Libraries and infonnation in science
fiction
by
Louise M. Goodall, B.A.
A Master's Dissertation, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Master of Arts degree of Loughborough University.
September 1997
Supervisor: Mr Alan Poulter, B.A., M.Se. Department of Information and Library Studies
© Louise M. Goodall, 1997 ABSTRACT
Investigates the ways in which libraries and information are represented in
science fiction. Establishes that science fiction is a particularly sensitive form
of literature for reflecting the society in which it was produced, and that as such
it may have insights into the library and information profession. Science fiction
texts discussed were chosen as representative canonical examples. The texts
used are : George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, William Gibson's
Neuromancer, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It concludes that SF omitts
to represent libraries in most instances, but portrays information as a vital
resource.
, .!CI;:.s::o ~l.s ii t...... :.;.: .... · =- . ..,1 i /'C!; 40 15 7--3-0···~1 t,·.' ~ No. ~ ·.~n:'';'"N;...:...~"..._".:.H_'''''''''''''_''\'''P'M'''''',''''' ' KobSI"Z.!>1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Alan Poulter, my supervisor, for the help and guidance he has provided me with while writing this dissertation.
Thank you also to Emma for her unfailing support, and to the rest of my family for their concern and interest.
iii CONTENTS
Page
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iii
Contents iv
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 : Libraries and Information 4 References 12
Chapter 2 : Science Fiction 13 References 20
Chapter 3 : Control 22 References 39
Chapter 4 : Electronic Information 42 References 58
Chapter 5 : Preservation 60 References 76
Conclusion 78
Bibliography 80
iv INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this study is to establish if, and in what ways, libraries and information are represented in science fiction. If libraries and information are portayed, is the portrayal positive or negative? What aspects of information work does science fiction consider to be most important? From these representations any consensus of views may be of use to the library and information profession in assessing the importance placed on its work by society. Furthermore, themes which prove to be repeated throughout the genre may be said to be those issues of most importance to the library user. These, then, should surely also be those issues on which the library and information profession places most importance when considering how service provision should be developed.
Popular literature might be said to reflect, or inform, popular thought. If this is the case then insights about our society which can be gleaned from popular literature could prove valuable to any interest group or professional body.
Science fiction (SF) is felt to be that form of literature most sensitive to the climate in which it is produced (1) and for this reason should provide particularly acute comments. SF is also a genre particularly suited to an enquiry into information related matters as it concentrates on knowledge and has a strong sense of its place within history (in its broadest sense, and also within literary history and its own genre history) and of its role as a producer of knowledge (see chapter two).
1 Methodologically speaking SF texts have been chosen which are considered to be thoroughly canonical examples. There are such vast numbers of SF novels and stories, not to mention media SF, that it would have proved impossible to canvass them all. For this reason representative texts had to be selected. That the texts belong to the SF canon allows for no danger of distorting the development of the arguments of this study by introducing texts which might lie outside the genre. Chapters one and two discuss the themes important to a consideration of libraries and information and SF. The strongest themes linking SF and libraries and information proved to be : free access and its key role in ensuring democracy; preservation of information as an element of free access; and the electronic future of information and its potential for increasing or decreasing access. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was chosen to represent SF dealing with the control of information being used to prevent the possibility of democracy; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was chosen to represent the issues surrounding the preservation of information; and
William Gibson's Neuromancerwas chosen to explore what consequences the electronic future of information might have. These issues are developed in chapters three to five. Inevitably there is some consideration of each of these themes outside the chapter to which they are assigned owing to the thoroughness with which some of the authors have treated the subject matter.
Texts other than the three main ones mentioned above serve to reinforce or expand upon the issues discovered in the main texts.
2 REFERENCES
1. Grifflths, John. Three tomorrows: American, British and Soviet science fiction, 1980, p.S3.
3 CHAPTER 1 : LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION
In considering the representation of libraries in science fiction we must first de.cide what we mean by a library. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a library as "a place set apart to contain books for reading, study or reference"
(1). However, a library should not be defined as a building but as an institution recognisable by the social functions it performs. S.R. Ranganathan attempted to define the functions of a library by writing his Five Laws of Library Science:
Books are for use. Every reader his book. Every book its reader. Save the time of the reader. Library is a growing organization. (2)
In this way Ranganathan reiterated the library profession's central ideal of free and equal access to information, as any factor which runs counter to the Five
Laws reduces access.
