his technical support.
CONTENTS
Page
Preface...v
Acknowledgements...………...…...vi
Contents………...………..vii
INTRODUCTION...1
CHAPTER I: Cyberpunk Science Fiction as an Outcome of the Late Twentieth- Century...………8
A) Cyberpunk Science Fiction ...………...9
B) An Overview of the Cyberpunk Movement in a Historical Context…....17
C) The Relationship of the Cyberpunk Movement with Late Twentieth- Century Culture and Philosophies.………...22
CHAPTER II: Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero by William Gibson as examples of “Cyberpunk Fiction”………..……...47
A) Neuromancer……….50
B) Count Zero ………...……….……...70
C) Mona Lisa Overdrive ………....…....…84
CHAPTER III: The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix, and Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling as examples of “Cyberpunk Fiction”…...101
A) The Artificial Kid………...104
B) Schismatrix………...115
C) Islands in the Net ………128
CONCLUSION....…..………..………...143
BIBLIOGRAPHY………...153
TÜRKÇE ÖZET……...………...…...164
ABSTRACT……….…...166
INTRODUCTION
In this dissertation, “Cyberpunk Fiction: An Analysis of the Works of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling as Examples of the Post-1980s Science Fiction Tradition”, Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero by William Gibson The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix and Islands on the Net by Bruce Sterling are analysed as examples of Cyberpunk science fiction that appeared as an outcome of a post- 1980s social and cultural environment. However, since Cyberpunk is seen as a reflection of postmodern attitudes by critics such as Fredric Jameson, Jean François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Arthur Kroker and Paul Virilio, the dissertation will also address the relationship between Cyberpunk fiction and late-twentieth century studies.
As new computer technology became an integral part of man‟s life and society, science fiction writers were also influenced by it and made statements about its real and potential influence on cultural and political life. The way the 1970‟s science fiction writers handled the subject of the combination of the technological and the biological, has influenced the 1980s‟ Cyberpunk writers, but their only concern was not the “cyber” part. The authors of Cyberpunk novels have developed their own style especially focusing on the “punk” of the imagined close future or virtual world. The word “punk” actually refers to the cultural phenomenon experienced in Britain and the United States of America (especially New York) during the 1970s, which was a result of negative social conditions and unemployment (O‟Hara, 2003: 27). What lies in the shaping of the viewpoint of
“Punks” is the disappointment of the unemployed white, young, working class and its alienation and hatred towards any socially accepted norms and institutions. This
thought system was shaped in the streets with this awareness. (O‟Hara, 2003: 27).
Cyberpunk writers used this viewpoint of “punks” in shaping their characters like Case in Neuromancer, Bobby in Count Zero or Arti in The Artificial Kid. These characters are alienated from social life, they do not have regular jobs or a respectable status in the society, and they are, in a way, trying to prove their existence through their reactions like being punks in the streets.
Cyberpunk fiction presents men or subjects as inactive objects controlled by technology or users of technology. The cyberpunk protagonists are passive and ineffectual anti-heroes who have no security or communal bonds as seen in the Neuromancer and The Artificial Kid. They are fragmented and decentred individuals as the characteristics of Postmodernism suggest. They become objects, instead of subjects through the influence of the invasive development of all types of technology. This can be read as a kind of deliberate warning on the part of the cyberpunk authors, or as a sort of anxiety about the results of improvements in the fields of science and technology. The authors, in a way, are warning people about thinking on the possible outcomes of current technological developments.
Another idea that brings Cyberpunk and Postmodernism close to each other that, technology creates a crisis for culture. The immense improvements in various fields of technology have created fear and anxiety in the twentieth century. This fear and anxiety reached a maximum point through the end of the century and marked its cultural formation. The works of Cyberpunk authors are productions of this specific era which has been called “the Dataist Age” (Bukatman, 1993:346), reflecting the fear and anxiety in a pessimistic way. The world Gibson and Sterling describes is full of terror and violence caused by or struggling with advanced technology.
The popular imagination started to be strongly influenced by cybernetics (which means “the interdisciplinary study of the structure of complex systems, especially communication processes, control mechanisms and feedback principles”
(http://www.bookrags.com/Cybernetics - Retrieved 03.09.2010) and information technology in the second half of the twentieth century. The imagination of Cyberpunk authors represent of this specific era in that they use images, metaphors and language directly derived from cybernetics and information technologies. In their works information technology dominates social, cultural, political and economic interaction on a global scale. Gibson and Sterling‟s novels describe such individuals whose lives are dominated by, especially, information technologies and cybernetics.
Bruce Sterling puts forward that science fiction has been dealing with the influences of technology on human life; however what distinguishes Cyberpunk from previous science fiction is that it regards technology as not just a phenomenon that has a strong influence on human beings but as something very close to man, even under his skin, in his brain, as a part that is completing him, or even sometimes controlling him (Sterling, 1986: xiii).
Authors of Cyberpunk present utopian artificial worlds, while drawing dystopian scenes for the real world. Utopia means both nowhere and somewhere good (outopia and eutopia), and cyberspace that appears in the work of Gibson carries something like this double meaning of “nowhere-somewhere”, as Kevin Robins mentions in his article “Cyberspace and the World We Live In”. He states that cyberspace can be thought of as a utopian vision for postmodern times (Robins, 1995: 135-155). It is somewhere but it has no solid location. The Net or the Matrix proposed by Gibson is regarded as a utopian space, a nowhere-somewhere in which
everything is subject to be regenerated, even after death. As is seen in Mona Lisa Overdrive, its existence also depends on the existence of human beings: “Cyberspace exists, by virtue of human agency” (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 107). Thus, cyberspace includes positive connotations in that sense, and promises a kind of hopeful existence for humanity in the near future as opposed to the dystopian settings of the works.
However, this existence is not in the concrete world, but in an abstract, cyber world.
It is imagined as a sort of reaction against or opposition to the real world through the use of “simulacra”. Thus, it might also be regarded as a limited utopia in that sense.
