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
 ii

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
iii
 iv

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
 v

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.

 vi

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.
 vii

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
 1

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
 2

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.

 3

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

 4

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

 5

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
 6

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).

 7

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.
 8

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
 9

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
 10

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).

 11

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

 12

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.

 13

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
 14

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
 15

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.

 16

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

 17

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
 18

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,
 19

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.
 20

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.

 21

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.
 22

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

 23

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.
 24

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):

 25

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,

 26

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

 27

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
 28

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
 29

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

 30

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
 31

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
 32

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

 33

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

 34

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
 35

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
 36

in a recording studio. Live out your amorous passions in real time - the whole thing

on video from start to finish” (Baudrillard, 1996: 26).

In a world where signs have lost signifiers because they are virtual, things are

becoming “extreme” or “beyond the limits” for Baudrillard. He describes this state as

follows: “Things have no origin any longer and no end, they cannot develop logically

or dialectically any more, but only chaotically or randomly…they are beyond the

limits” (Baudrillard, 1996: 27). This means that subjects of the late twentieth century

are passive, experiencing a kind of inertia in the objective irony of the world.

Baudrillard concentrates on semantics while shaping his thoughts on “the

real” and “the reality”. To him when reality gets rid of its origin, since it does not

have a signifier, the sign is also exterminated and this means “the murder of the

sign”: (Baudrillard, 2005: 67) “Since the meaning works through signs, what is left is

only a fanatic structure: language” (Baudrillard, 2005: 69). In a world where

signifiers do not refer to reality, but simulations, communication is also impossible,

and the subject becomes alienated from the real world, like the characters seen in

Cyberpunk novels. The previous distinctions between illusion and reality, signifier

and signified, subject and object, collapse in the twentieth century, since there is no

reality. To Baudrillard, what is left behind is only a self-referring “hyperreality” in

this postmodern world (Baudrillard, 1982:1). A reality that lacks an essence (or

reality) is defined as “hyperreality” or “simulation” by Baudrillard (Baudrillard,

1982). In the contemporary world, reality is produced through miniaturized cells,

matrices, memories and command models. Thus, multiple creation of reality is

possible. Baudrillard introduces the model of Disneyland to this kind of created

reality in which simulacra are interwoven. Disneyland is presented as an ideal place

 37

where fake simulations look more real than the real and the efforts to present them in

this way are so successful that reality and representation blur together. In a way, it

convinces individuals of the reality of outside world by showing them the borders of

rationality (Baudrillard, 1982: 12). Today, such a created model of reality is easier to

reach; people are living for their virtual farms, establishing civilizations and

watching interactive soap operas. These games and T.V. shows make subjects feel as

if they are a part of them, and this turns out to be their “reality”. What Baudrillard

criticizes is the first step of cutting oneself off from the outside reality, and the

further steps of this situation are presented by Gibson in the Trilogy. Baudrillard‟s

example of Disneyland turns out to be the whole virtual world in the Cyberpunk

works, since it symbolizes a similar gap between reality and simulacrum. The

characters prefer the catatonic virtual life to the life they experience with their

“meat” (Neuromancer, 6).

Illusion is no longer possible for Baudrillard, as he indicates in Simulacra and

Simulations, because the real is no longer possible (Baudrillard, 1988: 407). As

explained in this article, “it is the whole political problem of the parody, of

hypersimulation, or offensive simulation” (Baudrillard, 1988: 407). He discusses the

degree of reality of certain repressive apparatus such as law and order:

For a real hold-up only upsets the order of things, the

right of property, whereas a simulated hold-up

interferes with the very principal of reality.

Transgression and violence are less serious, for they

only contest the distribution of the real. Simulation is

infinitely more dangerous since, it always suggests,

 38

over and above its object, that law and order

themselves might really be nothing more than a

simulation (Baudrillard, 1988: 408).

The moral system and accepted norms are set by owners of capital, thus they

impose what is scandalous and unaccountable or immoral on us according to their

profit expectations, as Baudrillard also mentions: “All that capital asks of us is to

receive it as rational or to combat it in the name of morality” (Baudrillard, 1988:

407). Therefore, Baudrillard questions the norms of society and affirms that the

accepted values and norms of societies are set by capital owners and truth or reality

depends on how one reads it. For example, for some, “Watergate” might be regarded

as a scandal, but for others, who discuss economic equivalence, power relations and

capital exploitation it might not be regarded as a scandal. Besides, in a world where

reality is produced, such events are nothing but scenarios for poisoning the masses.

Especially, in the second and the third works of Trilogy, we come across a similar

production of reality. The simstim (see page 48) that Angie Mitchell experiences in

her brain and the world of the cloned embryos 2Jane, 3Jane and numerous others are

living in their own reality, no matter if it is created or not.

Another subject underlined by Baudrillard is the determination of value in the

postmodern society. To him, “events, discourses, subjects or objects used to exist

only within the magnetic field of value” that “exists as a result of tension between

two poles: good or evil, true or false, masculine or feminine” (Baudrillard, 1996: 67).

For Baudrillard, these values are depolarized in the contemporary world (Baudrillard,

1996: 67). In the worlds drawn by Gibson and Sterling in their novels, this loss of

poles is clear since the characters are not searching for absolute goodness or truth but
 39

they are trying to survive in any way. Neither the world they are in is real or virtual,

or their motivations are clear. Baudrillard defines postmodern society as organized

around the production and consumption of commodities and simulation, and play

with signs and images. Images, codes and models shape individual identities and

determine their relationship (Baudrillard, 1988).

In this determination, the subject openly turns out to be an object, or a kind of

victim like Gibson‟s characters Case, Bobby, Molly, or Abelard and Kid in the works

of Sterling. This process of degradation of the human being shows the power of

technology as “invasive” or “cynical” as it is termed by Arthur Kroker (Kroker,

1992:12). Kroker‟s comments on technology and contemporary culture in his works

Digital Delirium (1997), The Possessed Individual (1992), Panic Encyclopaedia

(2000), Body Invaders (1988), and Hacking the Future (1996) are useful for a deeper

analysis of the artistic productions of the end of the twentieth century. His works

may be accepted as a sort of guide to understand the Cyberpunk world depicted by

Gibson and Sterling. Kroker argues that in the postmodern era, science and

technology are the real language of power as seen, for example, in the Islands in the

Net, in which the holders of technology control the world. Furthermore, Kroker deals

with the new horizon of electronic culture and techno-culture in the 90s. To Kroker,

The 90s began with a blast of techno-utopianism, but it

will end with slow suicide in the surplus streets. Net

Politics, the story of the 90s, as a radically split reality:

surplus class and virtual class, surplus flesh and virtual

flesh, separate and digitally unequal (Kroker, 1997:83).

 40

Kroker questions the results of living in a world of advanced technology in

his works like, Hacking the Future. He discusses the situation of the individual

surrounded by technology and evaluates the outcomes of ultra-technology and its

reflections on the streets. Therefore, his approach and criticism is quite applicable to

the world created by Gibson and Sterling in their novels, because technology is like a

living mechanism on the streets in their works.

Technology is in the centre of Kroker‟s cultural criticism asit is in

Baudrillard‟s, however his approach is from a different angle. In The Possessed

Individual, he views technology as “a cynical power” by referring to the twentieth

century French thinkers from Baudrillard and Barthes to Virilio, Lyotard, Deleuze

and Guattari, and Foucault who “refuse the pragmatic account of technology as

freedom and eschew a tragic description of technology as degeneration” (Kroker,

1992: 12). He presents a useful list, which provides a summary of twentieth century

thinkers and their views of technology:

technology as pure speed (Virilio), technology as

simulation (Baudrillard), the rhetoric of technology

(Barthes), technology as a desiring machine (Deleuze

and Guattari), technology as aesthetics (Lyotard) and

technologies of subjectivity (Foucault) (Kroker, 1992:

12).

Kroker regards technology as an “invasive power” that dominates life with its

“technological language” (Kroker, 1992: 12). Gibson and Sterling employ such a

language which is difficult to decipher. The language changes, as seen in the works

of cyberpunk authors, not only with the use words from the language of science and
 41

technology, but also with difficult grammatical structures. Kroker defines virtual

reality as “the recoding of human experience by the algorithmic codes of computer

wetware” (Kroker, 1992: 12). [Computer wetware is a term for operators using a

computer system here meaning an artificial organic brain.] He underlines the

relationship between technology and the individual as a kind of possession of the

individual by the language of technology that belongs to virtual reality. “No longer

alienation, reification or simulation as stages in the technological dialectic of social

emancipation and human domination, but virtuality now as the dominant sign of

contemporary technological society” (Kroker, 1992: 12). Kroker distinguishes the

individual of the end of the nineteenth century, the fin-de siècle man, from the

individual of the twentieth century, the fin-de –millennium man (Kroker, 1996). To

him, the fin-de-siècle generation “had experienced feeling of great anxiety and

melancholy”, while fin-de-millennium generation “was giving itself to cold

romance,...generation cannot be nostalgic about the disappearance of the organic

body because, unlike the 1890s, we have never lived the illusion of the real”

(Kroker,1996: 32). Kroker analyses how art as a means of representation of emotions

and ideas has changed using the example of Two Machines for Feeling by the artist

Tony Brown. To him we can now speak of “neon brains, electric egos, and data skin

as the bigger circuitry of a society held together by the sleek sheen of surface and

network, … positioned in the hallucinogenic world of postmodern technology”, like

the worlds Gibson and Sterling created during the 1980s (Kroker, 1992: 23).

This artificial world of light, electricity and network is determined by speed.

The action is to be taken faster in the virtual world while a silent and slow life is

taking place outside, in the “real” world. At the same time, speed is sign of
 42

prosperity and supremacy. Hence desire for speed is another outcome of the late-

twentieth century as it is also argued by French philosopher Paul Virilio. Virilio, who

regarded the development of technology and speed as simultaneous, and is presented

as “the emblematic theorist of the fin de millennium”:

For in his theoretical imagination all of the key

tendencies of the historical epoch are rehearsed: the

creation of the postmodern body as a war machine; the

fantastic acceleration of culture to its imminent moment

of collapse in a nowhere zone between speed and

inertia; the mutation of subjectivity into “dromocratic

consciesness”; the irradiation of the mediascape by a

“logistic of perception” that work according to the rules

of the virtual world (Kroker, 1992: 20-21).

Virilio disagrees with Baudrillard‟s idea of simulation in that, to him there is no

simulation but substitution because reality has become symmetrical and “the data

glove” has replaced matter (Kroker, 1997: 43). “Dromology” is a term used by

Virilio to explain the meaning and importance of speed in the contemporary world.

Virilio regards speed as a class issue, because it shows one‟s wealth and social status

in the twenty-first century. This is valid for both transportation vehicles and data

transfer systems. Faster cars, faster planes, faster internet, faster computers show

wealth and class ranking in the society. As Virilio points out, those who can move

fast or have access to high speeds, are usually wealthy. Societies of the post-modern

period are defined as the “society of speed” by Virilio and to him the only way to get

rid of this dromocracy is “putting the brakes on it, and making things, especially the
 43

body, world-heavy” (Virilio, 1986: 81). Virilio is best known for his “war model” of

the growth of modern society and the evolution of human society. It is possible to

think about the worlds created by Gibson and Sterling in the frame of Virilio‟s ideas

on technology and speed, since they present imaginary early-twenty-first century

societies shaped by these elements.

Because of the close interaction between the characteristic features of the

Cyberpunk movement and those of the Postmodern approach, many critics, such as,

Jameson Baudrillard, Kroker and Virilio have pointed to the movement as a space

where postmodernism fulfils itself. Claire Sponsler describes this situation as

follows:

Anti-foundational, sceptical of authority, suspicious

about the possibility of human autonomy, and

fascinated by the way technology and material objects

shape consciousness and motivate behaviour,

Cyberpunk would seem to square with postmodern

culture as it has been amply described by Baudrillard,

Jameson, Jean François Lyotard, among others

(Sponsler, 2001: 627).

These critics commonly underline the interconnection between the human and

the technological as the central focus of discussions. The breakdown of binary

oppositions between the natural and the artificial, and the human and the machine is

evaluated as a sort of “postmodern identification” (Hollinger, 1991: 205) and the

human or “subject” is regarded as deconstructed in this particular breakdown. The

subject is identified as “anti-humanist” (Hollinger, 1991: 203) and this is presented

 44

as the postmodern condition of the genre science fiction (Hollinger, 1991: 203). The

work of Gibson and Sterling presents examples of such human-machine

combinations; these have either artificial parts in their body, or have a consciousness

that is shaped by technological constructs. This blurring of boundaries is welcomed

by some feminist critics of postmodernism like Donna Haraway, who is the writer of

“Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late

Twentieth Century” (1985), since it also leads to the disappearance of the duality of

male and female.

The limited number of female characters in the works of Gibson and Sterling

prove Haraway‟s approach in that; they are depicted as “fabricated hybrids of

machine and organism” (Haraway, 1985: 150). For example, Molly from Mona Lisa

Overdrive and Kitsune from Schismatrix are fabricated female characters in whose

body “the old dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and

machine” become obsolete (Haraway, 1985: 163). Female body, like many other

male bodies, is presented as open to any kind of altering to create war machines.

Apart from the female characters, the characters in the works like Edward

Turner or Abelard Lindsay are trapped in an abysmal present that will last forever.

Jenny Wolmark explains this state of losing the sense of time in her article

“Cyberculture” as follows:

As the concept of time as linear progression has eroded,

the postmodern cultural environment has been

described not only as having lost a sense of history but

also as manifesting a feeling that the future has

 45

imploded into an increasingly science-fictional present

(Wolmark, 2003: 218).

All these discussions that combine the features of Cyberpunk Movement and

Postmodernism resulted in the emergence of “cybertheory”. Cybertheory can help us

to comprehend Gibson and Sterling‟s works from a broader view: As Wolmark

notes, cybertheory mainly deals with the destabilization of boundaries between

human and technology, the real and the virtual and self and the other, and it started to

be a critical field for discussions about the overlapping influence of technoscience

and disciplines (Wolmark, 2003:219). The critical field of Cybertheory demolishes

accepted theoretical approaches on purpose, in order to set a body of thought through

which the relationship between man and technology is defined more clearly. It

opposes previous debates since they do not answer the needs of the era and tries to

establish a new approach in which a diverse range of discourses from various arts are

included. David Bell, one of the editors of the anthology of articles on cyberculture

The Cybercultures Reader, lists the concerns of cybertheory as follows:

domains of digital communications and information

technologies, - the Internet, the world wide web, email;

plus all the subframes within these (bulletin boards or

BBs, chat rooms, multi-user domains

(MUDs)/dungeons, etc.) –alongside a host of related

technological systems, including virtual reality, digital

imaging systems, new biomedical technologies,

artificial life and interactive digital entertainment

systems (Bell, 2000: 1).

 46

Cybertheory deals also with the cultural use and the value of all these items as wells

discussing their place in the life of late twentieth century and early twenty-first

century man. Therefore, Cyberpunk, Cyberculture and Cybertheory all reflect the

researches and observations of relationship of man and technology.

To conclude, Cyberpunk, as both a movement and a literary science fiction

subgenre, is shaped by the cultural conditions of the 1980s that have been summed

up as Post modernism. It reflects nearly all kinds of erosion of boundaries between

various types of opposites and this vagueness of borders is the main concern of both

Postmodern studies and Cyberpunk works. The works of William Gibson and Bruce

Sterling have the characteristics of the 1980s and reflect many of the basic

denominators of the era. The next two chapters aim to analyse William Gibson‟s the

Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Bruce Sterling‟s The

Artificial Kid, Islands in the Net and the Schismatrix as examples of Cyberpunk

science fiction, in the light of the views put forth by the postmodern critics

mentioned in this chapter.

 47

CHAPTER II: NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO AND MONA LISA

OVERDRIVE BY WILLIAM GIBSON AS EXAMPLES OF CYPERPUNK

FICTION:

This chapter aims to discuss how certain characteristics of Cyberpunk science

fiction are seen in William Gibson‟s Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and

Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). The characteristics of Cyberpunk science fiction and

the relationship between Postmodernism and the Cyberpunk movement will be

discussed with references to the works named above in this chapter.

William Gibson, who is famous for having coined the word “cyberspace”, has

become one of the central points of reference for Cyberpunk science fiction, having

dealt with subjects such as the Internet or Virtual Reality long before either existed.

