This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion
(excerpts from readings, outlines of issues,
links to resources, etc.). The materials
are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page
is subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
5/25/07
)
Cyberpunk Fiction
and Postindustrialism: Neuromancer
The first note from Fredric Jameson's
Postmodernism, or The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism (1991):
"This is the place to regret
the absence from this book of a
chapter on cyberpunk, henceforth,
for many of us, the supreme literary
expression if not of postmodernism,
then of late capitalism itself."
Science fiction as the imagination of
a cultural moment:
"Golden Age" SF (1937-50s):
WW II and the Cold War
New Wave SF (1960s-70s): Counterculture
Cyperpunk SF (1980s-90s): Postindustrialism.
Cyberpunk emerged in the 1980s-90s
during the same period as the encounter
of American corporations with the new
Japanese business model, global competition,
knowledge work, and information technology.
Cyberpunk is the literary equivalent
of books like Workplace
2000 or The Virtual Corporation.
It is an imagination of postindustrialism.
Gibson's "cyperspace" is
what Jameson calls a "cognitive
map"
of postindustrialism:
William Gibson, Neuromancer
(1984), p. 51:
"Cyberspace.
A consensual hallucination experienced
daily by billions of legitimate operators,
in every nation, by children being
taught mathematical concepts . . .
A graphic representation of data abstracted
from the banks of every computer in
the human system. Unthinkable complexity.
Lines of light ranged in the nonspace
of the mind, clusters and constellations
of data. Like city lights, receding. . . ."
McCaffery:
There are so many references
to rock music and television
in your work that it sometimes
seems your writing is as much
influenced by MTV as by literature.
What impact have other media
had on your sensibility?
Gibson: Probably
more than fiction. . . .
I've been influenced by Lou
Reed, for instance, as much
as I've been by any "fiction"
writer. I was going to use a
quote from an old Velvet Underground
song—"Watch out for
worlds behind you" (from
"Sunday Morning")—as
an epigraph for Neuromancer.
Remixed Old Media
(TV, film, books and magazines,
"dub" music)
The Finn's Metro
Holografix (p.
48)
Ashpool's dead-media
collection:
"The room
was very large,
cluttered with
an assortment
of things that
made no sense
to Case. He saw
a gray steel rack
of old-fashioned
Sony monitors . . .
Molly's eyes darted
from a huge Telefunken
entertainment
console to shelves
of antique disk
recordings, their
crumbling spines
cased in clear
plastic, to a
wide worktable
littered with
slabs of silicon."
(p. 183)
New Media
simstim (Tally Isham,
Sense/Net star) (cf.
Peter Riviera's holographic
projections)
hybrid simstim/cyberspace
media
(Case "flipping"
into Molly's sensorium;
Wintermute's and Neuromancer's
avatars) (cf. augmented
reality)
Information = Media
Information ultimately has
no meaning in this world;
data is just media (cf.,
McLuhan: "the medium is the
message")
p. 43, p. 101
pp. 269-70
Neuromancer:
A World of Postindustrial Corporations
(compare features of the new business
described in previous lectures)
"biz" is life
Case, businessman (p.
145)
The dominance of corporate
"arcologies" and
"zaibatsus" (pp.
37, 203)
Zaibatsu:
"A Japanese
conglomerate
or cartel [Japanese
zai wealth . . .
batsu
powerful person
or family . . ."
(American
Heritage Talking
Dictionary,
ver. 4.0)
cf. Neal Stephenson's
"phyles"
and "claves"
in The Diamond
Age (1995),
pp. 260-61:
"Why
do the Vickys
have such a
big clave?"
Nell asked. . . .
"Well,
each phyle has
a different
way, and some
ways are better
suited to making
money than others,
so some have
a lot of territory
and others don't"
"What
do you mean,
a different
way?"
"To
make money you
have to work
hard—to
live your life
a certain way.
The Atlantans
[Vicky's] all
live that way,
it's part of
their culture.
The Nipponese
too. So the
Nipponese and
the Atlantans
have as much
money as all
the other phyles
put together."
cf.
Eric S. Nylund, Signal
to Noise, 1998
Radical change and "creative
destruction"
E.g., the new technology
that allows the Chiba city
black-market biotech firm
to leapfrog competition;
corporate assassinations,
kidnappings, and defections
in later Gibson novels
Global competition
Paradigm of Japan, Inc.
Hybrid Japanese, American
("Sprawl"), European
scene of the novel
Fusion culture: (pp. 9,
19)
Freeside as the epitome
of globalism (a free port
like Hong Kong, except extraterrestrial)
In short, the perspective of the
"Street," of the marginalized
populations who live in the shadow of
the great corporate arcologies of knowledge
work and play out a unique, subversive
version of that knowledge work:
where technology is bent to new
ends: Gibson, "the street finds
its own uses for things"; quoted
in Bruce Sterling, Mirrorshades,
p. xiii)
where knowledge work is hacking
All presented from the first in the "look
and feel" or stage setting of the
novel (mise en scène).
Gibson: . . .
A lot of
the language
in Neuromancer and Count
Zero that
people
think is
so futuristic
is probably
just 1969
Toronto
dope dealers'
slang,
or biker
talk.