To Robins, virtual reality and cyberspace are “associated with a set of new and innovative forms of society and sociality” (Robins, 1995:96). Virtual reality is imagined as “an alternative to the difficult and dangerous conditions of contemporary reality” (Robbins, 1995: 146). To Robins “as in utopian thinking more generally, there is belief or hope that the mediated interaction that takes place in that other world will represent an ideal and universal form of human association and collectivity” (Robins, 1995: 146). However, in the case of Gibson‟s worlds, it is not possible to agree with Robins in his optimism that, even if the created world looks like a limited utopia, and it is possible to generate opportunities for the sake of humanity, these are all simulations and the simulation cannot be transferred into the real life. Therefore, it is too optimistic to accept the opportunities of virtual life as alternatives to the dangerous conditions of contemporary reality.
Cyberspace is also likened to the Heavenly City, or Eden, which stands for a social reality in which “intimate contact with material nature is possible” (Benedict, 2000:38); the world of enlightened human interaction and information by Benedikt (Benedikt, 1991:15). On the other hand, cyberspace is also imagined as a zone of
unlimited freedom “a grid reference for free experimentation, an atmosphere in which there are no barriers, no restrictions on how far it is possible to go” (Plant, 1993: 14). Therefore, cyberspace in Gibson‟s works can be seen as virtual utopias in terms of being data heavens in which the mind reaches absolute freedom, but they don‟t refer to the real world in which the real body is stuck. They are never totally free from reality and the concrete body, and it appears that the author‟s aim is not to constitute a utopian world in the traditional sense.
In the first chapter of this thesis, after a brief summary of the definition of Cyberpunk and discussions on the movement, the characteristics and the history of Cyberpunk Science Fiction and the relationship between Postmodernism and Cyberpunk Fiction are studied. The birth and the basic characteristics of the movement are presented in the first and second parts of this section. The close connection between Postmodernism and the Cyberpunk and how the Cyberpunk movement became a mirror of Postmodern concerns is discussed with references to the aforementioned critics. Terms such as “new-wave”, “cyber”, “punk”,
“cyberpunk”, “cyberculture”, “cybertheory”, “soft and hard science fiction”,
“hyperreal”, “simulation”, “image-centred”, “virtual reality”, technology as “cynical power”, “dromology” are defined in order to set up the necessary background information for a better understanding of the works of the period.
The second chapter presents an analysis of the works, Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero by William Gibson as examples of Cyberpunk Science Fiction. Since Gibson is one of the most popular writers of Cyberpunk Science Fiction, and the author who coined the terms “cyberspace” and “virtual reality” that build the terminology of the sub-genre, his works are studied as the main
examples of post-1980s Cyberpunk Science Fiction (D‟Ammassa, 2005: 266). How Gibson employs the basic themes of Cyberpunk Science Fiction is considered. These include the invasion of body and mind in the form of genetic alteration, prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence and neuchemistry; and the blurring of boundaries between the advanced technology and low life, the man and the machine, the real and the virtual; and man‟s situation in a physically ruined world dominated by multinational corporations that master information technologies. The Chapter also underlines that the work of Gibson presents a sort of social anxiety that appeared during the 1980s, an anxiety about the situation of man in a world of rapidly developing technology. In the work of Gibson, technology overpowers all types of the natural substances, and the world is already physically ruined. Man‟s survival in this world depends on his ability to comply with the advanced technology. However, he victimizes his body and even identity during this process and turns out to be an object in this relationship. Thus, Gibson‟s work presents technology as an “invasive” or “cynical” power, in Kroker‟s terms (Kroker, 1992:12). Gibson also points out that power relations of the near future world are to be determined by means of use of technology. Cyberpunk authors mainly deal with the near future, and Gibson‟s novels, which were written during the 1980s, might be regarded as attempts to foresee the early twenty-first century. As critics such as Jameson, Baudrillard and Kroker underline, this sub-genre reflects the social and economic phenomena of the period, by presenting the individual as a
“virtual man”, wired to technology, and living in “cyberspace” with his implants (Baudrillard, 2001: 115).
The Third Chapter presents an analysis of The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix, and Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling as further examples of Cyberpunk Fiction.
Sterling, who has written his novels in the same period as Gibson and undertaken the mission of advocating the sub-genre, dealt with themes similar to those seen in Gibson‟s works in and similar ways. Sterling regards technology as a kind of extension of twenty-first century man, and questions this relationship in his works.
He presents characters from low-life, who abuse and are abused by advanced technology by means of genetic surgeries, implants, biochemical suppressants, mind- altering drugs and the endless opportunities of playing with every kind of data. It is possible to say that Sterling discusses the role of technology in the changing economic, social and cultural conditions of the world. Therefore, in this Chapter, the themes and characteristics of Cyberpunk Fiction that were analysed in the previous chapter are investigated in relation to Sterling‟s work.
The Conclusion will be a summing up of the main arguments, thereby highlighting the possibility of seeing and studying inspiring ideas on Cyberpunk Science Fiction.
CHAPTER I: CYBERPUNK SCIENCE FICTION AS AN OUTCOME OF THE LATE TWENTIETH – CENTURY
The basic purpose of this Chapter is to describe the characteristics of the Cyberpunk Movement and Cyberpunk Science fiction with references to critics who commented on the genre. The historical and philosophical evolution of the genre, as well as the movement, will be explained in the second and the third parts of this Chapter.
“Cyberpunk” as a term not only refers to a literary science fiction genre, but also to a social movement and sub-culture that became dominant in the Western World after the 1980‟s. The word is made up of two parts “cyber” and “punk”
presenting the most basic characteristic of the genre, which is to combine advanced technology the lives of characters from lower social classes. Cyberpunk fiction mainly deals with the invasive development of all types of technologies such as computer technologies, information technologies and bio-technology and the isolated and fragmented individual in such a highly-developed world. It also brings forward the blurring of the boundaries between high and popular cultural products, between the natural and the artificial and between the real and the virtual, which make these works representatives of the cultural atmosphere of the late-twentieth century that is referred to as the “Postmodern Era”. Although authors of Cyberpunk fictions produce novels that are conventional in terms of narrative techniques and formal qualities of novel writing, their works are studied in the frame of Postmodernism
because of this preoccupation with Postmodern concerns and choice of subject- matter.