The Sprawl Trilogy or Cyberspace Trilogy, which he wrote during the 1980s, is

composed of Neuromancer, (which won the science-fiction "triple crown" awards,

the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award), Count Zero,

(which was nominated for the Locus and British Science Fiction Awards in 1986, as

well as the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1987), and Mona Lisa Overdrive, (that was

nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1988 and the Hugo Award for

Best Novel in 1989). The novels are all set in a fictional near future world where,

characteristic of the Cyberpunk world, the nation state has withered away and power

lies in multinational corporations, in which electronic information technology has

come not only to dominate forms of life recognizable to the generations of the

twentieth century, but to create new and increasingly unrecognizable forms of life as
 48

well; reality or the concept of reality is replaced by created reality, in other words

virtual reality.

The Trilogy presents a close future in which human beings are closer to

machines and technology becomes a part of human body in various forms such as

implants, sockets or cloning. Thus, technology appears as a kind of “invasive” or

“cynical” power as Kroker defines it (Kroker, 1992:12). The theme of combining

man and machines, in the form of cyborgs, which became central to most of the

cyberpunk works, is realized through the idea of software that might turn the body

into a programmable machine like a personal computer. The machines become more

human as well. Gibson depicts artificial intelligences, and machines acting and, in a

way feeling like human beings. Cyborgs, androids and robots are quite frequently

seen in the works of Gibson.

Gibson mainly focuses on the effects of advanced technology, and the

individual‟s struggle against technology to survive in this rapidly advancing world of

technology; on the other hand, he deals with individuals who define their existence

through technology and cannot live without it. Thus, it is again seen that technology

is one of the identifying elements of Cyberpunk science fiction. Gibson handles the

characteristic preoccupation of postmodern science fiction, the theme of a subject‟s

capacity to change and adapt to technology. Hence, it can be said that the

complicated relationship between man and technology is highlighted in the works of

Gibson. Furthermore, the trilogy makes an indirect statement about a power-structure

that depends on using technology for future societies.

The novels of the trilogy are set in “The Sprawl”, which is depicted as

covering the entire East Coast of the United States, from Boston to Atlanta, even if
 49

Gibson intentionally does not identify the name of the country as Olsen also notes

(http://www.lanceolsen.com/neuromancer.html, Retrieved, 2011.09.05, 12:20). Since

the natural world is ruined, the world Gibson presents is a dystopian future in which

several geographical locations and virtual settings are merged into one megacity. The

city has its own climate, without a real night/day cycle and has an artificial sky that is

always grey. The Sprawl includes people from different social classes; there are areas

for rich people, while poor people are struggling to survive in some other areas.

However, advanced technology is a part of all people living in the Sprawl, regardless

of their social class and it is easily accessible. People spend much of their time in the

"matrix" for work or other purposes. The people who live in the Sprawl frequently

use "simstims" a word derived from simulated stimuli and means “a form of virtual

reality that allows people to experience a television program, typically soap operas,

from the point of view of a fictitious media personality” (http://soundcloud.com/

data/data-the-sprawl-horizons-music - Retrieved 20.06.2011). Chiba City is another

prominent setting that appears in the work. Chiba is in fact a highly techological

district near Tokyo in Japan; however due to the Cyberpunk authors concern for

Japan and China as the significant threats for the world, Chiba appears as a dystopian

underworld in Neuromancer. The third setting Freeside, is depicted as an orbital

shaped space station in the high orbit. The rich Tessier-Ashpool clan, Villa

Straylight, lives in one end of the spindle. There are many other cities including

Istanbul, Dog Solitude and cyberspace itself are other places in the stories. The

places depicted, including cyberspace, depict a near-future world dominated by

multinational corporations and ultra-advanced technology. There is a brief reference

to World War III that has changed the structure of the world. The three novels cover
 50

a period over sixteen years, and although there are familiar characters, like Molly,

that appear in all of them, each novel presents a self-contained story and minor

stories that are connected to each other. The characters have direct access to the

virtual world through implants in their brains and they become a part of information

space. Therefore, direct mind-machine links is a major subject matter of the work.

The main theme of the trilogy is the struggle of an artificial intelligence to unite with

another artificial intelligence in the artificial world. This can be considered as a

struggle to reach a technological singularity that would end humanity.

In the Sprawl Trilogy, Gibson‟s use of elements such as cyberspace,

developments in the field of genetic engineering due to advancements in science and

technology, organ transplantation and surgeries that combine the human body to

machines through prosthesis, computer networks and control of information and

power relations through these nets, changing economic systems, a world ruined by

chemical weapons, terrorism, computer pirates known as hackers, artificial

intelligence and cybernetics, can be seen as features that trace Cyberpunk science

fiction and these matters link cyberpunk works to cultural studies trying to explain

late-twentieth century social phenomena.

Neuromancer (1984)

The first novel of the trilogy, Neuromancer, appears as a kind of expanded

version of William Gibson‟s famous short story “Burning Chrome”, which is about

two hackers, Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack, who hack systems for profit. This

story became a starting point for his later works in which he presented a
 51

technologically developed violent society in which human beings are living together

with machines and that appears as a typical setting for Cyberpunk stories. Although

the subject-matter and themes are quite postmodern, the novel has a traditional

narrative structure which is made up of a story line presented in chronological order,

an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and a resolution. The author‟s

stylistic choices at this level thus, create a traditional novel in terms of structure. It

has a common adventure plot in which a solitary protagonist goes through several

adventures with a group of characters for a certain mission assigned to him. The

characters and events of the novel are organized to give a sense of play on the

borders between the real and the virtual. Thus, it is possible to say that Gibson‟s

Cyberpunk novels are the examples of the traditional novel form dealing with

postmodern concerns such as the boundaries of the real and the virtual and the

human and the artificial.

Gibson combines high-technology with the lives of people from the lower

social strata in the Neuromancer. The title of the work acts like a key word

explaining the intention of the author since the way it is prounced suggests new

romanticism which embraces innovation and emotion. According to Olsen, a well

known critic who deals with postmodern science fiction, this impulse that is to say,

new romanticism, often takes the form of an intense subjective expressionism (Olsen,

1992: 66). David Porush, another critic who discusses the same subject, says that the

title “puns on the idea of the literary text as a cybernetic manipulation of the human

cortex, a neurological romance” (Porush, David, 1987:171). Then, as Porush also

underlines, it is possible to think that the novel appears as a kind of textual machine

that activates and stimulates the human mind (Porush, David, 1987:171). On the
 52

other hand, the word is also similar to “necromancer”, which means a kind of a

magician who has power to get in touch with dead people. Neuromancer also

suggests the idea of man‟s relation to or combination with machines. Therefore, it

may refer to the connection of reality to the virtual world through the manipulation

of the brain. Besides, Gibson makes an intertextual reference to previous science

fiction novel Necromancer (1962) by Gordon R. Dickson in the Neuromancer: “

„Neuromancer,‟ the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the sun. „The lane to the

land of the dead. Where you are my friend...I could read the book of her days. Neuro

from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer Necromancer. I call up the dead‟ ”

(p.243-244). Thus, Gibson plays with the words necro and neuro, to create the sense

that nerves might be connected to the world of the dead.

In Neuromancer, Gibson narrates the story of Henry Dorsett Case, a talented

computer hacker aged twenty four. Case is a hacker or in the words of the virtual

world a space cowboy. However; his connection to it prohibited because of the

mycotoxin inserted to his body by his previous employers as a punishment for having

stolen from them. Molly, another talented cyberspace user helps him to provide his

service to Armitage who is an ex-military officer. Case‟s nervous system is repaired

and he sets out on a mission with a team in which each person has special gifts. He

reaches Wintermute, a powerful Artificial Intelligence who was planned by a

powerful family, the Tessier-Ashpool dynasty. Wintermute, although being a

programmable machine, is presented as having humane characteristics. In the final

part of the novel, Case completes his mission on time, Molly leaves him and he

continues the hacking work, but understands that the inhuman intelligence that he

fought against survives in the matrix. As this brief summary displays, this work
 53

displays almost the entire range of characters of Cyberpunk science fiction, with all

of its main concerns as mentioned in the previous chapter.

Case is a representative of a typical Cyberpunk protagonist being a former

cyberspace hacker whose nervous system has been destroyed by “wartime Russian

mycotoxin”, rendering him unable to enter (jack) into the matrix and forcing him to

find work on the black market (Neuromancer, 5). This damaging of the nervous

system is a recurrent theme in Cyberpunk works and indicates one of the main

characteristics of the cyberpunk world: the influence of advanced technology on the

human body. The body turns out to be a machine that can be treated by scientists in

special ways. This instance of being open to process turns the body into a kind of

prison. Thus technology is presented as a kind of “cynical” and “invasive” power in

Kroker‟s terms. Case suffers at the beginning of the novel, even wants to die because

he is away from his console (the device he uses to enter the Matrix), and would do

anything to be able to jack in again. His situation away from the console is defined as

a prison: “Case fell into the prison of his own flesh” (Neuromancer, 6). His present

state, cut off from cyberspace, is explained thus:

For Case, who‟d lived for the bodiless exultation of

cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he‟d frequented

as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain

relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat

(Neuromancer, 6).

As illustrated in this quotation, the body is not merely a natural matter, but

also a kind of commercial commodity in Cyberpunk novels. Therefore it is possible

to talk about a sort of mind-body dualism that reminds one of the Cartesian duality of
 54

mind-body, that goes back to Plato and Aristotle and the argument that the mind or

the soul cannot be identified with, or explained in terms of, the physical body. René

Descartes (1641) termed this concept “dualism”, arguing that the body could be

divided up by removing a leg or arm, but the mind or soul were indivisible. Descartes

was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and

to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ Retrieved 2012.01.16). Hence, formulated

the mind-body problem and clearly this is one of the main influences on the theme of

separation, or a kind of blurring of the boundaries of the mind and body in

Cyberpunk fiction which is a postmodern attitude.

Case appears to be a representative of late twentieth century phenomenon: the

computer hacker. He is a free soldier of technology who works at his own charge. He

is presented as follows:

At twenty-two, he‟d been a cowboy, a rustler, one of

the best in the Sprawl. He'd been trained by the best, by

McCoy Pauley and Bobby Quine, legends in the biz.

He'd operated on an almost permanent adrenaline high,

a by-product of youth and proficiency, jacked into a

custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied

consciousness into the consensual hallucination that

was the matrix. A thief, he'd worked for other,

wealthier thieves, employers who provided the exotic

software required to penetrate the bright walls of

 55

corporate systems, opening windows into rich fields of

data (Neuromancer, 5).

What is meant by being “jacked into a custom cyberspace” is to be connected

to a computer‟s data storage by means of plugs and cable. The brain and the

computer work together through the process. When Case physically jacks himself

into his deck, he enters cyberspace, a landscape (like virtual reality) inhabited by

computer programs and simulacra created by artificial intelligences. Case has a talent

for using and hacking the electronic world of connections and data. Since he is

regarded as a representative of the cyberpunk prototype, his situation can be given as

an example of the subject in the postmoden world in terms of Baudrillard‟s

definition. From the postmodern view of Baudrillard, Case, as a subject, is no longer

“the master of representation” but he is the “operator of the objective irony of the

world” (Baudrillard, 1996: 74). Therefore, as a human being his value is degraded

when he is not a user of technological data. Baudrillard‟s definition of a “virtual

man” finds itself a body in Case: “Virtual man makes love via the screen and gives

lessons by means of the teleconference. He is a physical –and no doubt also a mental

cripple. That is the price he pays for being operational” (Baudrillard, 1993:52). Case,

likewise, is the operational postmodern man who turns out to be a cripple when he is

away from the virtual world. In this case, he feels utterly worthless and trapped as the

modern man.

In Neuromancer, we see that Case is trying to maintain the distinction

between life outside and life inside cyberspace or in other words between the “real

world” and the “virtual world”. For example, when he sees Linda Lee in cyberspace

after she was killed in the real world, although he knows where he is, he insists that
 56

she cannot be real because she is dead. But death is already dead in the virtual world

since the subjects are replaced by data, which is immortal.

Molly, who helps Case to recover, is a bodyguard and contract killer. She

approaches him on behalf of a man, Armitage who remains mysterious for some

time. She says, “I‟m collecting you for the man I work for. Just wants to talk, is all.

Nobody wants to hurt you” (Neuromancer, 25). At this point, it appears that Case

cannot maintain a balance between the real world and the virtual world. Armitage

offers to repair Case‟s nervous system damage in exchange for his hacking skills.

This reference to repairing a nervous system is yet another common topic in

Cyberpunk fiction. Case takes the job and is instructed, with Molly, to enter the

media conglomerate Sense/Net and steal a ROM module that reproduces the brain

functions of McCoy Pauley, “Dixie Flatline”. These media conglomerates appear as

representatives of the late capitalist, since they are presented as holding power, not

governments. Therefore, the world described by Gibson appears to be a model of

Jameson‟s arguments on “Late Capitalism” which has its own cultural logic. People

serve these powerful organizations without questioning their background. In the

work, Case‟s team raid Sense/Net using Molly‟s simstim, which means stimulation

of the brain and nervous system of one person using a recording (or live broadcast)

of another person's experience (http://www.technovelgy.com/cy/ content.asp?

Bnum=1777) where Case jacks in and can hear and see everything Molly is doing.

“„You got a rider, Molly. This says.‟ He tapped the black splinter. „Somebody else

using your eyes.‟ „My partner.‟ „Tell your partner to go.‟”. (Neuromancer, 57). In

this quotation, the idea of virtual reality or “recoding of human experience by the

algorithmic codes of a computer wetware”, as Kroker terms it, becomes more clear.
 57

The traditional idea of having a unified body and brain breaks down with this

approach and the idea that a mind can be commanded by another person or by a

machine becomes a central theme of Cyberpunk works.

Case and Molly investigate Armitage‟s background while preparing for this

raid:

Look, Case, I been trying to suss out who it is backing

Armitage…But it doesn‟t feel like a zaibatsu, a

government, or some Yakuza subsidiary. Armitage gets

orders. Like something tells him to go off to Chiba,

pick up a pillhead …We coulda bought twenty world

class cowboys for what the market was ready to pay for

that surgical program. You were good, but not that

good… (Neuromancer, 50).

What is described in this quotation appears as a mirror of the new life which was

being experienced in the United States of America in the 1980s. Gibson presents in

his novel the results of the new economic order in the novel, as Jameson also referred

to in his discussion on Late Capitalism.

Another character that Case and Molly discover together is Colonel Willis

Corto who they met as Armitage. This character is also important in terms of

Cyberpunk characteristics. Corto is one of the surviving soldiers from the Screaming

Fist operation. He was serving in a Russian military base as a soldier because of his

hacking tools. His aim was testing the effects of EMP (electromagnetic pulse)

weapons. After the operation, Corto was left psychologically damaged. Case and

Molly also find out that Armitage was supported by Wintermute, a powerful
 58

Artificial Intelligence (AI) constructed by the Tessier-Ashpool family. The use of

artificial intelligence as a character in the work is also quite a common characteristic

of Cyberpunk novels. In fact, the whole plot of the work centres on an artificial

intelligence‟s effort to reach full consciousness, that is to say, to liberate itself from

the restrictions imposed on its potential by human authorities. Gibson presents

Wintermute as a person having emotions, since the whole plot progresses around its

desire to unite with the “Neuromancer”. The human characters in the work appear

not as subjects but as mere objects, and operators of technology as in Baudrillard‟s

definition of postmodern man. For example, Wintermute, instructs Case, to find and

add “…one certified psychopath name of Peter Riviera” to their team (Neuromancer,

51). Case fulfils this command although he is uneasy about this because Riviera is a

psychotic thief and drug addict who has the ability to project elaborate illusions using

the holographic projector in one of his lungs. All these characters that have a

potential for violence are alienated from society as an outcome of the changing social

order in the late capitalist postmodern age. It is eventually revealed that Wintermute

wants access (in terms of reaching the data) to the computer terminal containing the

AI‟s hardwiring, because it wants to unite with Neuromancer. The team, made up of

these outcast members of society, works together to enter “Villa Straylight” where

the terminal is located. They try to take control of Wintermute in order to protect the

systems in the virtual world. Case uses his talent to unlock the hardwiring and free

Neuromancer, with the help of the Flatline. “The lock that screens the hardwiring,

it‟s down under those towers…He [Neuromancer] won‟t try to stop you…he‟s given

up, now” (Neuromancer, 261). The operation is successful, “Wintermute had won,

had meshed somehow with Neuromancer and become something else…”

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(Neuromancer, 268). This ending appears as a kind of warning on the part of the

author: having an open ending about what may happen if the artificial intelligences

take control is an anxious treatment of the theme of the human-machine relationship.