Cyberpunk is not the only form of science fiction sub-genre that appeared after the 1980s. Several other types of science fiction emerged in the genre in the 1990s, including works on environmental issues, and questions about biotechnology and nanotechnology. Post-Cyberpunk, which has evolved from Cyberpunk, is yet another movement seen in the 1990s that focuses on technological developments in near future societies and that deals with nearly the same themes as Cyberpunk, but in a more optimistic way. The characters in Post-Cyberpunk novels go through similar situations as Cyberpunk characters but they try to protect the status quo of the world as depicted in the novels, and they try to improve social conditions. Bruce Sterling‟
Islands in the Net (1988) is regarded as a Post-Cyberpunk novel in this sense, depicting a near-future world that is very much like today‟s world (Person, http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/10/08/2123255/ notes-toward-a-postcyberpunk- manifesto).
The next three parts of this Chapter aim to present a detailed definition and discussions on Cyberpunk Movement and the Cyberpunk Science Fiction as a literary subgenre, the historical context and the philosophical and the cultural framework in which cyberpunk can be placed.
A) Cyberpunk Science Fiction:
This part of the first Chapter aims to present a detailed definition of the term
“Cyberpunk” by referring to the authors and critics studying the subject. Cyberpunk
is not only a relatively young science fiction subgenre but also a social movement that was influenced by developments in the field of technology and in the street culture of the 1980s. The Cyberpunk Movement was born out of the 1970s “New Wave” and it was influenced by the authors of this movement, but Cyberpunk authors turned to “hard sciences” for their subject matter and produced “hard science fiction” works as opposed to the “soft science fiction” of the New Wave movement (Don, 2005). Cyberpunk has quite extraordinary definitions, like that presented by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson:
One cup film noir, one cup Bester, two tablespoons Blade Runner, one tablespoon James Bond, a dash of Delany, “several thousand micrograms” (for those who don‟t speak Cyberpunk), a half gram of Dexadrine; mix thoroughly, cover in a thick layer of Reagenesque hype and Ramboesque aggressiveness. Bake at full heat for three years, then let simmer. Serves two good writers and hangers-on (Robinson, 1998: 47-48).
This “recipe” reflects different characteristics of the Movement as well as some of the influences on Cyberpunk Science Fiction authors. It shows how Cyberpunk writers were the followers of previous science fiction authors like Alfred Bester and Samuel Delany and how it is in a close interaction with popular street culture. In his Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, which is regarded as the manifesto of the movement, Bruce Sterling, who is also the spokesperson of the movement, argues that, this movement has risen from within the science fiction genre “–against the tradition, not as an invasion but as a modern reform” (Sterling, 1985: xv).
This “new” New Wave movement and subgenre of science fiction had various names before “Cyberpunk” became the accepted label, such as “Radical Hard Science Fiction”, “the Outlaw Technologists”, “the Eighties Wave”,
“Neuromantics”, “the Mirrorshades Group” and “the Movement” (Sterling, 1986:
ix). At first, the word “cyberpunk” was only used to refer to a prototype, a young criminal who is talented in technological devices and who survives through the means technology provides him with (http://project.Cyberpunk.ru Retrieved 20.07.2010). The word was coined by Bruce Bethke in the early 1980s, and was used for the “bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech” science fiction that was emerging on that certain time period (Bethke, 1983). It first appeared as the title of Bethke‟s short story “Cyberpunk” that was published in the Amazing Stories in 1983, and later the science fiction editor Gardner Dozois popularized the term (http://project.
Cyberpunk.ru Retrieved 2010.07.20).
There are many attempts to explain this term and describe the boundaries of literary Cyberpunk subgenre and the Cyberpunk movement. For example, Peter Nicholls focuses on the word itself in order to define the term:
The “cyber” part of the word relates to cybernetics: to a future where industrial and political blocks may be global (or centred [sic] in space habitats) rather than national, and controlled through information networks;
a futile place in which machine augmentations of the human body are commonplace, as are mind and body changes brought about by drugs and biological engineering. Central to Cyberpunk fictions is the
concept of virtual reality, as in Gibson‟s Neuromancer sequence, where the world‟s data networks form a kind of machine environment into which a human can enter by jacking into a cyberspace deck and “projecting his disembodied consciousness into the matrix” (Nicholls, 1993: 288).
On the other hand, he refers to the second part of the word as having quite different connotations when compared to the first part:
The “punk” part of the word comes from the rock‟n‟
roll terminology of the 1970‟s “punk” meaning in this context young, alienated and offensive to the Establishment (Nicholls, 1979: 288).
These characteristics of the word are underlined in other definitions like that of Featherstone and Burrows‟s:
the term Cyberpunk refers to the body of fiction built around the work of William Gibson and other writers, who have constructed visions of future worlds of cyberspaces with all their vast range of technological developments and power struggles (Featherstone and Burrows, 1995: 3).
The definition above clarifies the main focus of the Cyberpunk themes depicting a dystopian future world marked by the use of technology. In such a world the power relations are determined by the use of technology.
Sterling lists Cyberpunk concerns in Mirrorshades under two headings. The first one is “body invasion”, which includes any kind of intervention in the parts of the body and that may include “prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery and genetic alteration”, and the second theme is “mind invasion” that may be in the form of “brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, neurochemistry – using the techniques radically redefining the nature of humanity and the nature of the self” (Sterling, 1986: xiii). The Gibson and Sterling novels studied in this thesis employ most of these concerns. Since Cyberpunk frequently makes use of the combination of low life with advanced technology, it is possible to see stories of crime, data piracy, drugs and violence together with these motifs. This type of Cyberpunk that combine these elements is referred to as Gibsonesque Cyberpunk.
Another common feature of this type of novels is that they take place in the near future rather than in the far future, and the setting is either the virtual world or the Earth in which human beings control nature (or whatever left from it) by means of technology. However, this relationship is quite complex, in that they are also controlled by the technology. That is, Cyberpunk works deal with a dark vision of the close urban future. The stories take place in a technologically improved but industrially ruined world. Nature is not depicted as a beautiful, fertile “real” setting but as a part of virtual reality for example in Neuromancer. Here Gibson depicts the city in the beginning of the novel as follows: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (Neuromancer, p. 3). This depiction that includes an electronic metaphor immediately focuses the reader‟s minds on the modern world of electronic goods in Cyberpunk world just at the beginning of the work. In the world depicted by Cyberpunk authors, social instability appears to have
reached to a maximum with the imbalance between the rich and the poor, since there is no governmental control, and multinational companies are the owners of the authority and they run the world according to their own profit. In Sterling‟s Artificial Kid for instance, the contradiction among the social classes and the struggle of the lower class to survive is depicted with sharp descriptions. Each of the novels of Gibson and Sterling mentioned in the thesis present crime and violence as a part of everyday life. Bobby, for example, loses the parts of his body and is renewed by scientists in Count Zero, Molly uses the blades in her fingers to protect herself in Mona Lisa Overdrive, Arti fights to sell his videotapes to survive, Lisa is subject threatening of terrorists in her own house in Islands in the Net. Therefore, in Cyberpunk science fiction sophisticated technologies appear together with industrial poverty and chaos.
The characters are prototypes like the 1980 punks rockers in the streets:
unemployed, alienated, aggressive and amoral but talented in using the technological devices. These types of characters are referred to as “average Johnny Mnemonics”, the name of a character created by William Gibson in his “Johnny Mnemonic”
(http://project.Cyberpunk.ru – Retrieved 2011.07.04) and adapted for cinema in 1995. Cyberpunk prototypes share common character traits such as not presenting much virtue and not having a mission like saving a country, protecting a society, or fighting for religious ideals or freedom, but being ordinary anti-heroic characters who just want to save the day and survive in a world where individuals are no more important. They are all sophisticated in the ways of using technological devices and they save the world with their special talents although they don‟t mean to. Most of the characters in the Cyberpunk novels are presented as if they are paralyzed by the
fear of being part of a data system if they do not submit silently to the rules set by dominant powers. These characters or “cyberpunks” have a certain reason like being blackmailed or saving their own lives, to fight against a group or technological power like an artificial intelligence. Both Gibson and Sterling frequently use the terms “the System” or “the Corporate” in their novels and this is pointed out as a major characteristic of Cyberpunk stories by Project Cyberpunk (www.project.cyberpunk.ru). The characters are in struggle with “the System” or
“the Corporate” and they cannot escape from the traps they fall in, and they use technology to get rid of these problems. They are mostly not parts of open wars and their fights do not have ethical bases, they are just characters who are manipulated and try to continue their existence. The presentation of such characters and themes appears as a reflection of humanist anxieties about a technological future, such as man‟s position against machines, a subject matter which can also be found in earlier science fiction novels.
The Cyberpunk authors generally employ conventional narrative techniques in expressing such concerns as intelligent machines, genetic altering on human body, and man-machine combinations which might be listed as “postmodern”, due to the way of combining them. Both Gibson and Sterling present stories that have regular patterns of plot structure with an exposition part, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. They use multiple stories that are combined at the end of the works, to maintain suspense and curiosity. Both writers prefer object point of view while recounting the events and they do not experiment with narration techniques except using multiple story lines. In plain words, writers focus on their concerns which are mostly technological subjects more than their own writing experience.
As it is mentioned above, Cyberpunk is not only a literary subgenre, but it is also a cultural movement that had considerable influence on the life styles and artistic creations of its audience. For example, it is possible to see that the music of Velvet Underground, the Talking Heads, the Sex Pistols and films such as The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Blade Runner (1982), Videodrome (1983), The Matrix Series (1999-2003), animations like Tron (1982), Æon Flux (1990s), Rise of the Robots (1994), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Animatrix (2003) contain cyberpunk elements. Five Cyberpunk authors, including William Gibson and Bruce Sterling made a considerable contribution to this cultur. They read, criticised and supported each other‟s works and are known as the “Satellite of Cyberpunk”. This group was constituted by Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner and John Shirley. Bruce Sterling categorizes the influences on this group as follows:
the cosmic outlook of Olaf Stapledon”, “the science/politics of H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein”,
“the reality games of Philip Dick”, “the soaring, skipping beatnik tech of Alfred Bester” (Sterling, 1986:
x).
The Satellite Group, having these influences in their background, have dealt both with both traditional and unconventional subject matters in a pessimistic way. They all present a highly technological but naturally exhausted world in which humanity is about to be replaced by machines, or prefers the infinite opportunities of the virtual world to the real world. Thus, they also point out the question of “reality” by presenting the virtual as its preferable counterfeit. These oppositional concerns show that Cyberpunk is a cultural outcome of the late-twentieth century, as a kind of
mirror of anxieties and dysphoria that is brought about by the late-capitalist socio- political environment.
B) An Overview of the Cyberpunk Movement in Historical Context:
The genre science fiction became an important branch of popular literature in the twentieth century with the interaction of literature, the industries of cinema and gaming and popular television productions. A general survey of such science fiction novels such as Philip Dick‟s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968), Samuel Delany‟s Babel 1-7-(1966) and Roger Zelanzy‟s The Amber Novels (1970-1978), movies such as Blade Runner (1982), The Matrix Trilogy (1999), Terminator (2003) and Artificial Intelligence (2001) and television productions such as the Doctor Who Series (1968-2005) show that close interactions between technology and science fiction resulted in the production of works on several subjects such as computer technologies, virtual reality, genetic engineering and cybernetics. Therefore, the twentieth century has witnessed the diversification of the science fiction genre. Since the twentieth century has become the century of technological improvement and social changes parallel to these developments, Kingsley Amis‟s definition of science fiction as “the literature of change” explains the grounds of the rise of science fiction in this specific era (Amis, 1963).