Hence, it is possible to see that Gibson is also feeling insecure about the development

of machines and artificial intelligences and he wants his reader to think about this

certain subject. Gibson is questioning that, what happens if artificial intelligences

escape from the control of mankind, and what would be the result of these

technological developments? The artificial intelligence continues its existence in the

data-haven, and Case turns back to where he begins. Thus, this story may be

considered as human beings‟ vain struggle against machines that continue to improve

themselves in the virtual world. In this respect, Gibson‟s story might be seen as an

example of Kroker‟s “possessed individual” that presents the status of man in the

technological postmodern world.

The famous first scene of the novel, in which the setting is described through

the image of the blank surface of a dead television screen: “The sky above the port

was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (Neuromancer, 3) gives an idea

of the image of the world outside “cyberspace”, and this outside appears to be a

meaningless and shadowy frame for the “inner side” or cyber world in the work of

Gibson. In addition, the image of the “real world” is also depicted as a part of the

virtual world or “matrix”. Cyberspace appears as a central metaphor in the trilogy

and it is defined as a “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of

every computer in the human system… in the nonspace of the mind” (Neuromancer,

51). Gibson, in his works, appears to consider cyberspace as a digital world

generated by computer networks or “mankind‟s extended electronic nervous system”

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(Burning Chrome, 170) in which anything is possible. John Christie defines

Gibson‟s cyberspace as “a map of power and wealth” (Christie, 1991:44). It turns out

to be a parallel world which has its own cultural formation.

In the Cyberpunk world drawn by Gibson, the power of the states is

replaced by giant multi-national corporations that can make use of cyberspace in an

efficient way. The national industries have collapsed due to commercial arbitration

applied by gigantic companies. This changing order of economy and social life

appears as a mirror Jameson‟s discussions about the characteristics of the

postmodern age.

The changing culture appearing in Cyberpunk works is handled in various

ways by the critics. For example, David Tomas describes Gibson‟s work as the

adventures of a volatile male-dominated underworld populated by small-scale

independent entrepreneurs –fences and middle men in “corporate crossovers”,

corporate mercenaries, console cowboys and members of alternative “tribal” groups

(Tomas, 2000: 176). Gibson clearly describes the late twentieth century postmodern

world that has changed economically and socially. The society he depicts is made up

of extremes. It is possible to see the worst life conditions in some districts, while

some people live in wealth surrounded by advanced technology. The military power

is omniscient but directed by multinational companies. It is possible to see

aristocratic families at the top of these corporate companies, like the Tessier-Ashpool

clan. The hackers are just operators who organize parasitic activities for their

employers. Gibson refers to powerful formations as “zaibatsus” (Neuromancer, 37).

Among the powerful combined corporate formations, Maas Biolabs GmbH and

Hosaka deal with genetic engineering and corporate espionage; Tessier-Ashpool is a

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decadent high orbit family and the Yakuza is a multinational underworld

organization. These companies, like “Hosaka” whose only aim is to discover a

profitable invention, or “Maas Biolabs” that only care for its own profit and oppress

its workers harshly, employ mercenaries like Case in Neuromancer or Bobby Turner

in Count Zero. “Power, in Case‟s world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the

multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers.

Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality” (Neuromancer, 203).

Subjects, in other words, human beings lose their importance and are replaced by

these corporations. Even when all the heads of the zaibatsus are killed, there are

others who can replace them and these are the ones who can directly access

information. “You couldn‟t kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen executives; there

were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the

vast banks of corporate memory” (Neuromancer, 203).

As thoses who make use of this power, human beings are not only

presented as connected or united with machines but also act like machines. Molly

and Armitage, for example, appear to lack thoughts and feelings to a great extent.

More than human, they act like highly complicated automata. They lose their

humane abilities like thinking and loving:

Molly turned. She crossed the room to Ashpool‟s chair.

The man‟s breathing was slow and ragged. She peered at

the litter of drugs and alcohol. She put his pistol down,

picked up her fletcher, dialled the barrel over to a single

shot, and very carefully put a toxin dart through the

center of his closed left eyelid. He jerked once, breath

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halting in mid-intake. His other eye, brown fathomless,

opened slowly.

It was still open when she turned and left the room

(Neuromancer, 186).

The characters of the novel are presented as if they are machines, for

example they cannot present even their anger in a traditional way. Actually, Case

appears to have lost all of his emotions:

It was there still. Where had it come from? He

remembered feeling only a kind of bafflement at his

maiming in Memphis, nothing at all when he‟d killed to

defend his dealing interests in Night City, and a slack

sickness and loathing after Linda‟s death under the

inflated dome (Neuromancer, 152).

Therefore, he represents the late twentieth century man who is inactive, experiencing

a kind of inertia in the objective irony of the world as it is explained in the first

chapter. In the novel, machines are presented with human emotions, as well.

Wintermute, “a high-rez simstim construct”, is powerfully driven by a desire to

connect with it‟s other half. As Olsen notes, it plots, betrays and murders, not out of

reflex or as a part of its programming but “out of a deep desire” (Olsen, 1992:

www.lanceolsen.neuromancer.html Retrieved 12.01.2011). As Baudrillard points

out, the aim of technology is no longer to be an extention of man and his power, but

it turns out to be a power that supports itself. Since feeling or emotions is one of the

most important characteristics that separate man from machines, Wintermute‟s desire

to unite with Neuromancer brings machines to the same level as human beings. The
 63

united artificial intelligence can be regarded as “the first born native of cyberspace”

(Olsen, 1992:73). Artifice is defined as “the power of illusion” in the Xerox and

Infinity” by Baudrillard (Baudrillard, 1993: 54). To him, Artificial Intelligence is

devoid of intelligence because it is “devoid of artifice”:

In this sense they may be said to be virtuous, as well as

virtual: they can never succumb to their own object: they

are immune even to the seduction of their own

knowledge. Their virtue resides in their transparency,

their functionality, their absence of passion and artifice.

Artificial Intelligence is a celibate machine (Baudrillard,

1993: 52)

Although Baudrillard defines artificial intelligence as an object that does not function

in the same way with the human beings, in Gibson‟s work the Artificial Intelligence

of the twenty-first century turns out to be a sort of subject that has desires and

passion. Besides, all the human characters in his novel are assembled and directed by

this artificial intelligence; therefore they are presented as puppets or “machines”

subject to the manipulation of Wintermute. None of the characters in the Trilogy

have psychological depth, they simply appear as caricatures or flat images driven by

the electronic world intelligence, and they will become the characters of the future

world. This situation is referred to as “electronic postmodernity” by John Christie

(Christie, 1991: 46). To Christie, these characters are “intertextual characters drawn

from a knowing acquaintance with a wide range of contemporary popular culture”

(Christie, 1991: 46). When the traits of characters are observed closely, Christie‟s

arguments prove to be true.

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These characters live in dirty and ugly settings, which is a characteristic of

the “punk” part of the Cyberpunk. The beautiful, clean and good only appear in the

virtual world descriptions, and these are depicted as heroic ideals from the past.

Beauty is affordable by those with money, but it is artificial and temporary. This is

why the narrator of the Neuromancer refers to Ratz‟s ugliness as heraldic: “His

ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something

heraldic about his lack of it” (Neuromancer, 4). Moreover, in Gibson‟s cyberpunk

novels descriptions of nature include many industrial and technological terms in

Gibson‟s Cyberpunk novels: “The water was smooth as silk, the color of lead, and

pale holograms flickered indistinctly above a distant line of archery stalls” (Mona

Lisa Overdrive, 4).

Cosmetic surgery and bio-technology may be regarded as defining features

for the construction and continuation of social identities in the Cyberpunk world:

Case met his first Modern two days after he'd screened the

Hosaka's precis. The Moderns, he'd decided, were a

contemporary version of the Big Scientists of his own late

teens. There was a kind of ghostly teenage DNA at work in

the Sprawl, something that carried the coded precepts of

various short-lived subcults and replicated them at odd

intervals. The Panther Moderns were a softhead variant on the

Scientists. If the technology had been available, the Big

Scientists would all have had sockets stuffed with microsofts.

It was the style that mattered and the style was the same. The
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Moderns were mercenaries, practical jokers, nihilistic

technofetishists (Neuromancer, 58-9).

The power of technology to change everything related to subjects and objects

comes to the fore in the novel‟s treatment of bio-technology.

Another important aspect of Cyberpunk seen in the novel is cybernetics

invading the human bodies. The word “cybernetics” that comes from the Greek word

"kubernétés", "steersman", also means a science "of control and communications in

animals and machines" (Weiner,1961). In this case, however cybernetics means

artificial body parts, which are usually considered better then their human

counterparts (Jörvinen, 2003). Cybernetics enables people to increase their physical

abilities, snd enhance their sensory systems.

Neurosurgery is another striking subject that Cyberpunk novels deal with.

Gibson also frequently refers to this subject matter in the trilogy. For example,

Molly‟s reflexes are altered by neurosurgeons for combat in virtual life:

He'd known that her reflexes were souped up, jazzed by

the neurosurgeons for combat, but he hadn't experienced

them on the simstim link. The effect was like tape run at

half speed, a slow, deliberate dance choreographed to

the killer instinct and years of training (Neuromancer,

214).

Molly appears as a technological warrior especially with her fingernails under

which blades have been implanted by a surgeon. As Arthur Kroker terms it, Molly‟s

body represents of the “postmodern body as a war machine” (Kroker, 1992: 20-21).
 66

Gibson, like other Cyberpunk authors, is very much concerned with artificial

intelligence, which means the area of computer science which deals with producing

intelligent machines or computer programs similar to human intelligence. The desire

to create intelligent machines has been a main concern for humanity since ancient

times and today with the improvements in the field of computer technologies and

programming techniques, these dreams are turning into reality. Engineers are

working on systems which can imitate human thought, understand speech, and do

many jobs that have only been by human beings until now. However, this area was

not very much developed in the 1980s, when Gibson was writing his works. He

nevertheless imagines machines that could compete with human beings and even

control them. How smart an AI can become and whether or not it can replace human

beings is the central discussion of the trilogy. Gibson relates this anxiety in the

Neuromancer with this discussion between Molly and Case:

How smart's an AI, Case?' „Depends. Some aren't

much smarter than dogs. Pets. Cost a fortune anyway.

The real smart ones are as smart as the Turing heat is

willing to let 'em get.' `Look, you're a cowboy. How

come you aren't just flatout fascinated with those

things?' `Well,' he said, `for starts, they're rare. Most of

them are military, the bright ones, and we can't crack

the ice. That's where ice all comes from, you know?

(Neuromancer, 95).

The word “ice”, mentioned in the quotation above stands for “Intrusion

Countermeasures Electronics” (Neuromancer, 28), in other words, it refers to

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elaborate security countermeasures which are used to protect corporate data from

being accessed by data pirates or hackers (http://www.technovelgy.com

/ct/content.asp?Bnum=732). Ice becomes a kind of centre of power in the cyber

world.

“Neuromancer” is the name of an AI, and the central plot of this eponymous

novel develops around the machines that desire to unite with each other. Wintermute,

an artificial intelligence created by human beings presents humane desires and

Wintermute‟s union with Neuromancer signals total control of artificial intelligences

in the cyberspace. The desired union is described as follows with personifications :

Wintermute was hive mind, decision maker, effecting

change in the world outside. Neuromancer was

personality. Neuromancer was immortality. Marie-

France must have built something into Wintermute, the

compulsion that had driven the thing to free itself, to

unite with Neuromancer (Neuromancer, 269).

The postmodern concern with interfaces between humans and machines is

one of the major themes of the work, as Olsen underlines -: “just as the reader‟s mind

is ingested by the text, so too are the humans in the text ingested by AIs” (Olsen,

1992:68). The work contemplates on questions about the working of brain and mind,

how the consciousness is used, if it is possible to use it in connection with machines

and if it can be controlled remotely. How long does one‟s consciousness under a

machine‟s control belong to himself or herself? The characters in the work are driven

into such situations that they can no longer control their bodies or consciousnesses
 68

and this situation results in questions of self-hood. For example, Case cannot act

freely because his nervous system is under some other entity‟s control.

The Human beings in the trilogy are presented as machines and machines

are presented as human beings. By jacking into a cyberspace deck (which means

plugging and connecting the brain physically directly to the machine), using a

cyberspace deck human beings are connected with machines and this connection

turns out to be a sort of union that both parts start to have the characteristics of each

other. Rivierai Molly and Armitage are closer to machines than human beings with

the altered parts of their bodies. Thus, the human in Gibson‟s work has transmuted

into a sort of “techno-centaur” as Olsen notes (Olsen, 1992). The body or the meat is

something controllable in the Cyberpunk world:

His gaze swept past her, to the rack of blank faintly, and

smiled. “We cause the brain to become allergic to

certain of its own neutransmitters, resulting in a

peculiarly pliable imitation of autism.” His head swayed

sideways, recovered. “I understand that the effect is now

more easily obtained with an embedded microchip”

(Neuromancer, 185).

Like the bodies that are controllable by outside forces, society and the

individuals living in it are also depicted in terms of Cyberpunk vision and imagery.

Gibson uses the issues of government and nuclear tension that were topical at the

time he was writing, to ask questions about the future of the world and to give

predictions. He portrays a world ruined by nuclear war. The individuals in this world

continue to survive in a naturally exhausted world for only personal benefit or just
 69

for the sake of living. Case, who presents the characteristics of an anti-hero, is placed

in surroundings where the atmosphere has deteriorated and society has mutated into

black markets involved in nerve-splicing and microbionics. He does not care about

the effects of his deeds, he just wants to do what he enjoys doing, which is playing

with data. He is bewildered by the endless opportunities of virtual life and its profits.

Virtual reality, for Featherstone and Burrows, is “a computer-generated

visual, audible and tactile multi-media experience which aims to surround the human

body with an artificial sensorium of sight, sound and touch” (Featherstone and

Burrows, 1995:6). As we have seen, Gibson refers to virtual reality as “cyberspace”

and he has his own definition of it in “Neuromancer”:

A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions

of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children

being taught mathematical concepts... Unthinkable

complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the

mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights

receding (Neuromancer, 51).

The Gibsonian cyberspace is further defined by Gibson as a global computer

network, “the matrix” which is entered by users through “jacking in” via plugs into

“cyberspace decks”, as Case does. The users can move in the matrix from one data

system to another, and these are referred to as “cities of data”. In Gibsonian

cyberspace, there are other intelligent entities which do not have relations with the

outside world but can become more and more powerful in the matrix by uniting.

Artificial Intelligences (AIs) like the Wintermute or the Neuromancer are such

powers as referred in the novel: “Wintermute is the recognition code for an

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AI…Artificial intelligence.” (Neuromancer, 73) or “Wintermute was a simple cube

of white light, that very simplicity suggesting extreme complexity” (Neuromancer,

150). The subject of artificial intelligence became a great source of inspiration both

in the field of science and in the vision and imagery of Cyberpunk Literature.

Scientists, science fiction authors and film and game producers used this rich mine

and tried to predict the future of humanity that created and developed artificial

intelligence. Gibson makes the reader consider a future that can be out of control of

humanity. As it is mentioned before, he creates this feeling by writing an open-

ending about the union of Artificial Intelligences.

In conclusion, Gibson presents most of the Cyberpunk themes and concerns

in the Neuromancer, such as cybernetics, developments in the field of genetic

engineering, surgeries that combine human body to machines through prosthesis,

changing economic systems due to new formations, terrorism, artificial intelligence

and cyberspace. Gibson‟s prophecy about the near future has already been fulfilled,

in that his depiction of a world dominated by information technology in which

characters survive with their ability to master technology is not different from

today‟s world. These concerns, that are also seen as postmodern reflections of the

changing economic and social order, make Neuromancer one of the outstanding

examples of Cyberpunk science fiction.

B. Count Zero (1986)

Count Zero, the second work of the trilogy set in the same fictional dystopian

future as the Neuromancer, is very similar to the first work of the Trilogy, in that, it
 71

is mainly the story of a young cyberspace hacker, Bobby Newmark and his

adventures in the virtual world. Bobby contributes in a business intrigue unwillingly,

and he opens his eyes in a hospital after an explosion that injures most parts of his

body. He appears in the “zero line” (which means nearly dead fallen into vegetative

state), since he appears physically dead at the beginning of the novel but he is still

going on to live connected to the matrix. The title of the novel, like that of the first

novel, has various connotations as a kind of trope of Cyberpunk in that, the zero

point can be regarded as a sort of purgatory, in which people are neither in the world

of the dead nor alive. On the other hand, the matrix is made up of “1”s and “0”s,

which create all meaning in the virtual world. Therefore, the title connotes both

meanings and creates a Cyberpunk atmosphere and directs reader‟s expectations at

the beginning of the novel.