The writers of Cyberpunk are natural followers of the earlier science fiction writers who created and improved the genre. As Luckhurst also points out in his work Science Fiction, in which he analyzes the origins of science fiction genre, authors of Cyberpunk Fiction are heirs to the science fiction writers of the earlier
twentieth century from the 1920‟s, known as the “pulp era”, the to the 1950‟s often recognized as “the Golden Age of Science fiction” and to the New Wave science fiction of the 1960‟s and 1970‟s (Luckhurst, 2005).
Cyberpunk writers were especially impressed by the New Wave Movement of the 1970‟s. The authors of the New Wave Movement such as Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, Philip Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny emphasized the social sciences and radical thoughts and, they dealt with the theme of the darker sides of technology in works such as Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep (1968), The Dancers at the End of Time (1981), The Left Hand of the Darkness (1969) and The Drowned World (1962) (James,1994). The New Wave writers of the 1970‟s were experimenting with both content and style, and referring to sociological and psychological themes (James, 1994: 176, 196). For example, Ursula Le Guin wrote stories commenting on gender issues, Philip Dick wrote about God and existence, and J.G. Ballard focused on the theme of ecological catastrophe.
This type of science fiction was later named “soft science fiction” (Clute and Nicholls, 1995). Cyberpunk, which appeared in the next decade, is known as “New”
New Wave and what it is different from its predecessor in that, Cyberpunk authors dealt with “hard” sciences, such as computer sciences, cloning and other advances in biotechnology and experimentations with brain-machine combinations. Therefore, Cyberpunk is also known as the “Hard Science Fiction”. Each of the New Wave authors, especially William Burroghs (1914-1997), Alfred Bester (1913-1989), Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) and A.E. Vong Vogt (1912- 2000) have contributed to the formation of Cyberpunk in different ways (Clute and Nicholls, 1995). For example, Asimov who wrote or edited more than 500 books,
and is regarded as one of the most accomplished science fiction writers, dealt with such subjects as sophisticated robots and other scientific inventions and is known to have revolutionized the form of science fiction with his works such as the Foundation Series (1942-1950) and the Robot Series (1950-1985). Asimov created the robot stereotype with the “Laws of Robotics”, setting out the rules that should be obeyed by the robots in his stories:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
(Asimov, 1950: 158)
4. (Zeroth Law- added later)A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm
(Asimov, 1950: 158).
The authors of the Cyberpunk fiction appear to have been influenced by this preoccupation with intelligent machines and started to experiment with the subject by adding more detailed and more recent concerns such as artificial intelligence, artificial consciousness, cognitive robotics, cybernetic, hybrots, biomedical and genetic engineering. Cyberpunk authors reflect a similar anxiety as found in Asimov‟s Zeroth Law, that human beings might be victims of the intelligence they have created.
Actually, it is a commonly known fact that the idea of “Robot” goes back to ancient times. Homer‟s description of an intelligent mechanical device in the XVIII Book of Iliad is given as the first description of artificial creations that imitate human beings. The character of Frankenstein created by Mary Shelly also can be seen as an early example of a robot. However, robots stepped out of the imagination of man and became a part of reality in the twentieth century. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling also referred to this topic in their works and presented them as the only friends of the isolated early twenty first century man. However, it is also possible to find a sort of warning about this close relationship between lines. As the artificial and the natural come closer to each other and start to reflect each other‟s characteristics, the machine can replace man and start to “think” better than him.
It might be useful to distinguish the types of man-machine combinations that are also seen in the life of the twentieth century man in order to understand the work of Gibson and Sterling. For example, there are androids (robots that look like a real person ( Fowler et all., Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 10th edition, 1999: 39)), bionic men (having artificial parts of the body and so able to do things no normal human being can do (Fowler et all.., Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 10th edition, 1999: 107)) and cyborgs (which are defined as a cybernetic organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creation of fiction in A Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway, 1991:
149-181). Organic artificial human beings or androids are also referred to as
“biological constructs”. All these types are human forms that are mixtures of organic and mechanical parts. This subject matter has become a great source of inspiration for the authors of Cyberpunk Science Fiction.
Science fiction authors such as Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny, Philip Dick, Stanislaw Lem, Rudy Rucker, and Terry Pratchett focused on robots and their interaction with the human species, which appear as one of the main subject matters that Cyberpunk authors borrowed from their predecessors. The television and movie industry employed robots many times in different forms in the second half of the twentieth century as well. For example, Andromeda (1961), the Doctor Who Series (1963-2005), the Lost in Space series (1965-1968), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barbarella (1968), Solaris (1972), The Bionic Boy (1976), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), I, Robot (1983), Robotix (1987), Robocop (1987), Star Trek (1987-1994), Cyberstalker (1995), Johnny Mnemonic (1995), The Matrix (1999), Artificial Intelligence (2001), Terminator, Rise of the Machines (2003), and The Cyborg Girl (2007) are some of the TV series and movies in which human- machine combinations, that is to say cyborgs, androids or robots, are seen. These works deal with the subject of robots and human-machine combinations in various ways. For example, the revenge of the machine turned out to be a central focus in popular culture through the end of the twentieth century, as it is seen in Blade Runner, I, Robot and Matrix.
Cyberpunk science fiction is the apparent heir to the previous traditions of science fiction genre and it presents the gloomy atmosphere of the 1980s Western world that was shocked by the rapid developments in technology and disappointed and anxious about the negative social and economic conditions. Cyberpunk authors reflected their excitement and disappointment at once, by combining advanced technology with the characters and settings that represent the lower classes of society.
C) The Relationship of the Cyberpunk Movement with Late-Twentieth Century Culture and Philosophies:
In this part of the First Chapter, the close connections between the social and historical conditions of the late-twentieth century and the Cyberpunk movement will be discussed, and how the cyberpunk movement has become a mirror of Postmodern concerns will be presented by referring to certain late-twentieth century critics and philosophers such as Fredric Jameson, Jean François Lyotard, Jean Baurillard, Arthur Kroker and Paul Virilio.
The late-twentieth century in which Gibson and Sterling produced their works is referred to as the Postmodern Period and this label refers to its social and cultural characteristics that are to be explained in this chapter. Gibson describes himself as a
“postmodern writer...who has adapted several postmodern motifs and themes to his purpose” (Gibson, 1998: 16.2&221). Postmodernity has turned out to be central to most studies and debates that aim to explain cultural change and the social phenomena of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Postmodernism and postmodernity are terms that are used interchangeably from time to time. However, there are slight differences between the two terms. David Lyon mentions this difference as follows:
As a rough analytic device it is worth distinguishing between postmodernism, when the accent is on the cultural, and postmodernity when the emphasis is on the social... Postmodernism, then, refers to cultural and
intellectual phenomena...Postmodernity, on the other hand, while still concentrating on the exhaustion of modernity, has to do with putative social changes (Lyon, 1994: 6-7).
As is known, postmodernism particularly attacks sharp classifications such as natural versus artificial, real versus virtual, male versus female and story versus history. Cyberpunk movement expresses this rebellion against such sharp distinctions and instead it puts forward the postmodern values of difference, plurality (in the sense of reality made up of several images and interpretations), alterity and scepticism ( in the sense that there are no absolutes in the world, and everything is subject to change). Therefore, it is in many ways postmodern since it developed during the eighties, as a kind of investigation of the individual‟s place in the media dominated, late capitalist Western society and presents a deliberate preoccupation with the points where the borders join together.
The contemporary world is described as “image-centred”, “hyperreal” and
“emerging from the ruins of the enlightenment‟s grand narratives” by David Lyon, who comments of the analyses of especially the French theorists of Postmodernism (Lyon, 1994). It is possible to add that what defines the Postmodern world is “pure speed” as Paul Virilio terms it. The worlds drawn by Gibson and Sterling are also marked by hyperreality and by having image and speed as the key denominators of all types of activities. Hence, in spite of their conventional approach to narrative techniques as mentioned above, the themes and concerns of the two writers are entirely postmodern.
A close investigation of Postmodernism is required in order to understand Cyberpunk Fiction in its historical context.
The development of technology and the parallel changes in the economic structure and social system in the last centuries is explained by Ernest Mandel, a twentieth century theorist who has many works on late capitalism and political economy: Mandel has pointed out three economic revolutions governed by revolutions in power technology; “freely competitive capitalism”, which lasts from 1700 to 1850 and includes the steam engine of 1848 and the rise of electricity, the second one is the period of “monopoly capitalism” which witnesses the combustion engine is marked by the imperialistic development of Western countries and their colonial territories, finally the age of “late capitalism” that includes the development of nuclear and electronic technologies since the 1940s (Mandel, 1986). The dominant characteristic of this period which has started after the Second World War are the multinational corporation, globalized markets and labour, mass consumption, and the space of liquid multinational flows of capital (Mandel, 1986). As it is clear from Mandel‟s definition, the last phase of this historical classification is later described by Fredric Jameson as “Postmodernism”. Lance Olsen‟s reference to Toffler‟s arguments about the waves in history appears to be quite illuminating in that, Cyberpunk develops entirely parallel to this last historical epoch as an outcome of the technological and economic developments occurred in this specific era. In Toffler‟s futuristic sociological study The Third Wave, which was published in 1980, like Ernest Mandel‟s previous argument on the development of capitalism parallel to the developments in technology, Toffler argues that civilization has evolved through three stages “or waves” (Toffler, 1980):
During the first Wave most people consumed what they themselves produced. They were neither producers nor consumers in the usual sense. They were...
“prosumers”. It was the industrial revolution, driving a wedge into society, that separated the two functions, thereby giving birth to what we now call producers and consumers (Toffler, 1980: 266-267).
Toffler‟s arguments are parallel to that of Mandel in that, in both of their theories a new epoch starts after 1950s. This formation of post-industrial society is named “super-industrial society” by Toffler (Toffler, 1980):
As the Third Wave has begun to restructure the world economy, the economics profession has been savagely attacked for its inability to explain what is happening.
Its most sophisticated tools, including computerized models and matrices, seem to tell us less and less about how the economy really works (Toffler, 1980: 280).
There is a wide diversity of life styles in this post-industrial society, and information might substitute most of the material sources. The fast changes that took place in the period of the Third Wave and their influence on the social, cultural, technological and political conditions are also underlined by Lance Olsen as follows:
The Third Wave has begun to revolutionize the deep structure of society, entering the techno-, info-, socio-, bio-, power- and psycho- spheres, and advocating the anti-thesis of “indust-reality”: customisation,
decentralization, demassification, diversification and globalisation. Rather than thinking in terms of hierarchy, it thinks in terms of “network”... Politically it moves away from the authoritarianism of capitalism or socialism toward a complex democracy advocating minority power and de-nationalization (Olsen, 1992:
17)
This division of Waves according to socio-economic changes are parallel to divisions according to the technological developments. As seen in the works of Gibson and Sterling, Cyberpunk science fiction appears as a kind of mirror to the themes and concerns of this third phase, thus to Postmodern period, with its references to the relationship of ordinary man and advanced technology, and man‟s place in the changing economic and social system.
In the world described by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling the individual is portrayed as decentred and fragmented and surrounded by a high flow of information. These postmodern elements prove why Cyberpunk is referred to as “the pre-eminent literary genre of the Postmodern Era” (Sponsler, 2001: 178). These writers attempt to present the inevitable consequences of recent technological developments. They describe a future in which the global economic structure totally changes and gets controlled by multinational corporations, the countryside is totally ruined, crime and violence have become ordinary in urban life. In the novels, then, we find such inescapable events as Case‟s taking place in a violent bargain with an Artificial Intelligence to gain his healthy body back again in Neuromancer, or Laura Webster‟s struggle against the F.A.C.T (Free Army of Counter-Terrorism) in
Grenada in the Islands in the Net; and the consciousness and movements of man are shaped and directed by highly developed uncontrolled technology.