Gibson employs multiple storylines which become interwoven through the

end of this work, which are again introduced as parallel computer programs familiar

in the Cyberpunk world. The plot of Count Zero is as follows: Turner is a mercenary

and he accepts the job to “shift” (Count Zero, p.19) the top researcher – “head

hybridoma man” (Count Zero, p.19) of Maas Biolabs – Christopher Mitchell to the

Hosaka Corporation. However, instead of this duty, he becomes guardian to his

daughter on a foreign journey. The sub-plot takes place in France and presents a

small gallery owner, Marly. She is engaged to the enormously wealthy art collector

and patron Herr Josef Virek, to find out the unknown creator of his futuristic,

mysterious Joseph Cornell-style boxes. These boxes are depicted as powerful art

objects that are kept in the marketplace out of the underground of the Sprawl. In the

last story, Bobby Newmark, a young Jersey-suburb computer hacker, nicknamed

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“Count Zero”, flatlines (a term which is central to Cyberpunk works and which may

function both as a verb and a noun, attributing to word‟s meaning in slang which is

being in the border of death and life, or having a paralyzed body in the real world

while continuing to exist the cyberspace) while hacking into a corporate computer

with a piece of important black market software. Bobby plugs himself into the matrix

and almost dies. What saves him in the matrix is the vision of a young girl who is

composed of light. This girl is Angie Mitchell, who appears briefly in the first and

the third novels as well. Her nervous system has been altered by her father,

Christopher Mitchell to allow her direct access in her head to the cyberspace matrix,

though she is not conscious of it at the beginning. The work is similar to

Neuromancer in that the protagonists try to survive in a struggle in cyberspace,

through a series of adventures. Its plot structure, although more complicated with

three interwoven stories that unite at the end, is still an example of conventional

narrative technique.

Count Zero is a particular example of the genre, since choosing of characters

from low life and presenting them in high technological settings is the basic feature

of Cyberpunk works. Gibson followed his own choice of characters and setting in the

Neuromancer by employing the same themes. However, Count Zero is remarkable in

its character development when it is compared to the first novel of the trilogy, in that

it presents a more developed character representation which creates a sort of

Cyberpunk prototype. Larry McCaffery also points out this development in his

interview with William Gibson:

a mixture of eccentric lowlifes and nonconformists who

find themselves confronting representatives of vast

 73

egomaniacal individuals whose wealth and power result

directly from their ability to control information

(MacCaffery, 1990:131).

The subject of multinational corporations that dominate the world instead

of governments and states comes to the fore in the Count Zero as in Neuromancer.

There are many references to the relationship of the individual to these corporations

in the work. For instance, in one case, the narrator explains how these corporations

are powerful and how they benefit from individuals as long as these people are

useful for them: “The multinationals he worked for would never admit that a man

like Turner existed” (Count Zero, 14). This quotation also presents how such people

are annihilated when they are not needed. This situation shows that determination of

value in the postmodern society is not the same as previous perceptions that appear

as a result of tension between such poles as good or evil, true or false etc. However,

the values are depolarized in the postmodern world as Baudrillard argues, and truth

or reality depends on how capital owners interpret it (Baudrillard, 1996:67).

Therefore, subjects lose importance to profit and people like Turner become the

playthings of powerful companies. In other words, the subject is seduced by the

object in Baudrillard‟s terms (Baudrillard, 2005:82). The subject is no more

important, but merely the operator, as the user of data. Thus, he loses his freedom in

the illusionary endless virtual life in which they regard themselves to be free. This

illusion can be accepted as the seduction of the subject by the object.

In the trilogy, the wars are fought in cyberspace by these multinational

corporations that control the individuals instead of governments or armies. Survival

of the individual in such a world is a matter of harmonising with technological

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advancements. The individuals who are in touch with technology might be a part of

power system. People‟s fascination with new machines and technology is referred to

frequently in Count Zero:

„What‟s this? The console had the blank, half-finished

look of a factory prototype.

„Maas-Neotek cyberspace deck.‟

Turner raised his eyebrows. „Yours?‟

„We got two. One‟s on site. From Hosaka. Fastest thing

in the matrix, evidently, and Hosaka can‟t even de-

engineer the chips to copy them. Whole other

technology‟ (Count Zero, 37).

Paul Virilio‟s term “dromology”, that was mentioned in the First Chapter, can be

used to explain this quotation, since it denotes a society that measures life with

speed. Speed becomes one of the most important issues in the postmodern

Cyberpunk world, in that quality and benefit depend on speed. Speed in cyberspace

marks power as well.

Cyberspace, dominates the real world in the trilogy. As has been pointed out

in the First Chapter, in the postmodern world where illusion is no longer possible

because the real is no longer possible, as Baudrillard also mentions, simulation

overcomes the real. Law and order themselves are also nothing more than simulation

(Baudrillard, 1998: 180) and the moral system and accepted norms are defined or

framed by the owners of the capital as in the case of order established in Count Zero

by the multinational corporations. In such a world dominated by giant companies,

individuals cannot gain much power. Only a few of them, whose existence is open to
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question, may have money and power: "Virek? ... If you believe the journalists, he's

the single wealthiest individual, period. As rich as some zaibatsu. But there's the

catch, really: is he an individual? In the sense that you are, or I am? No” (Count

Zero, 144). As seen stated in Count Zero, only the Third World countries still have

traditional governments. This means that third world countries do not have enough

power to take their place in the cyberworld. The authority of the security forces has

been overtaken by Ice (the most powerful artificial intelligence), so Ice lays down the

rules, which take the place of laws. “…ice, all the really hard stuff, the walls around

every major store of data in the matrix, is always the product of an AI, an artificial

intelligence” (Count Zero, 114). It is represented in cyberspace as having the sensory

properties one associates with materiality. Hayles explains existence in cyberspace as

follows:

Literalizing abstractions, cyberspace creates a level

playing field where abstract entities, data constructs and

physically embodied consciousnesses interact on an

equal basis. All forms are equivalent in this space; none

is more physically real or immediate than any other. The

signifiers representing an actually existing person cannot

claim more materiality than those representing the shape

of a data bank or construct generated by a computer

program, because all signifiers within this space –

include those generating the space itself – operate

according to a logic of literalization (Hayles, 1996: 111-

112).
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As it is clear in the quotation, cyberspace includes all forms and all types of

signifiers representing existing people in the real world. Thus, reaching data related

to power, that is equal to economic prosperity, is also possible in relation to

technological competence.

Gibson continues to display the economic structure of cyberspace in Count

Zero. The “conglomerate of traffic in information systems‟ hardware and software”

(Bell and Kennedy, 2000:176), and the “configurations of data organized in matrix

form in cyberspace” (ibid, p. 176) are two principal zones of illegal economic

activity in this world. The individuals, who make up clans and live in these zones,

are prosthetically and genetically improved. Gibson explains the nuance between a

clan and a corporation in Count Zero: “The difference between a clan and a

corporation, however, is that you don‟t literally need to marry into a corporation”

(Count Zero, 145).

Baudrillard argues that the difference between real life and simulated life or

simulacrum has decreased to a point where it becomes hard to distinguish one from

the other in the postmodern world in “The Precession of Simulacra” (1983). In Count

Zero, the matrix or cyberspace is defined as “the world”: “„Okay,‟ Bobby said,

getting the hang of it, „then what's the matrix? If she's a deck, and Danbala's a

program, what's cyberspace?‟ „The world,‟ Lucas said” (Count Zero, 163). Thus, as

it is clearly seen in the quotation, the whole system becomes a “weightless gigantic

simulacrum” (Baudrillard, 1998:173) as cyberspace replaces the real world.

Baudrillard‟s discussions of hyperreality, in which reality and simulation are

perceived as being no different from one another, are presented in Count Zero.
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Although the whole world is recreated as replica in the virtual world, the real

body is also still being re-created. Gibson employs genetic engineering or genetic

manipulation, a theme frequently put forward by the Cyberpunk authors, in Count

Zero in a quite prominent way. In Count Zero, Turner wakes in a reconstructed body

at the beginning of the work:

It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put

Turner together again. They cloned a square meter of

skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-

cartilage polysac-charides. They bought eyes and

genitals on the open market The eyes were green

(Count Zero, 9).

Turner, “a soldier in his own right”, “a mercenary” for various employers is recreated

by this team after he has been blown up during a dangerous mission in India (Count

Zero, p.7). The mercenaries who have a good contract with their employers are lucky

to be recreated after their task. Turner is recreated in three months: “you can go

home now, Turner. We‟re done with you. You‟re good as new now” (Count Zero,

10). Thus, how the powerful multinational companies disregard individuals and use

them for their own profits in such a world of technology is presented. In this highly

technological world, the human being is regarded as a simple object or machine that

can be fixed when needed. The parts of the body can be bought and sold in the open

market, like the eyes and the genitals of Turner. His brain is also open to operations;

they can load information of any kind into it:

Among the dozen-odd microsofts the Dutchman had

given him was one that would allow a limited fluency in

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Spanish but in Vallarta he‟d fumbled behind his left ear

and inserted a dustplug instead, hiding the socket and

plug behind a squire of fleshtone micropope (Count

Zero, 11).

Computer systems also make use of human flesh and blood to create new

combinations, which were referred to as androids or cyborgs at the beginning of this

section of the book. For instance, Armitage is created by Wintermute by using the

remains of the body of Corto. Technology is also used as a means to attain

immortality in the works of Cyberpunk authors. Gibson presents powerful characters

who maintain an immortal life in the “orbit”, although being dead in the real world:

He says, if I remember all this correctly, and I‟m not at

all certain that I do, that Virek is an even greater fluke

than the industrial clans in orbit. The clans are

transgenerational, and there‟s usually a fair bit of

medicine involved: cryogenics, genetic manipulation,

various ways to combat aging (Count Zero, 145).

Gibson deals with the theme of the difficulty of separating the human from

the technological both rhetorically and phenomenologically as a central issue in his

novels as seen in Count Zero as well as in the two other works of the Trilogy. This

subject matter is also a major concern of Postmodernism, for instance such scholars

as Jameson who tries to explain the cultural logic of late capitalism while describing

a new electronically defined reality. Both postmodernist arguments and Cyberpunk

fiction present similar anxieties regarding the status and power of the human in a

technologically advanced world. Since technology became a means of superiority

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and power in the world in the second half of the twentieth century especially the

United States of America and Russia aimed to use the technology to become the only

dominating power, as Scott Bukatman also underlines in Terminal Identity, in which

he discusses the relationship of Postmodernism and Cyberpunk fiction, the citizen is

defined within a techno-political system, “reinforcing a view of the human that arose

with the advent of cybernetics (post-WWII) and its „functional analogy‟ between

human and computer” (Bukatman, 1993: 3). The human body appears as a rhetorical

figure in Cyberpunk works as in the case of Bobby‟s body in Count Zero. As

Bukatman also underlines, by referring to the writings of cultural theorists such as

Baudrillard, Haraway and Krokers who are interested in “the dissolution of

boundaries” and “the electronic challenge to the definition of the subject”, the human

body turns out to be a “sign” or “rhetorical figure” in the postmodern discourse

(Bukatman, 93:16). As in the case of the protagonists of the Neuromancer and Count

Zero , the body is “mere flesh” (Neuromancer, 6), and its existence depends upon its

place in the electronic world as a part of the world of data, instead of being part of

the solid world as matter. Hence the writer questions the relationship of man and

technology in its simplest situation, by presenting the pure body into the centre of

discussion. What will become of man‟s body when it totally interacts with advanced

technology is the question the author discusses in his work. The answer of this

anxious questioning is not clear but there are some suppositions like man will try to

get rid of the limits of solid body to become a part of data world as in the case of

Case and Bobby.

Gibson‟s depiction of cyberspace, the futuristic society and the people who

live in it, turns out to be a common element of Cyberpunk science fiction. Gibson
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offers his own suggestion of “cyberspace” in the Sprawl trilogy. He plays with the

idea of space in order to present an ultra-technological future in which reality turns

into illusion, while illusion appears as reality.

The concept of “cyberspace” and the literature on it has a very significant

place in the popular culture of recent decades. According to Featherstone and

Burrows this concept is:

best considered as a generic term which refers to a

cluster of different technologies, some familiar, some

only recently available, some being developed and

some still fictional, all of which have in common the

ability to simulate environments within which humans

can interact (Featherstone and Burrows, 1995: 5).

This definition is followed with a classification through which cyberspace is

categorized under three headlines. These are Barlovian cyberspace, virtual reality

and Gibsonian cyberspace. The first one is named after John Barlow, one of the

founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and refers to the real high

communication models such as international networks. This is defined as a simpler

form of cyberspace, which is little more than the telephone systems that are being

used today. The second term, “virtual reality”, was coined by Jaron Lanier, and it is

defined as “a real or simulated environment in which the perceiver experiences

telepresence” (Steuer, 1992: 76-7). And the third one is Gibsonian cyberspace as

presented in the Trilogy.

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Beside these definitions of cyberspace by Featherstone and Burrows,

Michael Benedikt presents a long list of detailed definitions of “cyberspace” in his

article entitled “Cyberspace: First Steps”. For example, he defines cyberspace as:

a new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained

by the world‟s computers and communication lines. A

world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets,

measurements, indicators, entertainments and alter-

human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences

never seen on the surface of the Earth blossoming in a

vast electronic night

(Benedikt, 2000: 29).

Another definition in the list emphasizes its mental geographical place:

A common mental geography, built, in turn, by

consensus and revolution canon and experiment; a

territory swarming with data and lies, with mind stuff

and memories of nature, with a million voices and two

million eyes in a silent, invisible concert to enquiry,

deal-making, dream sharing and simple beholding

(Benedikt, 2000: 29).

Therefore, as Benedikt underlines, cyberspace does not simply exist but it is

everywhere “wherever electricity runs with intelligence” (Benedikt, 2000: 30).

Gibson defines the concept of cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination” in

Neuromancer (51) and the concept of cyberspace has started to be an accepted term

due to the advancements in computer and information technologies, the approach of

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Gibson resulted in discussions about virtual reality. Cyberspace is defined as:

“everything remotely connected to the Internet, 3-D animation and

telecommunications, a combination of all three and so on. In short, it is used to name

any kind of modern information transfer” by the Project Cyberpunk Group

(www.project.cyberpunk.ru/ Retrieved 2008.10.15, 11:25). In this world or “the

matrix” there are operators like Henry Dorsett Case in the Neuromancer, Molly

Millions in Mona Lisa Overdrive, or Bobby Newmark in Count Zero, who can enter

into any part of the vast three-dimensional system of data and move in it by using

their “deck”. These operators or “hackers” are in a way free soldiers working for

multinational corporations, the evolved forms of governments that engage in a battle

for control over a powerful new technology and the “matrix” is their battlefield.

Cyberspace is presented as “a replica of the real world, a kind of simulation

with certain geological distances and proportions” (www.project.cyberpunk.ru/

Retrieved 2008.10.15, 11:25). The images of buildings and cities have no real

restrictions to be regarded as fantastic or surreal. The copy is no longer a copy, but

where the subjects identify themselves with and define their existence according to

these images. The description of cities as neon coloured data glows hanging in the

"air" is very much like Virilo‟s description of postmodern city. “Now and ever was,

fast forward, Jammer‟s deck jacked up so high above the neon hotcores, a

typography of data he didn‟t know. Big stuff, mountain-high, sharp and corporate in

the non-place that was cyberspace” (Count Zero, 230).

Thus, the constructed “Gibsonian Cyberpunk cyberspace” is inhabited by

computer programs and simulacra created by artificial intelligences such as the

Wintermute constructed by the plutocratic Tessier-Ashpool clan in the Sprawl

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trilogy. It lets characters move free from the boundaries of real space, as Bobby opts

to do for the rest of his life in Count Zero. The characters like Case or Bobby “jack”

themselves into a computer deck and leave the concrete world behind, losing

themselves in a mental landscape. The process has a drug-like result, through which

people abandon the decadence of the body and penetrate into the mind.