When William Gibson and Bruce Sterling started to produce Cyberpunk works and write comments on the movement in the early 1980s, Fredric Jameson was starting to comment on the cultural phenomenon of “Postmodernism”. Being the first theorist who discussed postmodern phenomena in relation to socio-political circumstances, in other words to history, his comments led other theorists to try to understand and explain the products of the era defined as “postmodern”, which was shaped by advanced technology and certain characteristics of late capitalism. The concept of “utopia” and utopian thinking has great importance in Jameson‟s thought, since he suggests that the fractured, decentred, surface –fixated variety of postmodern television embodies “utopia” in its own way. To Jameson, high modernism or established critical canon is replaced by what is considered to be
“shocking, scandalous, ugly, dissonant, immoral and anti-social” (Jameson, 2000:
350). In his Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, he argues that the contemporary period is marked by an “inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that” (Jameson, 1984 - http://www.newleftreview.org/?
view=726). In the introduction to Gibson‟s Burning Chrome, Sterling makes a similar comment on this feeling of the end of something: “one distinguishing mark of the emergent new school of Eighties Science Fiction [is] its boredom with the Apocalypse” (Sterling, 1986: xi -Preface to Count Zero).
“Late capitalism”, a phrase Jameson adopted from the economist Ernest Mandel mentioned above, represents a new economic logic, the third phase of
capitalist development that gained ascendancy over the older forms sometime after World War II. It is followed by a new cultural logic which is labelled Postmodernism. For Jameson, Postmodernism correlates to “a new type of social life and a new economic order which is also called “multinational capitalism” as reflected in Cyberpunk novels like Sterling‟s Islands of the Net. Jameson underlined
“pastiche” and “schizophrenia” as the two significant features of Postmodernism (Jameson, 1991). Jameson himself has stated that Cyberpunk is “henceforth, for many of us, the supreme literary expression if not of Postmodernism, then of late capitalism itself” (Jameson, 1991: 417). People in the postmodern age, as in the Cyberpunk works to be analysed in this dissertation, are even from their emotions since they are subject to enormously violent or sexually explicit things and they are not moved by any of these stimulants.
In addition to Jameson‟s influential arguments, Poster has shown how through the end of the twentieth century, sophisticated computer communications, electronic and media technologies have produced a decentring and fragmentation of representational forms and blurred images (Poster, 1990). Postmodern culture is marked by a sense of cultural discontinuity and fragmentation that is also seen in Cyberpunk novels.
Due to the multiplicity of producers and distributers of information, as Patrick Novotny also argues, late twentieth century culture is increasingly oriented toward cultural complexity rather exhibiting itself as a homogeneous and monologic cultural dominant (Novotny, 1997: 102-103). In the works of Cyberpunk writers, this kind of cultural complexity is seen clearly. For example, Gibson‟s Neuromancer takes place in Chiba, Sprawl and Istanbul and makes use of various cultural elements
from each setting including language and religious references; likewise Sterling‟s Islands in the Net presents a cultural diversity or complexity.
Another philosopher of the Postmodern period who tries to explain the cultural phenomena of the era is Jean François Lyotard. Lyotard questions the position of the writer in the Postmodern age. According to Lyotard, a postmodern artist or writer assumes the position of a philosopher:
The text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by pre-established rules, and he cannot be judged according to a determining judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work (Lyotard, 1991: 261).
To Lyotard, the work of art itself indeed seeks these rules and categories.
Therefore, the artist or the writer works without rules in order to formulate the rules of what “will have been done” (Lyotard, 1979). As Linda Hutcheon marks, cultural eclecticism, fragmentation, indeterminacy and parody that appear as the basic features of postmodern sensibility mark much of the late twentieth century artistic work (Hutcheon, 1995). The artists, literary theorists and creative writers of the period reflect the postmodernist sense of parody that exceeds aesthetic styles and representational norms. This parody celebrates the fragmented, indeterminate, unpredictable subject. In the same way, a similar sense of irony, disillusionment and pessimism has preoccupied much of the twentieth century aesthetic representation and culture including, the Cyberpunk literature.
Cyberpunk culture and literature finds itself a place in the frame of postmodern criticism through this problematization of boundaries. Everyday life, in
postmodern culture, according to Novotny, is pervaded by a sense of cultural discontinuity and fragmentation, and it is increasingly oriented toward cultural dominance. (Novotny, 1997: 101) As pointed out by Jean-François Lyotard in his The Postmodern Condition, the combination of different cultural genres and representations is a major feature of literature, music and culture. For Lyotard, eclecticism:
is the degree zero of contemporary culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald‟s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong (Lyotard, 1985: 76).
Since such colourful and detailed descriptions that the readers might easily visualise because they are already familiar, the characters, settings and events Gibson and Sterling create are all cinematographic, including all types of elements from past and present popular life and highly technological devices. This fragmented approach to reality and culture makes these works closer to postmodern perspectives.
Real and reality became elusive terms at the end of the twentieth century.
Industries such as the cinema, T.V., Internet, and multimedia created their own
“reality”, which is referred to as “virtual reality”, and individuals under the influence of social conditions which are created by the era of so-called the “late capitalist”, have become surrounded with this virtual reality. The gap between what materially is and what is animated or a production of simulation started to decrease, and the individuals started to confuse the created reality with their own lives as foreseen by
Gibson in the “simstim” example in which characters communicate with simulated, fake characters as if they are real in the Mona Lisa Overdrive.