As Cyberpunk authors use the theme of combination of advanced technology

and the common life and common people, they also like employing exotic elements

in their works. For example, in this work, Gibson presents a relation between Haitian

Voodoo and the urban hyperreality of his fictional Sprawl. The religion he chooses

for this urban dystopia is influenced by African traditions. The work presents two

groups in struggle with each other: Beauvoir's group and the Yakuza, the Japanese

gangs. This struggle appears as a battle between two traditions - one of power,

corruption, and influence; the other of passion, magic, and sensuality

(www.project.cyberpunk.ru/ Retrieved 2008.10.15, 11:25). Since ornamenting the

narratives with oriental or exotic elements is a common technique used by

Cyberpunk readers, Gibson creates a magical atmosphere by means of Haitian

Voodoo elements with use of words such as Loa and Legba that refer to spirits of the

Voodoo. In Neuromancer, for example, the damaging of Case‟s nervous system is

likened to voodoo. In Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, Legba and other Loa

appear as the human perception of the fragments of the Wintermute/Neuromancer

super-intelligence in the Matrix. Voodoo, as an ancestral religion, is regarded as an

ecstatic religion by western anthropologists (Simpson, 1978). The virtual experience

described in these novels is also depicted like moments of ecstasy. This similarity

draws an interesting and expletive element to the novels.

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Hence, Count Zero presents several Cyberpunk themes and concerns such as

the discussion of cyberspace or virtual reality, genetic manipulation, organ

transplantation, and surgeries that combine the human body to machines through

prosthesis, computer networks and control of information and power relations

through these nets, changing economic systems due to new formations, computer

pirates known as “hackers”, artificial intelligence and cybernetics.

C. Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

Mona Lisa Overdrive, the final work of the Sprawl trilogy, also deals with

similar cyberpunk themes and presents the individuals dominated by the “invasive

power” of science and technology which can be defined as “the real language of

power”, in Kroker‟s terms (Kroker, 1992:48).

Mona Lisa Overdrive, having a much more complicated plot structure than

the previous novels of the Sprawl Trilogy, is a continuation of the events that take

place in Count Zero, and likewise it is set in the Sprawl and the cyberspace like the

previous works. The work includes four story lines that interconnect with each other

from time to time through the appearance of some characters in other‟s lives. Each of

the story lines puts forward one of the outstanding themes of the Cyberpunk science

fiction such as cybernetics, developments in the field of genetic engineering,

surgeries that combine human body to machines through prosthesis, changing

economic systems due to new formations, terrorism, artificial intelligence and

cyberspace. The first story is about Mona (who briefly appears in Neuromancer), a

young prostitute who resembles Angie Mitchell, who appears in the previous works,
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too. She is able to connect to virtual world physically without using cyberspace

decks, which is rarely seen in the cyberspace. Mona is hired to undergo cosmetic

surgery and replace Angie by some unknown individuals who plan to abduct Angie.

The second story line centres on Kumiko, who is a teenage Japanese girl.Her

father is a Yakuza Boss and sends her to England, to protect her from the dangers of

his own life. However, Kumiko finds herself in danger in London. She meets Sally

Shears, who was once Molly (in Neuromancer) and gets involved in a kidnapping

and blackmailing plan with Mona against Angie Mitchell. Finally, in the last story

line Slick Henry who is an artist from the underprivileged parts of the city, is

introduced. He is hired to look after Angie's catatonic lover, Bobby, who's body is

nearly dead while he continues to live in the virtual world. He receives no

explanation about the situation but only says: "He's under, baby. He's on a long trip.

He needs peace and quiet" (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 11). The plot line about Kumiko,

which is treated in thirteen chapters focuses on Kumiko‟s growing up, from

childhood innocence to adulthood understanding. Thus, the plot structure takes the

form of an Erzienhungsroman. Although Mona Lisa Overdrive has a much more

compacted plot structure than the Neuromancer and Count Zero, it is still a narrative

written by using conventional writing techniques as opposed to its postmodern

concerns.

The final plot line follows Angie Mitchell, Simstim star who is known from

the Count Zero. Her father places biochips implants into her brain that provides her

direct access to the virtual world without any connection mediums and that makes

her a direct target of some companies.

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At the end of the novel, Angie is murdered and replaced by her double

through Mona who looks like her after many plastic surgeries. Thus, Gibson crates a

chance for himself to deal with various Cyberpunk themes through use of multiple

plot lines in the last novel of the Trilogy.

When the three works are studied in detail, it appears that Mona Lisa

Overdrive is much more focused on the idea of cyberspace than the previous works

of the Sprawl Trilogy, which were more interested in action. Gibson tries to answer

questions about matrix and the cyberspace through the dialogues of the characters.

For example, Continuity explains the matrix and cyberspace to Angie in a quite

remarkable way and this explanation gives the reader an idea about the structure of

cyberspace‟s nature and omnipotence:

“The mythform is usually encountered in one of two modes.

One mode assumes that the cyberspace matrix is inhabited, or

perhaps visited, by entities whose characteristics correspond

with the primary mythform of a “hidden people”. The other,

involves assumptions of omniscience, omnipotence, and

incomprehensibility on the part of the matrix itself.”

“That the matrix is God?”

“In a manner of speaking, although it would be more accurate,

in terms of the mythform, to say that the matrix has a God,

since this being‟s omniscience and omnipotence are assumed

to be limited to the matrix” (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 107).

Thus, Gibsonian cyberspace finds explanations in this work, as having its

own “God” in its own limits that appears as a general program that has dominance
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over the entire matrix. Thus, the idea that cyberspace is, in Baudrillard‟s term, a

simulation of the real world is proved once again with this assertion. In the work, the

individuals are subject to its own rules and laws as soon as they insert themselves

into the matrix. The skilful hackers are in a way rebels in this system, who try to find

holes in it in order to change power relations.

However, as presented in Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero,

cyberspace appears to be a chance for immortality. Characters such as Case, Bobby,

Angie, 3Jane and Virek prefer the bodiless and endless life in cyberspace to the

concrete life outside the matrix. Bobby, for example, nearly kills his flesh, a process

that started in the previous work of the Trilogy, and he casts off his body to live in

cyberspace in this work. His body is barely kept alive by medical support and he lies

as if he is dead. Slick, one of Gentry‟s friends in the factory where Bobby‟s body is

kept, cannot understand his situation:

It’s eating him, Slick thought, as he looked at the

superstructure of support gear, the tubes, the sacs of

fluid. No, he told himself, it’s keeping him alive, like in

hospital. But the impression lingered: what if it were

draining him, draining him dry? He remembered Bird‟s

vampire talk (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 68).

Not only immortality, but also the production of babies becomes a concern

of technological experiments in Gibson‟s work:

The first occupants of the vault were ten pairs of cloned

embryos, 2Jane and 2 Jane, 3Jane and 3Jane…There

were numerous laws forbidding or otherwise governing

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the artificial replication of an individual‟s genetic

material, but there were also numerous questions of

jurisdiction (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 104).

Gibson employs developments in the field of genetic engineering due to

advancements in science and technology in Mona Lisa Overdrive, too. Mona is hired

to undergo cosmetic surgery and replace Angie: “Gerald‟s a cosmetic surgeon.

You‟re having some work done. All of it reversible later, if you want, but we think

you‟ll be pleased with the results. „Anyone ever tell you how much you look like

Angie, Mona?‟” (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 120). Thus, it appears that the body becomes

something that scientists may apply any kind of experiment to, or even play with, in

Cyberpunk fiction.

Gibson deals with “technological transformations” in the Sprawl Trilogy

and Lyotard highlights that technological transformations have a considerable impact

on knowledge in The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard, 1984:4). To Lyotard, “two

principal functions” “already feeling the effect” are “the research and transmission of

the acquired knowledge” and “genetics provides an example with respect to the first

function” (ibid, p.4). This theme of genetics is one of the major subject matters of

Gibson as it is also seen in Mona Lisa Overdrive. The science of genetics, for

Lyotard, “owes its theoretical paradigm to cybernetics” (ibid, p. 4).

Gibson‟s definition of the economic powers in relation to technological

powers finds an explanation in Lyotard‟s emphasis on the change in the structure of

nations and corporations due to economic powers in the world in The Postmodern

Condition. He explains how nation-states are threatened by multi-national

corporations as it also appears in Gibson‟s trilogy:

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Already in the last few decades, economic powers have

reached the point of imperilling the stability of the State

through new forms of the circulation of capital that go

by the generic name of multi-national corporations.

These new forms of circulation imply that investment

decisions have, at least in part, passed beyond the

control of the nation-states (Lyotard, 1984: 5).

How the development of computer technology and telematics makes the

question more complex, as pointed out by Lyotard, is also exemplified in Gibson‟s

work. Lyotard underlines the problem of control that comes to the fore as these

corporations develop more and more everyday:

Suppose, for example, that a firm such as IBM is

authorized to occupy a belt in the earth‟s orbital field

and launch communications satellites housing data

banks. Who will have access to them? Who will

determine which channels or data are forbidden? The

State? Or will the State simply be one user among the

others? New legal issues will be raised, and with them

the question: “who will know?” (Lyotard: 1984, 6).

Therefore, it is possible to say Gibson touches another warning in the work.

He foresaw the problem of the secrecy and privacy of personal lives and legal issues

some time before the Internet turned out to be a way of interfering in other‟s lives

and issues. For the twenty-first century reader who is familiar with social networks

such as “Facebook” and “Twitter”, the hacker characters in Gibson‟s work, who are
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paid for their talent to play with computerized data, might not seem innovative and

interesting, but when it is considered that he wrote his works before the Age of

Internet and while writing his novels he used only a typewriter, his prophetic

approach appears to be more fascinating. This problem of access to information is

another subject highlighted by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition. Lyotard shows

that “functions of regulation and therefore of production” as being “withdrawn from

administrators are entrusted to machines” as it is seen in the Mona Lisa Overdrive

(Lyotard, 1987:7). Since information becomes the most important concern in the

postmodern, post-industrial world, “the central question is who will access the

information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions

are made” (Lyotard, 1984: 14). To Lyotard, access to data became and will become

possible as a type of privilege. This means that the groups who want to hold power

should find new ways to access data, such as trained and talented “hackers” as in

Gibson‟s works. Likewise, Ben-Tov argues that, in the work of Gibson, “people

don‟t generate information; information generates people” (Ben-Tov, 1995: 180). To

her, human beings have become “incarnated” into information, and they do not

regard themselves as God‟s creations as is set out in the Holy Scripture. This

argument might be acceptable but still human beings are in need of a God in the

matrix as well. As we have seen, some parts in Count Zero and Neuromancer

questioning if the matrix has a god or an artificial intelligence which can be

omnipotent like a kind of creator.

In addition, one of the writers of The Cyberculture Reader, David Tomas

describes information as “a new kind of blood in this post-industrial cyborg world”

(Tomas, 2000: 183), and this is illustrative of the world Gibson creates. In the New
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Rose Hotel, Gibson states that “it oxygenates the economic ecology that sustains

multinational corporations” (New Rose Hotel, 1986: 107) The formation of cultural

identity in the age of cyborgs depends on information technology, as Thomas

underlines in the following quotation:

These part human, part cybernetic systems are sites of

unusual manifestations of technological exchange and

technological advantage. They are also sites of emergent

cyborg cultural identities, identities that constantly

appear and disappear in the wake of continuously

upgraded information technology and biotechnology

(Tomas, 2000: 176).

This era is defined by John Christie as “an age where information technology

increasingly dominates archival, productive and communicative processes and binds

them increasingly within a unifying and global network” (Christie, 1990: 37).

Therefore history, present and future times are turned into data collections that can

be kept in memory devices and shared through a network, as happens today in our

world.

Arthur Kroker presumes that the generations in the twentieth century are “the

last of the human species born without data skin or cyber organs” (Kroker,1996:32).

This prophecy is shared by Gibson in that, in the world of early twenty-first century,

man loses his organic form through either genetic manipulations or surgery applied

to his neuro-system or other organs. The term "cyborg", a human with some machine

parts in his body, dates back to the 60´s, when a scientist Manfred Clynes described

it while talking of the advances in biomedical engineering. Mary Shelley‟s

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Frankenstein might have inspired Cyperpunk authors, since Frankenstein himself

may be regarded as one of the first cyborgs in literature, however, when the

definitions of different types of human-machine combinations are considered, it is

more like an early android (an automaton that resembles a human being –the

definition is taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse /mechanical+man),

an artificial life form. However, its effect on Cyberpunk can be clearly seen. For

example, Bobby Newmark in Count Zero is “made” by scientists as it is explained in

the first chapter of the work. In the Cyberpunk novels of Gibson and Sterling

experiments on living organisms, or changing their structure and having control on

them are frequently seen motifs. This theme of man inside a machine finds a place in

the postmodern discussions. Baudrillard and Haraway also point out that cyborg is

the central theme that dominates contemporary science fiction. Man and machine

become a couple that cannot be thought of separately, and this is quite postmodern in

terms of blurred boundaries. Gibson‟s novels present this theme by focusing on the

invasion of the mind and the body by intelligent machines. Mechanical organs are

very common in the cyber world created by Gibson. For instance, the first novel of

the trilogy Neuromancer starts in Chatsubo, a bar frequented by hackers and the

bartender Ratz is described as follows: “Ratz was tending the bar, his prosthetic arm

jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and

smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay” (Neuromancer,

3). Likewise, Mona Lisa Overdrive is full of references to the man-machine

combinations, and presents the body as a machine that can be reshaped. For example,

the parts of the body are presented as parts of a machine that can be replaced with

other‟s as in the case of the retinas of Newmark that are used to unlock the doors:
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“Retina identification. Either this is Robert Newmark or someone who bought his

eyes” (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 129). Therefore, man is turned into a combination of

machine and flesh, a kind of cyborg, the lost parts of the body can be replaced by

suitable objects such as metal, ceramic plastic alloys or electronic devices. The hand

of Ratz which is not prosthetic, is described as the “good hand”. This use of the word

“good” for the natural hand appears to be significant in that technology that is

reflected through the prosthetic limbs of Ratz is seen as the problem itself, which is a

characteristic of Cyberpunk novels. Technology, even if it is in the service of man, is

not used with the “good” and the “beautiful”.

In addition to changing parts of the body, Bell and Kennedy notes in The

Cybercultures Reader that identity is also subject to change. It is no longer

something internal, essential, fixed or trustworthy: it is something which”exists

cyberculturally either as a series of memory implants or as the composite of our

digitized personal records; moreover it can be faked, even erased” (Bell and

Kennedy, 2000:4). The memory is open to operations like deleting, processing or

loading by other people. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, for example, how memory is

erased or changed is explained in the tenth chapter. Slick Henry, who commits

crimes is caught, judged and sentenced. However, he cannot remember the whole

time in prison since some parts of his memory are erased, he remembers only what

he had done –which was stealing cars- and some details from his prison time.

He couldn't remember when he hadn't been able to

remember, but sometimes he almost could... That was

why he had built the Judge, because he'd done

something -- it hadn't been anything much, but he'd been

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caught doing it, twice -- and been judged for it, and

sentenced, and then the sentence was carried out and he

hadn't been able to remember, not anything, not for

more than five minutes at a stretch. Stealing cars.

Stealing rich people's cars. They made sure you

remembered what you did (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 64-5).

Later he adds that they make him remember only what they want him to remember:

“Korsakov's, they called that, something they did to your neurons so that short-term

memories wouldn't stick. So that the time you did was time you lost, but he'd heard

they didn't do it anymore, or anyway not for grand theft auto” (Mona Lisa Overdrive,

64-5).

In fact, Gibson explains that computers simply stand for human memory in

his work. He is mainly interested in the ways memory works and how memory is

easily subject to revision as is seen in the example of Angie Mitchell.

All the characters in the Trilogy are connecting to the virtual world either

through decks or physical abilities and cyberspace is presented as a unlimited source

of visions. It is also a tool used to control information and thus, power.

The last novel of the Trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive, set in the same world –

a combination of near future and cyberspace- as the previous novels, employs in a

comprehensive way, the Cyberpunk themes and concerns such as cybernetics,

genetic engineering, impacts of advanced information technology, hackers, virtual

life and an economically changed global world.

In conclusion, William Gibson is a creative Cyberpunk writer, whose art is

compared to that of Picasso by Olsen, who defines his art as “a lie that tells the truth”
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(Olsen, 1992: 4). Gibson is a postmodern writer in his “breaking through history in a

new way” which Fredric Jameson refers to postmodern characteristics of science

fiction. With the works of such writers, science fiction becomes “conscious of our

present as the past of some unexpected future, rather than as the future of a heroic

national past” (Jameson, 1988: 18).

Gibson draws an imaginary world in which characters are free from their

flesh, and can move as they wish by being a part of the endless heaven of data,

cyberspace. According to Katherine Hayles, in the Sprawl Trilogy, “the catalyst is

the deceptively simple premise that a landscape of computerized information can

literally become a space through which consciousness can move” (Hayles, 1996:

112). This idea is accepted as the creation of a new kind of space. The idea of

cyberspace creates a shift in the evaluation of reality. The characters in Gibson‟s

work are fighting for reality created by information instead of matter and energy.