In order to have a better understanding of conception that lies behind the Cyberpunk works and the cultural phenomena reflected by Gibson and Sterling, the cultural criticism of Baudrillard should also be studied. The French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard uses the word “simulacrum” which means an “image”, “copy” or “shadowy likeness of something” for the deviation from the traditional concept of reality. The word simulacrum, that Baudrillard derives from the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in whose opinion, the world is simply a copy of a purer and better world that exists on another higher level of being refers in Baudrillard‟s writings to the type of fake reality that appeared in the late twentieth century with the developments in the field of information technology. What Baudrillard describes in his essay “The Precession of Simulacra”
(1983) is explanatory for the values and approaches seen in the work of Gibson and Sterling. Baudrillard argues that western capitalism has moved from being based on the production of things to the production of images of things, of copies of
“simulacra” (Baudrillard, 1983). The difference between real life and simulated life or “simulacra” decreased towards the end of the twentieth century, to a point where it becomes hard to distinguish one from the other: “the whole system becomes weightless; it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum” (Baudrillard, 1983:
404). The individuals of the late twentieth century started to know and care for the imaginary artificial characters of movies, computer games and soap operas more than the real people around them, as do the characters of Cyberpunk works. Baudrillard points out that this resulted in the loss of a sense of the real, (like Case and Bobby
who prefer the created reality to the life they experience). The real for Baudrillard, lies between the borders of death and life, and it is in a vain struggle with the created real or “hyperreality”, as he calls it (Baudrillard, 1988:1). The reality created on T.V., cinema, multimedia or the Internet, that is to say “the simulation”, has replaced the “real” reality and individuals are imprisoned in hyperreality, because they cannot communicate. They are only subject to what is given to them, and this kills their imagination. The subjects accept the virtual life given to them as real and they prefer a life cut off from the outside. Thus, in this theory, humanity has entered into a new phase of creating and realizing reality through technology. Baudrillard argues that there are three levels of simulation (Baudrillard, 1994). The first one is an obvious copy of reality, the second level is a copy which blurs the boundaries between reality and representation because it is so convincing. The last phase is the one that produces a reality of its own without being based upon any particular part of the real world, like mathematical codes and computer language. This third level is called
“hyperreality” (Baudrillard, 1994). Baudrillard is shocked by the very lack of difference between the real and the unreal instead of difference between the two in the twentieth century. Baudrillard regards reality as an object of faith like God. Like God, reality exists as long as human beings believe in it (Baudrillard, 2005: 18-19).
In the theory of Simulation, reality and simulation are received as copies that have no difference. Thus, Plato‟s model where the copy comes after the original is overturned and the “simulacrum” precedes the real.
When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second –hand
truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic- stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production.
This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence (Baudrillard, 1983: 405).
Artificial characters, intelligences and space replace the real ones in the worlds drawn by Gibson and Sterling. For example, Wintermute or 3Jane in Neuromancer bothers Case more than the real people in his world.
For Baudrillard, reality or the concept of the “real” has been transformed in the postmodern world. The world has become “real beyond our wildest expectations”
(Baudrillard, 1996: 64). He asserts that technology is the reason for this change:
By our technical exploits, we have reached such a degree of reality and objectivity that we might even speak of an excess of reality, which leaves us with utopianism and imagination, whereas there is neither compensation for – nor any alternative to – the excess of reality. No longer any possible negation or surpassing, since we are already beyond. No longer any negative energy arising from the imbalance between the
ideal and the real – only a hyperreaction, born of the superfusion of the ideal and the real, of the total positivity of the real (Baudrillard, 1996: 64).
Baudrillard claims that, today, the real and the rational have been overturned by their very realization. However, the subject is no longer in an apposition to see it.
Moreover, the object and the subject have changed positions: “It is no longer we who think the object, but the object which thinks us. Once we lived in the age of the lost object; now it is the object which is „losing‟ us, bringing about our ruin”
(Baudrillard, 1996: 71). Baudrillard‟s argument of the subject‟s transformation into the object and being lost in this reverse system because of being forgotten by the object explains the position of the individuals seen in the Cyberpunk works. As the works of Gibson and Sterling are studied, it is clearly seen that the individuals lose their importance in a system dominated by technology, and they just turn into objects ignored by the system they live in.
Gibson and Sterling depict the early twenty-first century as a world in which technology appears as a major character or a kind of extension to human characters.
The definition of the identities of many characters like Case, Molly, Laura, Kid, Kumiko or Abelard, depends on their relation to technology. The aim of technology to be an extension of man and his power is regarded as an illusion by Baudrillard and he claims that “man labours under the subjective illusion of technology”
(Baudrillard, 1996: 71). For him, technology appears as an instrument ruled by man, however, “in fact the world is using this machinery to impose itself, and we are merely the operators” (Baudrillard, 1996: 71). Therefore, the subject is dominated by
technology and becomes just an “operator” like the example of Case in Neuromancer.
In The Perfect Crime, Baudrillard comments on the extermination of “the Other” in the era of the Virtual that is defined as the era of “liquidation of the Real and the Referential”. For Baudrillard the era of the Virtual witnesses:
The otherness of death – staved off by unrelenting medical intervention. Of the face and the body – run to earth by plastic surgery. Of the world – dispelled by Virtual Reality. Of every one (Chacun) – which will one day be abolished by the cloning of individual cells... if information is the site of the perfect crime against otherness. No more other: communication. No more enemy: negotiation… No more death: the immortality of the clone. No more otherness: identity and difference. No more illusion: hyperreality, Virtual reality. No more destiny. The perfect crime (Baurillard, 1996: 109-110).
The Cyberpunk world is thus an output of the “perfect crime”. To Baudrillard, the history of the world is completed in real time by the workings of virtual technology (Baudrillard, 1996: 25). That is to say, the deeds that mankind devoted itself to do are done by computers or machines in very short times, and this makes human beings feel inactive. People are living their lives not in real time, but living and suffering directly on screen or in front of a screen – in a virtual reality- having their thoughts encoded by the computers. “Make your revolution in real time – not in the street, but