Information remains distinct from matter and energy although its transfer depends on

them. According to Gibson, the dominant scientific metaphor of the end of our age is

information (McCaffery, 1990:136, Interview with Gibson). Thus, he thinks that

human beings should face it and try to understand what it means (McCaffery,

1990:136, Interview with Gibson). Characters such as Bobby and Case refuse to be a

part of the real world of matter, since they experience a different kind of existence in

techno-space, “a realm in which a control over the dataspheres of capitalism is

restored” (Bukatman, 1993: 16). However, in such systems, humans operate as cells

or mere units of data, and the artificial mind becomes a body of its own, like

Wintermute or Neuromancer. In Gibson‟s Trilogy the relationship of humanbeings

and machines is presented not only as complementary but also as a kind of

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opposition of ontological essence. Machinery completes man‟s body and mind but,

on the other hand, when one of these parts starts to oppress the other, the oppressed

one starts to react. Wintermute, for example, resists against the intervention of

human beings and “wants” to unite with Neuromancer to complete itself. Thus,

machines, in a way try to free themselves from another form of being, which appears

as a common theme in popular literature and movie industry of the twentieth century:

such popular works as Terminator: Rise of the Machines (2003), Transformers

(2007), and Tron (2006) include machines that rise against humanity these are in a

similar struggle not to be colonized by human race. As Homi Bhabba points out,

“mimicry” is the master principle in the formation of identity in the Colonial subject

(Bhabba, 1994:172). The machines and human beings that struggle against each

other for the sake of not being subordinated start to present each other‟s features, as

in Bhabba‟s theory. However, this hybridity fails to include a complete identity of

any one part. In the end neither the machines, nor the human beings can triumph over

the other entirely as in the relationship of Wintermute and the human beings in the

Trilogy. Wintermute may also be described as a divided self that is trying to

complete its identity and it is not certain what the result of this union would be.

Gibson‟s description of the Cyberpunk city as different from the traditional

concrete descriptions, as fields of data, is also postmodern in that sign and spectacle

dominate. The cities described by Gibson present the characteristics of what Paul

Virilio calls the “overexposed city” which is intense and dynamic and continually

being reconstructed by electronic screens and lights as in the description of Virilio

(Virilio, 1997). Virilio argues that of real space has disappeared as a result of the

impact of information technologies. Virilio puts forward that the perception of time
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and physical space is replaced by the computer screen and television set which

results in the loss of identity, collective memory and history (Virilio, 1997). In

Neuromancer, the Sprawl is described as an overexposed city made up of data:

Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Met-

ropolitan Axis. Program a map to display frequency of

data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on

a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid

white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic

threatening to overload your simulation.Your map is about

to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a

million megabytes. At a hundred million mega-bytes per

second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown

Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks

ringing the old core of Atlanta (Neuromancer, 43).

Cyberspace, on the other hand, is characterized as a field like city lights in

Neuromancer. On the other hand, as in Virilio‟s theory, the cities depicted in the

work, are no longer made up of architecture, but look like a flow of light and images.

Japanese life, culture and technology also appear frequently in the work of

Gibson and other Cyberpunk writers, since the technology created and designed by

Japanese people were dominant in the world during the 1980s and 1990s. For the

Western world, it is like a kind of legendary power difficult to predetermine, that

threatens to dominate the whole world. This interest becomes more apparent in the

third work of the trilogy in the story line about Kumiko and her father. Yakuza, the

Japanese organized crime syndicate, is referred to throughout the trilogy as the most
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horrifying and merciless power in the world: “Wintermute and the nest. Phobic

vision of the hatching wasps, time-lapse machine gun of biology. But weren't the

zaibatsus more like that, or the Yakuza, hives with cybernetic memories, vast single

organisms, their DNA coded in silicon?” (Neuromancer, 203). Besides, the

technological advancements of Japan are also referred to frequently in the works. For

example, in Neuromancer, Japanese neurosurgery is compared to that of the Chinese:

“The Japanese had already forgotten more neurosurgery than the Chinese had ever

known” (Neuromancer, 4). In a sense, as Olsen also noted, Japan stands for the

future, while England stands for the past (Olsen, 1992:105). London appears as a city

that,

was nothing like Tokyo, where the past all that remained

of it, was nurtured with a nervous care. History there

had become a quantity, a rare thing, parceled out by

government and preserved by law andd corporate

funding. Here it seemed the very fabric of things, as if

the city were a single growth of stone and brick,

uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age,

generated over the centuries to the divtates of some no-

all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire

(Mona Lisa Overdrive, 5).

Thus Tokyo is always associated with novelty and technology in the work. Most of

the characters in Neuromancer act the way they do, not because they want to, but

because they have to. They lack genuine free will to help them decide their own lot.

Molly points out that she behaves as she does because she is “wired” that way. Case
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continues his mission because he is blackmailed. If he does not do what he is

required, the toxin sacs planted in his nervous system will dissolve and destroy him.

There are various interpretations of Gibson‟s works apart from the

postmodern explanations. One of these interpretations is John Stratton‟s views

cyberspace from a Freudian angle. He asserts that the hackers of Gibson‟s works,

like Case or Bobby, are male and Matrix, as it is understood from its derivation from

the Latin word for womb, is female (Stratton, 2000: 720). Thus the “jacking in”

process is a sort of sexual imagery through which the mother and the lover engage in

a sexual intercourse. The male part returns “home” in a sense, and the price of this

fulfilment is the loss of the body. Therefore, the imagery, for Stratton, implies the

loss of the body as a site of the construction of identity (Stratton: 2000, p. 720). This

topic may be analysed in further studies.

Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

present a new imaginary world order in which “old and trusted boundaries between

human and machine, self and other, body and mind, hallucination and reality are

dissolved and deconstructed” (Bell and Kennedy, 2000: 768). These characteristics

that appear commonly in Cyberpunk novels also refer to postmodern arguments of

critics such as Lyotard, Baudrillard and Kroker. The trilogy exemplifies the use

common themes such as the persistent improvement of information technology and

bio-technology, fragmentation of the individual in such a highly technological world,

change of economic and power relations, machine-man connection, the

developments in the field of genetics, ruining of the environment in a highly

technological world and the rise of the importance of the simulacrum against the real
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world in the Cyberpunk works, that make these works a mirror of the postmodern

period.
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CHAPTER III: THE ARTIFICIAL KID, SCHISMATRIX, AND ISLANDS IN

THE NET AS EXAMPLES OF CYPERPUNK FICTION:

Michael Bruce Sterling wrote The Artificial Kid (1980), Schismatrix (1985)

and Islands in the Net (1988) in the same decade in which Gibson wrote The Sprawl

Trilogy. This chapter of the thesis aims to analyse these works as examples of

Cyberpunk science fiction and present them as examples of the cultural output of the

era. The themes that Sterling employs, that also appear as reflections of postmodern

concerns such as advancements in science and technology, organ transplantation, and

surgeries that combine human body with machines through prosthesis, computer

networks and control of information and power relations through these nets, a world

ruined by chemical weapons, terrorism, computer pirates known as “hackers”,

cyberspace, artificial intelligence and cybernetics will be traced in the works. Since

Bruce Sterling is famous for being the spokesperson of the movement, brief

information about the author and his arguments about the Cyberpunk movement are

provided at the beginning of the chapter and short summaries of the works are given

at the beginning of each analysis.

Bruce Sterling produced many novels labelled as Cyberpunk Science Fiction,

wrote various essays, and delivered many speeches on the genre and the movement.

Therefore, he is regarded as a sort of chairman in polemics on the movement by the

Cyberpunk Satellite Authors who were introduced in the First Chapter. The prologue

of his Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology, is regarded as the Manifesto of the

Cyberpunk movement.
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Sterling explains that the label “Cyberpunk” was not chosen by a group of

writers, but it later became “a fait accompli”, since it integrates “the overlapping

worlds that were formerly separate: the real of high tech, and the modern pop

underground” (Sterling, 1986: xi). He points out that, for Cyberpunks, “technology is

not the bottled genie of remote Big Science boffins; it is pervasive, utterly intimate,

inside our minds” (Sterling, 1986: xiii). Thus, as a writer of the movement he

clarifies that Cyberpunk authors combine 1980‟s street culture with advanced

technology that is in every day use and they regard technology as an extension of

ordinary man. His explanations of Sterling also underline another main characteristic

of cyberpunk, that it is not about far-fetched centuries and men of science and great

heroes but about the near future and ordinary people, as is seen in Islands in the Net,

which presents an early twenty-first century story. Sterling not only tries to define

the Cyberpunk movement but also discusses the distinctions between Cyberpunk and

earlier science fiction. To him, Cyberpunk authors are “perhaps the first generation

to grow up not only within the literary tradition of science fiction but in a truly

science fictional world” (Sterling, 1986: xi). Thus, he defines the 1980s as a “science

fictional” era. Sterling adds that the Cyberpunk world “is marked by its visionary

intensity” and the writers of Cyberpunk works appreciate “the bizarre, the surreal,

the formerly unthinkable” (Sterling, 1986: xiv). Sterling explains the relationship of

the narrative technique of Cyberpunk authors to their concerns. To him, Cyberpunk

writers willingly “take an idea and unflinchingly push it past the limits” (Sterling,

1986: xiv). In addition, he also observes that they often use an “unblinking, almost

clinical objectivity; a technique borrowed from science and put to literary use for
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classically punk shock value” (Sterling, 1986: xiv). Like Gibson, Sterling also uses

the hyperbolized language and technical terms of the Information Era.

Sterling‟s works present an environment based on technological power,

which is not different from the world presented in Gibson‟s work, especially in that,

united corporations and mega-cartels serve as the controlling power in the

Schismatrix, The Artifical Kid, and Islands in the Net. He describes a world marked

by terror and anxiety, caused by with attempts made to be solved by this technology

as already seen in the work of Gibson.

Sterling employs the theme of technological improvement as the central

subject matter in his novels, although he deals with a different field in each of his

works. For instance, while genetic engineering or biological modification is the

central concern of Artificial Kid, Islands in the Net is about Information Technology

and its influences on the common people in the Age of Data, and Schismatrix

combines all of these themes. Therefore, as in the Trilogy by Gibson, the future is

presented in the Cyberpunk framework as a place where humans and technology

interact and technology invades the human body in different forms, as seen in The

Artificial Kid. Not only bodies but the whole of life is under the influence of this

“invasive power” as Kroker notes in relation to the influence of technology in the

postmodern age. In an interview with Larry McCaffery, Sterling relates his views on

science fiction and technology as follows:

SF [science fiction] is nearly always a literature of and

for people who are powerless. It‟s mostly an escapist

fiction, but it doesn’t have to be. Wells certainly didn‟t

use it as such. SF is a tool that can be directed in many

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ways, and in Islands in the Net I felt it was necessary to

carry the war to the enemy. People are wrong about

technology. They talk about it in terms that are utterly,

ideologically incorrect, as if it were a shiny silver box

that beeps and gives you candy. That‟s absurd,

immature. Technology is a state of mind. It‟s deeply

embedded in our most profound social convictions, part

of the wiring of our brains (McCaffery, 1990:220).

In the novels, Sterling treats technology as a part of real life that influences

everything related to it. Technology influences and even changes human life in

various ways. Sterling mainly deals with themes such as information technology,

genetic modification, memory processing, multinational corporations, how chemical

weapons ruin the world, and man-machine combinations.

A. The Artificial Kid (1980)

The first of Bruce Sterling‟s novels, The Artificial Kid, takes place on a

different planet named Reverie. Sterling creates a world of coral continents and

levitating islands. Reverie is, in a sense what may become of Earth in the future, if

technology continues to improve in its current speed together with social and

economic inequality. Reverie is introduced as a utopia/dystopia, in which there is

serious class division. The protagonist of the work, Arti, is a biologically modified

young man from “the Decriminalized Zone”, an area which is free from any legal

and social rules. He becomes a popular star by selling his own videos in which he
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engages in bloody fights with other fighters. The upper class buys his videos for the

sake of entertainment. Arti or The Kid, as his friends call him, creates a theatrical

effect with his numchucks, and uses his floating cameras to document the story of his

life and his battles.

Reverie is an interesting planet because an ancient group named “Cabal”

established a “utopian” system on it centuries ago. A man named Moses Moses is the

leader of this system, and he is introduced as a sort of Jesus Christ, in that his

reappearance is depicted and referred to as a “second coming” (The Artificial Kid,

65). When Moses Moses awakes from his seven centuries of “cryosleep”, and Arti

discovers that he was a man of politics in his previous life with the same body, they

both have to escape from “cabal” and Reverie. He was Rominuald Tanglin, before

becoming Arti, and he was one of the most powerful men on the planet. Thus, the

Artificial Kid appears to be one person, but he has two groups of enemies. He

becomes the destiny of his planet as he learns about his past, which is a common

motif in the Cyberpunk works.

As an example of Cyberpunk, The Artificial Kid, is deeply concerned with

biological modification which is one of the subject matters Cyberpunk has adopted

from hard science. The main character of the work Arti is indeed a product of

advanced technology. The novel also reflects another generic feature of the

Cyberpunk novel, that is the emphasis on the combination of low life (Arti‟s life as a

wrestler takes place in bloody combats to entertain rich people who appear as the

“punk sensibility” of the movement) with advanced technology (Arti as a product of

advanced science and technology and making use of technology to earn money to

survive). Arti lives with technology and, in a sense, he becomes integrated with
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technology. For example, he uses floating cameras over his body to record his fights

and to prepare a documentary of his own life. Arti, thus is represented as a kind of

“hopeful monster” as Sterling himself refers to Cyberpunks (Sterling, 1987:4-5).

Arti is both the protagonist and the narrator of the work, and he appears as a

kind of anti-hero, unwilling for any type of adventure. He starts his struggle in the

bottom part of the planet like other Cyberpunk protagonists. Arti explains why he is

called the Artificial Kid as follows:

People used to ask me how I became a combat artist

and why I‟m called the Artificial Kid. People stopped

asking such prying questions after I ruthlessly beat

them up. Every formal interview I‟ve given has ended

with me “losing my temper” and secondly clubbing the

journalist… all combat artists must have a gimmick,

and mine has always been my childishness and wild

artificiality. “Kid”, on Reverie, means a young person,

but the word also has a certain raffish air of irreverent

disrespect (The Artificial Kid, 2).

Like the protagonists of the previously studied novels of Gibson, Arti‟s main concern

is himself alone at the beginning of the novel. He just wants to survive in a limited

environment, through fighting (and filming his fights in order to sell) like Case or

Bobby in Neuromancer and Count Zero. Arti does not care about the rest of the

planet or he does not have a purpose like fighting to save the future of it.

Beside characterization, Gibson and Sterling have many common techniques

in creating the Cyberpunk atmosphere. For example, Sterling gives a description of

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the sky right at the beginning of The Artificial Kid, as Gibson does in Neuromancer:

“The sky over Telset, my island city, is clear as the camera zooms in; I was careful to

check with the weather satellites before I did the taping” (The Artificial Kid, 1). This

description of the sky, though conveying an opposite effect to Gibson‟s description

of sky as “the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”, still presents the

Cyberpunk discourse since it describes nature in terms of technology. On the other

hand, Sterling‟s way of describing the first scene, right at the very beginning as “a

single block, a single street, a single person, me, and my own image swells to fill the

screen” (The Artificial Kid, 1), appears as if describing a camera viewpoint as it

zooms in from orbit above the planet.

Sterling deals with the influences of technological advancements applied to

the human body in The Artificial Kid. The time in which the work takes place is

referred to as the “day of technomedicine” (The Artificial Kid, 8).Technology and

advanced medicine are capable of changing lives in various ways. The body turns

out to be a machine that is open to processing. Likewise, the brain is demonstrated as

a sort of computer that can be formatted or reset. Artificial Kid explains his “first”

and current lives: Rominuald Tanglin was his previous personality and although his

memory is erased, he has an idea about his previous life due to records kept by

Professor Crossbow, his “tutor and mentor for the first twenty years” of his life (The

Artificial Kid, 3). How he gained a new personality or how he was “born” is

recounted by Arti himself:

I happen to have the first moments of my “birth” on

tape. They were taped by Professor Crossbow…In the

first few minutes of the tape it is obvious that, despite

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the fact that he says nothing, we are looking at

Rominuald Tanglin, my previous personality. He is two

hundred and seventy-one standard years old and looks

every day of it (The Artificial Kid, 3).

Arti‟s body is not a young one but aging gains a different sense in the

Cyberpunk world since time appears to be something that lost its influence on human

lives. Men can live longer and can have control over their bodies as long as they are

not controlled by someone else. The current time system is referred to as “standard”,

for example, Tanglin is two hundred and seventy-one “standard” years old. Professor

Crossbow ends Tanglin‟s life with a machine and creates Artificial Kid in his body:

The body, momentarily empty of any personality sags

in the chair, but transparent plastic braces, barely

visible keep the head upright. Tears form in the opened

eye ducts and slide down across the broad cheeks. The

memory eraser has done its work. Tanglin‟s mind is

gone, his personality is scorched away. Quickly,

Crossbow touches away the tears and removes the head

brace. Within seconds, consciousness returns, I am

born, and I lift my head (The Artificial Kid, 4).

Although he has a new personality and a totally new memory, the body remembers

its old reflexes. This creation scene reminds the science fiction reader of the birth of

Frankenstein. Due to advanced technology, Arti is conscious of his existence and

identity and he can learn about the world and his previous personality through

records. Thus, in Sterling‟s novel human memory turns into something that can be
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played with, erased or re-shaped. In addition, machines gain importance in personal

history, in that people record all their lives and keep their memories in personal

computers. “It must have hurt Tanglin to erase the hundreds of years of taped

memories in the personal computer I inherited from him” (The Artificial Kid, 5).

Since Cyberpunk is about the breakdown of opposites such as the natural and the

artificial, The Artificial Kid presents a chance to read Cyberpunk as an analysis of the

postmodern identification of the human with the machine.

Having long lives with different memories, human beings have more chance

to change their lives. For example, they start to live on various planets in The

Artificial Kid, and technology is highly developed on all the planets. The planet

Reverie, which is partly transformed into a Decriminalized Zone, an area freed of

legal and social restraint, is governed by Elders or the Cabal, and Arti has to fight

against the new Cabal to survive and save Reverie. One of the island cities of

Reverie, Telset, where Arti was born, was “cooked” by pioneer Reverids five

hundred years ago to “a state of red-hot viscosity with powerful orbital lasers, killing

all native life” (Artificial Kid, 7). Later, other species also settle on the island and the

island turns out to be a “riotous scramble of species from a dozen planets, each

seeking a niche in a chaotic, cosmopolitan system” (The Artificial Kid, 7). Arti

defines Telset as “wired” which does away with the need for compactness(The

Artificial Kid, 7). To Arti, “the primary recreation of her [Telset‟s] citizens is tape:

drone tape, art tape, life tape, memory tape” (The Artificial Kid, 7). In such a city,

Arti starts his career as a junior gang member of the “Cognitive Dissonants”, a group

led by Chill Factor and his Ice Lady, who were responsible for his development as an

artist and tape craftsman.

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The beginning of the second chapter gives us an idea about the general

inhabitants and the life style of the island. The house of Many Mansions is visited by

various people from different layers of society. Among these guests there are poets,

explorers, rising porn stars and ambitious tape craftsman. The assembling of people

from various fields of study and different layers of life in the house of Mr. Manies

and their discussion on social life and technology may remind science fiction readers

of the beginning of The Time Machine by H.G.Wells:

we were a markedly heterogeneous group. Alruddin

Spinney, the poet and „Ruffian Jack‟ Nimrod, the

explorer…But I had never before seen Professor

Angeluce of the Academy or Saint Anne Twiceborn, a

Niwlindid political refugee (The Artificial Kid, 12-13).

These people from different occupations and social strata come together and talk

about life.

Sterling introduces this future world in which technology presents limitless

possibilities as a place where economic structure shapes lives. Arti defines his age as

the “day of the techno-medicine” (The Artificial Kid, 8), but he adds that it is still

not so easy to heal up: “you can‟t fight all the time, there are limits: medical bills and

stuff” (The Artificial Kid, 8). Therefore, it appears that physical health is subject to

economic power. For Sterling, The Articial Kid is about violence and politics and

media. How all three became interwoven is presented through the story of Arti. He

fights to earn money and fame, but he is successful with his techniques of taping. If

he cannot sell his videos of combat he cannot earn money and he cannot survive.

Hence, Larry McCaffery‟s statement appears to be right in that Cyberpunk works

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such as The Artificial Kid seems to be the only art systematically dealing with the

most crucial political, moral and cultural issues of our day (McCaffery,1988).

Under the influence of biochemical suppressants, Arti appears sexless, since

he has no interest in the opposite sex, nor does he have any kind of physical feature

that indicates he belongs to a certain sex. As Baudrillard and Haraway underline, the

human and technology are no longer so dichotomous in the postmodern era, and this

dissolution leads to the disappearing of the duality of male and female as in the case

of Artificial Kid. Through to the end of the Artificial Kid, Kid starts to change

physically after he becomes unable to take the suppressants that present the

dominance of sex hormones.

I was exhausted and sick. My scalp tingled, and for the

first time I felt the borderline nausea of hormone

changeover. My suppressant had worn off, and a whole

dancing, capering Harlequinade of male biochemicals

were washing through my bloodstream, charging into

hair follicles at lip and jaw and groin and armpit,

triggering neotenic growth in my vocal cords, even

badgering the pituarity into an atavistic state of

alertness. I was too sick to notice the erotic effect, at

least for the time being (The Artificial Kid, 216).

This change also influences his character and he starts to be interested in the opposite

sex. Saint Anne Twiceborn, whose surname is significant in that she also presents a

kind of transmutation in terms of character and manners in the course of events,

becomes the target of his interest in women:

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Anne was the only woman. I saw her with new eyes,

not the calm blackrimmed eyes of the Artificial Kid,

but older, hotter eyes that showed slow heat

shimmering just above the surface of her skin. I had

never seen that the lines of a woman‟s body were

curves; that they were not static, not just the outside

layer of skin over muscle and tendon, but flowing and

living. Before, I had seen proportion; now, I saw grace.

When I had seen Anne‟s face before, I sad seen her

features; now, I saw a woman (The Artificial Kid, 222).

This quotation includes one of few references to male-female relationship,

since Cyberpunk novels usually do not include romantic references to male-female

relationships as it was also pointed out in the chapter on the work of Gibson.

Technology in a way satisfies man in different ways, and furthermore in chaotic

lives, individuals have no place for such relationships.

The relationship between man and woman is thus also seen to be subject to

control, since techno-medicine has reached the stage at which it canan advanced

point to control hormones and character: “I‟ve stayed on libido suppressants ever

since Professor Crossbow first gave them to me. My hairless face and high-pitched

voice attest to that” (The Artificial Kid, 9).

The dependence of man on technology appears as a dominant theme in the

work. For instance, Kid‟s weakest point is presented as his cameras, in that Kid feels

worthless when he loses his cameras which appear as a part of his body. It is as if he

needed his cameras to exist and he loses his identity together with the cameras when
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they are lost: “My cameras are gone. It blinded me” (The Artificial Kid, 217). The

loss of his cameras becomes a major step in his integration with his prior personality,

Rominuald Tanglin. Up to his self-actualization, Artificial Kid appears to live the

reality that he created for himself through his cameras, in other words, in his own

hyperreality in which, as Baudrillard argues, reality and simulation are perceived as

being no different from one another. The image he created through videos has more

value than himself.

Cloning of human beings and limbs, which is one of the main concerns of

Cyberpunk literature is also employed by Sterling in The Artificial Kid. For example,

Mr. Quizein, the food programmer of Money Manies, loses his two legs during an

ray attack while swimming in the reef and he awaits the clone growth of a new pair

of legs. Technological developments influence, change, and control animals as well

as human beings in The Artificial Kid. Animals are subject to change due to

advanced science. There are altered pets, mutant and hybrid products created by men

of science in the work.

Sterling discusses the concept of government frequently. For instance, St.

Anne Twiceborn, talks about how she was misinformed about the government in

Reverie:

I follow the path of righteousness wherever it leads. If

to Reverie, so much better. On Niwlind I was told that

Reverie is a paradise – that no one has to work, and that

the government is an invisible plutocracy. But I find

that there is much work for me here (The Artificial Kid,

15).
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Thus, in Sterling‟s work it is seen that the people of the near future desire

invisible governments. Likewise in the work of Gibson, a country with a government

is a subject of amazement “Christ, we‟ve still got a government here. Not run by big

companies. Well, not directly…” (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 218) because governments

are replaced by companies. As opposed to Gibsonian multi-corporate companies and

countries without a government, Reverie has a government and it is said that it has

been without a government only once in its history, when Moses Moses died.

“Reverie was ruled by a conspirator‟s council. Faceless men and women. Everyone

agreed that they were all rich, all immensely wealthy” (The Artificial Kid, 22). Later,

theCabal takes the power. Like the previous faceless Board of Directors, they are

also vague figures, who hide their faces to remain unrecognisible:

It‟s a common knowledge that there are thirteen

Cabalists. Seven are men and six are women. The men

are called Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, Indigo,

and Violet. The women are North, South, East, West,

Up and Down. They live in their own oneills [cities]…

(The Artificial Kid, 22).

Clearly, as seen in the examples from the works of William Gibson and Bruce

Sterling, multinational corporations in different guises control global economies in

Cyberpunk novels, which make these novels reflections of postmodern reality.

To conclude, Sterling employs such Cyberpunk motifss such as life that

appears as a combination of low social strata and advanced technology, biological

modification, genetic engineering, memory processing and a different global system

that reflects the changing economic order in The Artificial Kid. Thus, it reflects the
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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.

B. Schismatrix (1985)

Between 1982 and 1984, Sterling published five short stories, known as

“Shaper/Mechanist” stories, in which he dealt with various Cyberpunk themes. He

turned his “Shaper/Mechanist universe” into a novel in Schismatrix. The

“Shaper/Mechanist” stories are about the development of technology in two different

factions and the stories depict a mid-future solar system around the 2200s (though

the story continues to the twenty-sixth century) where the people on Earth and people

in space have agreed never to have any contact with one-another. Humanity is

presented as divided into two camps, as the Shapers, who prefer genetic

enhancements and utilize bioengineering, and the Mechanists, who utilize prosthetics

to reshape themselves to their new environments and desires.

The title “Schismatrix” is noteworthy, like that of Gibson‟s Neuromancer, in

its relevance to oppositions. As Bukatman underlines, “Schism” meaning a gap, and

“matrix” that is used for a connective network is an oxymoronic combination that

includes contradictory connotations (Bukatman, 1993: 276).

Since the work is full of Cyberpunk themes and concerns, the summary that is

given in this part is detailed in order to present the universe and the language Sterling
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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
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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
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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:

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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
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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
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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

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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
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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).

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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
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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

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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.
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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”
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(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.

C. Islands in the Net (1988)

As opposed to the dystopian references in the previous five novels studied in

this dissertation, Sterling‟s Islands in the Net offers a view of an early twenty-first

century world that seems peaceful with social order and corporations working in

harmony. This novel appears quite different from the rest because of this proposal of

an ordered world presented in the beginning, in which a young married couple are

living their everyday ordinary lives and bringing up a little baby. However, later, the

protagonist is pushed into adventures beyond her control and her peaceful life gets

ruined. The work presents a vast series of adventures all over the world, from

Grenada, Mali, and Singapore to Africa. Thus the Cyberpunk themes such as a global

network controlling power, terrorist attacks supported by advanced technology, a

combination with low-lives and data hacking, reflections of an economically

changing world, all of them being the outcomes of the late capitalist era again come

to the forefront in this work.

The novel takes place between 2023 and 2025. The protagonist Laura

Webster works as a public relations employee for a global corporation of economic

democrats, Rizome and she runs a resort with her husband, David, on the island of

Galveston. They have a three-month-old baby.

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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.

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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

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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:

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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).

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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.

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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
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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
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(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
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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
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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

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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
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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
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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

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they were going to have to go off their treatments cold-

turkey (Islands in the Net, 266).

Sterling particularly presents the invasive development of information

technology and a decentring and fragmentation of the individual in a global system in

Islands in the Net.

In conclusion, Sterling‟s novels are remarkable examples of the Cyberpunk

science fiction genre with all the aforementioned concerns and frames. Sterling

especially sets Islands in the Net and the Artificial Kid in a fictional near future world

as the characteristics of Cyberpunk science fiction and the electronic information

technology have come to dominate all forms of life as is seen in Gibson‟s Trilogy

too. As Hollinger points out, Cyberpunk as a genre that deals with the relationship of

low culture and advanced technology is the outcome of a contemporary cultural

dominant defined as Postmodernism. The works of Sterling are deeply concerned

with the cybernetic breakdown of the classic “nature/culture” opposition and the

oppositions between the natural and the artificial, the human and the machine. They

highlight the discussion on the human‟s secure place in the centre and present the

fears of the changing world system. Sterling presents man as a complex biological,

technological, economic and social network in.

Sterling‟s works, like those of Gibson‟s, can be regarded as examples of the

changing view of art with language full of unusual technical terms and metaphors

that are regarded as postmodern characteristics. The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix and

Islands in the Net are outstanding examples of Cyberpunk science fiction that appear

after the 1980s, with their concerns that appear as the combination of advanced

technology and low lives, in a near future setting.

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CONCLUSION:

Cyberpunk is a subgenre in science fiction literature and a movement which

has its own cultural dimensions. It was born both as a reaction against and a

continuation of the genre by presenting influences of previous science fiction

authors. What distinguishes Cyberpunk science fiction from the earlier science

fiction is that the authors of Cyberpunk science mainly deal with “hard” sciences

such as information technologies, genetics, biotechnology and cybernetics and place

their stories in a dystopic near future. As a product of the 1980s, Cyberpunk stories

present isolated protagonists who are talented in the use of technology, but their

connection to the society in which they live is weak. The protagonists of Cyberpunk

novels are mostly anti-heroes, pushed into adventures just to save their own lives.

They are not concerned with existential problems since they mostly prefer a virtual

life to their real existence. Thus, Cyberpunk science fiction is regarded as a literary

form that is basically concerned with the rhetorical productions of the “Dataist Era”

in which human reality is explained electronically. Cyberpunk stories present

technology and the information as the only indispensable reality, as a kind of

manifestation of power and path to freedom. This place of freedom is virtual space,

in other words the Internet, and they use this space in order to protect themselves

from the system. They exist as long as they can flow into cyberspace. The

Cyberpunk culture has this idea in its background, and it is possible to say that this

culture has formed the philosophy of “hyperreality”.

Moreover, Cyberpunk writers are regarded as the first generation whose lives

are already science fictional. The main focus of Cyberpunk science fiction is the
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combination of advanced technology and people from the lower social and economic

strata. As such, Cyberpunk works are well situated within postmodern literature since

they reflect the social, cultural and economical changes of the late capitalist period

referred to as the postmodernist era.

As exemplified in the chapters discussing the works of William Gibson and

Bruce Sterling, the postmodern concerns of the invasive development of information

technology and bio-technology, a decentring and fragmentation of the individual in

such a highly technological world and a blurring of the boundaries between high and

popular cultural products; between the human and the artificial; between the real and

the virtual are prevailing topics in Cyberpunk works. Gibson and Sterling present

their projections of the inevitable results of the contemporary technological, social,

political and medical developments. The two writers are regarded as the forerunners

of the movement, as Mark Bould also confirms: “If Gibson was Cyberpunk‟s stylist,

Sterling was its propagandist, announcing its arrival and declaring its demise” (Boult,

2005: 222). The picture they present about the near future is a dark one in that, the

world they describe is dominated by global corporations, the individual has no

importance in such a world, and technology is developed and easily accessed but

humane values are victimised to this progress. Such a picture might be accepted as a

kind of warning to humanity about being careful about the improving technology.

In the six novels studied in this thesis, Gibson and Sterling mainly deal with

the themes listed in the chapters such as brain-computer interfaces, artificial

intelligence, neurochemistry prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery

and genetic alteration.

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Gibson and Sterling both underline the power of multinational corporations as

in the works of the Neuromancer and Islands in the Net. These corporations are

omnipotent on human lives and their greatest weapon depends on controlling

technology and data. To survive in such a world turns out to be a matter of chance,

since crime and violence become ordinary. As pointed out in the First Chapter, the

position of the individual has changed in a situation in which profit and power

depend on advanced technology. The common individual is alienated from the

prevailing cultural narrative, as are Kumiko, or Slick Henry, relegated to a

postmodern condition of anxious subjectivity. The characters make use of advanced

technology to become a part of power. For instance, they implant biochips, like Case

in Neuromancer, to fill data into their brain and train themselves in certain subjects,

like various fighting techniques or instructions of a machine; or, they implant blades,

like Molly, under her fingernails and jack-up their nervous system.

However, as it iwas explained previously, the aim of technology to be “an

extension of man and his power” is regarded as an illusion by Baudrillard

(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). As an addition to Baudrillard‟s

comment, the so-called opposition between the human being and the machine

reaches to a maximum, and turns out to be a major conflict. The subject of the

revenge of the machine, that became a frequently treated subject through the end of

the twentieth century is also seen in the Trilogy.

It is seen that technology is mostly presented as in the service of violence, as

in the case of Kid from Artificial Kid, who records his bloody fighting contests by
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means of flying cameras around his head, to sell to rich people in order to amuse

them. Olsen‟s comment on the appearances of human beings in cyber fiction as being

transmuted into a sort of “techno-centaur” proves to be true in that sense, the human

being, his brain and his memory are open to process (Olsen, 1992). They can be

reshaped, and guided by highly developed technology.

The characters who appear in the novels studied are “decentred subjects

moving through a shattered affectless landscape” as Sponsler argues (Sponsler, 2001;

627). Case, Molly, Bobby, Kid or Lindsay are all presented as characters who are far

from the safe atmosphere of a family and home; they don‟t feel responsibility

towards other people and they are too concerned with their own lives and existence.

There is “no meaning, no affection and no communal bonds” (Sponsler, 2001; 627)

in their lives. Thus, they represent Cyberpunk prototypes, the anti-heroes of the near

future for Cyberpunk writers.

The Cyberpunk novels appear to follow the conventional narrative structure

of their predecessors in the movie industry, such as Star Wars or Star Trek,in that the

human qualities of the characters such as Case, Molly, Arti or Lindsay are always

victorious over advanced technology, and these characters always master it.

Hence, it is possible to say that when the characteristics of Cyberpunk culture

are analysed, the argument which illustrates the Cyberpunk movement as the

reflection of Postmodernism as defined by critics like Jameson, Lyotard, Baudrillard,

Kroker and Virilio is proven. For example, it‟s being anti-foundational, sceptical of

authority, suspicious of the possibility of human anatomy and fascinated by the way

technology and material objects shape consciousness and motivate behaviour.

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Critics, such as McCaffery and Bukatman, who discuss postmodern science

fiction and Cyberpunk, underline that science fiction possesses the capacity to

“defamiliarize our science fictional lives”, reflecting them back to us in more

hyperbolic terms. The hyperbolic language which characterizes the philosophy of

Baudrillard, Kroker and Haraway as well as Gibson and Sterling‟s fictions is defined

as a language of spectacle and stimulation, a language designed to be appropriate to

its era by Bukatman (1993: 11). In addition, the language of Cyberpunk science

fiction requires a continual defamiliarization on the part of the reader, since it

depends heavily upon imagination; the reader participates in the process of creating

meaning and imagery all through the reading activity. From time to time, it may

require technological sophistication; however, the special addressees of Cyberpunk

also follow science fiction movies, games, and animations and become familiar with

their language. Samuel Delany, the writer of The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the

Language of Science Fiction, observes that the dense and jargon- ridden language of

science fiction, which may even sometimes be hard to decipher with its abundance of

technical terms and imagery, aims to explain a posthumanist future (Delany, 2009).

Cyberpunk writers deconstruct the subject in various ways to be identified as

“anti-humanist” and present the breakdown of the classical “nature/culture”

opposition in various ways as pointed out in the previous chapters. Hence, they

create an atmosphere in which subject and object merges and by doing so, they warn

the reader about the possible future of the world

The characters depicted by Gibson and Sterling live in a “nowhere zone” as

Virilio names it, between “speed” and “inertia” (Virilio, 1986). They are trying to be

a part of a society in which speed in every sense and area reaches a maximum.
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Especially the speed of information technology determines where subjects belong

and how long they can be a part of where they belong. As Kroker mentions in his

works, Gibson and Sterling‟s Cyberpunk works propose speculations about what

happens when information technology escapes the high-tech labs of Silicon Valley.

Cyberpunk science fiction is a form of science fiction which deals with the

very near future. It depicts a possible future for the world. In fact, one of the

messages of this sub-genre is that the world will turn into the world of these works if

the technological advancement continues in its present speed. Thus, according to

Cyberpunk writers, what awaits the world appears to be environmental catastrophe,

rogue megacorporations, social chaos and technology out of control on a large scale.

It presumes technological advancements in bionics, cybernetics, hackers who

connect directly to the Net, an actual brain-computer interface that creates a

“consensual hallucination” called cyberspace. Cyberpunk writers created their own

world and mythology which differ from previous science fiction worlds and themes,

in that Cyberpunk has the “Net” or the “Matrix” instead of space ships, aliens or

galactic federations. The “Web”, the “Net”, the “Matrix”, or the “cyberspace” is the

centre of the “telematic culture” as Baudrillard calls it (Baudrillard, 1994). The

action develops around hacking and data stealing by cybernetically or bionically

improved human-beings who work for rival mega corporations instead of rival

empires or countries. The protagonists, who can easily access technology, live in a

world whose ecological balance is destroyed by human beings. These anti- heroes

need to be talented in technology in order to survive. They live by their wits, without

ambition to save the world or to be a hero. They are a part of black-markets outside

the law of the social system which is something that they did not choose but fell into.
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Cyberpunk science fiction presents the new, dematerialized society of signs,

images and codes as at the heart of commodities that took on an autonomy of their

own, similar to that which Baudrillard explains in relation to semiotic systems.

The contemporary world is described as “image-centred” and “hyperreal” by

Lyon as explained in the introduction chapter and Cyberpunk authors like Gibson

and Sterling reflect that kind of a world in their works (Lyon, 1994). Since

“hyperreality” characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from

fantasy, the novels analysed in this thesis reflect this deep concern of the postmodern

world. The characters in Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The

Artificial Kid, or Schismatrix present a kind of inability, or even escape from the

ability, to distinguish reality from fantasy. For instance, Bobby Newmark‟s

insistence on his choice of virtual life might be regarded as a vivid example of

postmodern concerns with the hyperreal.

Just as Baudrillard suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a

duplicate world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more, Gibson and

Sterling set their characters in double worlds where reality gets blurred from time to

time. Ordinary life in the real world is described as a “prison of flesh”

(Neuromancer, 6) for example, and the “simstim” where the individual can

experience another person‟s life through stimulation of the brain and the nervous

system turns out to be a daily entertainment (in the Mona Lisa Overdrive) in the

Cyberpunk world. Similarly, in the Artifical Kid, Kid feels as if he has lost his

identity when he loses his cameras (The Artificial Kid, 217).

The system of computer networks, the processing of working databases and

artificial intelligences, is regarded as a kind of electronic nervous system in

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postmodern science fiction works. Just as the brain receives neural messages caused

by external stimuli and transmits messages to control bodily position, action and the

memory, so the computers are based on databases and are comprised of an electrical,

message-processing system. Therefore, as Bukatman points out in the Information

Age, computers are seen as outer “extensions of man” (Bukatman, 1993:70) and thus

they turn out to be a part of the body, creating “cyborgs”.

In Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero and The Artificial Kid

and Schismatrix human beings are not only presented as connected or united with

machines but they also act like machines. The figure of the cyborg is central to the

Cyberpunk novels of Gibson and Sterling. The body transforms from its traditional

shape and structure into something that can be evolved, de-evolved, genetically

engineered, simulated, retooled or revived. This combination of man and machine,

for Baudrillard and Haraway, makes Cyberpunk science fiction quite postmodern in

its efficacy to explain the contemporary world. Therefore, Cyberpunk science fiction,

as stated in the previous chapters, appears to be capable of reflecting the

technological and cultural changes occurring in late capitalist, post-industrial society.

Thus, as in Anette Kuhn‟s comment, Cyberpunk is “a privileged cultural site for

enactments of the postmodern condition” and this comment appears to be explicated

through the analysis of the works of Gibson and Sterling (Kuhn, 1990).

Cultural eclecticism, a basic feature of Postmodernism, appears as a main

element in Gibson and Sterling‟s novels. The authors present a culturally eclectic

world in which eastern and western traditions are mixed and moulded with advanced

technology. In this way, Cyberpunk appears as a reflection of human anxieties about

a technological future.
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Gibson and Sterling‟s works appear as examples of the unification of

representation and the world. Since Postmodernism tends to be seen as a cultural

formation, where representation itself becomes established as reality itself in its

autonomous form, it is not possible to say that these works do not reflect the

postmodern spirit. As in Baudrillard‟s words, the image, the sign becomes a

simulacrum, no longer secondary or derivative, but primary as in the case of the

“matrix” of Gibson and the “Net” of Sterling which constitutes the cultural

consciousness of the postmodern age. This world of simulacra that lacks depth, since

it constitutes mere representation, brings forward the idea of fragmentation which is

one of the major characteristics of Postmodernism. The characters seen in the novels

analysed in this thesis lack coherence and unification in a world where contemporary

chaos is either ignored or blessed. The (human) subjects such as Arti, Bobby, Laura,

Molly or Abelard try to understand the (non-human) object, but because the object

can only be understood according to what it signifies (and because the process of

signification immediately involves a web of other signs from which it is

distinguished) this never produces the desired results as Baudrillard explains

(Baudrillard, 1996: 27). The subject, thus, becomes seduced by the object, or by the

artificial or the virtual and experiences a kind of "hyperreality".

To conclude, when the six novels by Gibson and Sterling are viewed, and the

characteristics of the “third wave”, or “Postmodernism” as Jameson names it, are

observed, it is clearly seen that the Cyberpunk movement shares the basic concerns

of Postmodernism, since both have little patience with borders such as those lying

between human and machine, between high and low, between country and country,

and between the real and the simulation. Cyberpunk seems to be a branch of popular
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science fiction dealing with the most crucial political, philosophical, moral, and

cultural issues of the current world, named in total “Postmodernism” and exemplified

in the Cyberpunk novels by Gibson and Sterling analysed in this dissertation. In

addition, each of the works of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling analysed in this

thesis present various Cyberpunk themes and concerns such as cybernetics,

developments in the field of genetic engineering, surgeries that combine the human

body to machines through prosthesis, changing economic systems due to new

formations, terrorism, artificial intelligence and cyberspace in a comprehensive way.

 153

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“SİBERPUNK” ROMAN:
WILLIAM GIBSON VE BRUCE STERLING’iN ESERLERİNİN 1980
SONRASI BİLİM KURGU EDEBİYATI ÖRNEKLERİ OLARAK
İNCELENMESİ

TÜRKÇE ÖZET

William Gibson ve Bruce Sterling 20. yüzyılın sonunda Neuromancer, Mona

Lisa Overdrive, Count Zero, The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix ve The Islands in the

Net gibi eserleriyle bilim-kurgu edebi türü ve bu türe kısmen karşı çıkarak gelişmiş

olan “Yeni Dalga” akımının ikinci kuşağı olarak anılan “Yeni Yeni Dalga” akımına

dahil yazarlardır. Eserleri “siberpunk” edebi akımının örnekleri olarak görülen

yazarlar temel olarak bireyin geleceğin teknolojisiyle yaşadığı sorunları, mücadeleyi

konu etmektedirler. Gibson ve Sterling‟in eserlerinde teknoloji, karakterlerin hem

bütünleştikleri bir durum, hem de içine düştükleri olumsuz durumların temel kaynağı

ve hatta problemin kendisidir. Bu nedenle Gibson ve Sterling gibi “siberpunk”

yazarları daha çok teknolojinin getirdiği olumsuzluklar ve sorunlar üzerinde duran

kişiler olarak görülmektedirler. Örneğin, Gibson Neuromancer‟da sinir sistemi tahrip

edilerek şantaj yapılan ana karakter Case‟in yapay zekâlarla mücadelesini

işlemektedir. Sterling‟in Schismatrix isimli eserinde ise 23. yüzyılda genetik ve

psikolojiyle uğraşan “Shapers” ve bilgisayar ve protez uzuvlarla uğraşan

“Mechanists” olarak iki gruba ayrılan insanlar parlak bir diplomat olan Abelard

Lindsay‟in bakış açısından anlatılmakta ve anlatım sırasında tarih defalarca yeniden

şekillendirilmektedir. Benzer şekilde Mona Lisa Overdrive, ve Count Zero, The

Artificial Kid, ve Islands in the Net’de de bilim ve teknolojinin gelişimiyle ortaya

çıkan genetik mühendislikteki gelişmeler, organ nakli ve insan vücudunun protezler

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vasıtasıyla makinelerle birleşimi, bilgisayar ağları ve bu ağlar aracılığıyla mümkün

olan bilginin ve daha da önemlisi bunun getirdiği gücün kontrolüne sahip olma,

kimyasal silahlar yüzünden türlerin yok olduğu bir dünya, terörizm, “hacker”

tabiriyle anılan bilgisayar korsanları, siber uzay, yapay zekâ, ve sibernetik

(güdümbilim) gibi konular ele alınmaktadır.

“Siberpunk” bilim-kurgu edebiyatının yansıttığı sosyo-politik ortamlar,

tamalar ve bireyin teknoloji ile olan ilişkisi incelendiğinde, bunların postmodern

dönemin açıklamalarında kullanılan özelliklerle ortaklık gösterdiği görülmektedir.

“Siberpunk” bilim kurgu edebiyatının ortaya çıkış ve gelişme dönemi gözönünde

bulundurulduğunda bu türün postmodern geleneğin bir yansıması olduğunu

söylemek de mümkündür. Bu yaklaşım, tezde, Jameson, Baudrillard, Lyotard,

Kroker ve Virilio gibi eleştirmenlerin fikirleriyle desteklenerek sunulmakta ve

postmodernizm ile cyberpunk arasındaki parallellikler açıklanmaktadır.

Bu tezin amacı William Gibson ve Bruce Sterling‟in adı geçen romanlarında

yukarda bahsedilen temaların ortaya çıkış şekillerini ve insanın tarif edilen karanlık

gelecekte teknolojiyle bütünleşmesinden ya da teknolojiye karşı giriştiği

mücadeleden bilim kurgu geleneği adına ne gibi mesajların çıkarılabileceğini

yirminci yüzyıl sonu sosyo-ekonomik koşullarına da göndermeler yaparak

incelemektir.
 166

CYBERPUNK FICTION:
THE WORKS OF WILLIAM GIBSON AND BRUCE STERLING AS
EXAMPLES OF THE POST-1980s SCIENCE FICTION TRADITION

ABSTRACT

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling are writers that belong to the “New New

Wave” Movement, known as the second generation of “New Wave” that appeared

through the end of the twentieth century both as a continuation and a reaction to the

previous literary science fiction, with their works such as Neuromancer, Mona Lisa

Overdrive, Count Zero, The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix and Islands in the Net.

Gibson and Sterling whose works are regarded as examples of the “Cyberpunk”

literary movement, basically deal with the relationship, problems and struggle of the

individual with the future technology. While in previous science fictional works,

technology is at the service of human beings; in the works of Gibson and Sterling

technology is both something that characters are united with and is the main source

of the troubles that the individual faces. Furthermore, it may appear as the problem

itself. Therefore, Cyberpunk writers such as Gibson and Sterling are regarded as

writers who focus on the problems and negative sides of advanced technology. For

instance, Gibson depicts the struggle of Case, whose nervous system is ruined by his

ex-hirer and blackmailed because he has stolen from them. He fights against artificial

intelligences in order to survive. In Sterling‟s Schismatrix, history is re-shaped many

times through the explanation of two groups of people known as “Shapers”, who deal

with genetics and psychology, and “Mechanists”, who deal with computers and

prosthesis limbs in the 23rd century from the point of view of Abelard Lindsay, who

is a successful diplomat. In a similar way, the subjects such as the advancements in

 167

science and technology, in the field of genetic engineering, organ transplantation and

combination of human body with machines through prosthesis, computer networks

and the control of power through these networks, a world ruined by chemical

weapons, terrorism, computer piracy known as “hackers”, cyberspace, artificial

intelligence and cybernetics are analysed in Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive,

Count Zero, The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix and Islands in the Net.

When the socio-political environment, motifs and individual‟s realtion to

technology as reflected in the Cyberpunk works are observed closely, it is seen that

the explanations are parallel to those that are use to explain the characteristics of the

postmodern period. Since Cyberpunk literature appeared in the decade referred to as

the “late capitalist” period, and presented much of it‟s characteristics, it is possible to

say that this sub-genre is a reflection of postmodern tradition.This approach is

explained and supported with references to critics such as Jameson, Baudrillard,

Lyotard, Kroker and Virilio, and the relationship between postmodernism and

cyberpunk is thus explained.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the ways how these themes appear in

the novels of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, man‟s union with technology and

the messages that can be found in these works.