The main purpose of the library is therefore to ensure access, but how is this achieved and why is access so important? In the UK the main structure for information access is the public library system. This system is provided free of charge to any member of the community. Within the library the information is arranged in such a way that it can easily be found. This organisation of information is very important as a heap of books on the floor, though containing a great deal of information, is worthless to the citizen with a particular query to be answered. This difficulty is traditionally overcome by the use of classified sequences and a classified catalogue and is vital in the observance of
4 Ranganathan's fourth law. In an Office of Arts and Libraries document entitled
Setting objectives for public library services the objectives are to encourage: democratic, cultural and economic activities; educational development; positive use of leisure time; reading and literacy; and the use of information and an awareness of its value (3). One of the fundamental issues surrounding public libraries is the provision of fiction. That a large proportion of the public library budget is annually spent on popular romances, detective fiction and science fiction has recently come under some attack. That libraries stock popular fiction fulfils those objectives of encouraging cultural activities, aiding educational development, encouraging positive use of leisure time and promoting reading and literacy. Margaret Drabble has commented on the importance of fiction:
Novels are not, as all who read and write them know, a frivolity, a luxury, and indulgence. They are a means of comprehending and experiencing and extending our world and our vision. They can exercise the imagination, they can widen our sympathies, they can issue dire and necessary warnings, they can suggest solutions to social problems, they are the raw material of the historians of tomorrow. (4)
Fiction is actually as important a part of promoting the democratic process as
any factual document could be, perhaps more so as a novel can capture the
imagination and excite the reader in a way that a government document, for
example, could never do. Therefore freedom of access to fictional material also
needs to be preserved.
Information has been said to be the currency of democracy (5) and it is as an
aid in the democratic process that freedom of information is considered to be
so important:
5 ... much of the political unrest one observes at "grass roots" is often the result of a lack of access to basic information. In many situations individuals and communities need information before something happens; for instance to help them influence proposed legislation. (6) .
Adequate information is therefore essential to allow political action to take place. By the same token, its removal would result in the decline of democracy. Archibald MacLeish commented on the destruction of the freedom of information in occupied areas during the second world war in his 1971 book
Champion of a cause:
The murders of the teachers, the writers, the intellectuals, the burning of books and the pillage and destruction of libraries ... are open and visible proof ... that ... the principal weapons and the principal defences of a free nation are the books and the organizations of books, which serve it. (7)
MacLeish also makes it clear here that the library serves the interests of the community before any other interest. This brings into the arena another important question. What is the role of the librarian in serving the community?
Richard Sweeney says of the information professional:
Librarians should not be defined by a place - i.e., a library or even by a type of media such as the book. They should not be defined by print, audiovisual materials or computers either. Librarians must be defined by their service-activity for people. (8)
The traditional activity for librarians has been to provide whatever information they are asked for without question. This may be termed the librarian's neutrality. It is considered important as a way of protecting the individual's right to freedom of information that the librarian does not show bias in presenting information. However, Bob Usherwood argues that the public library has never
6 been neutral as it embodies the radical ideals of equality, free expression and free access and furthermore that the public library cannot afford to be neutral if it wishes to challenge the inroads being made on free information provision
(9). Some information professionals believe that libraries should actively disseminate information of importance to the democratic process if it is not already in circulation.
The final important function of the library is that of preservation. If freedom of access to information is to be maintained and if society is to reap the maximum benefit from years of scholarship and data collection then it is vital that all documents (and other media) of potential importance be preserved for the future. Because potential importance is difficult to gauge, however, at least one copy of each book and public document published needs to be preserved. In the UK all publishers are legally obliged to deposit a copy of each work in the
National Library and these works can then be consulted by the public. In this way libraries become the collective mind and memory of society (10).
We have established that one of the principal functions of the library is to offer access to information, but there are a number of ways in which access can be compromised. Kevin Harris lists these barriers as: geography, topography, architecture, cost, language, technology, bureaucracy and the "user interface"
(11). These items limit access in a indirect way. Geography, topography and architecture may make the library inconvenient to visit (Harris here comments that people will not use an information service if it is less inconvenient to go
7 without the information than it is to get hold of it). Cost may bar some individuals from using some library services. Unfamiliar language and unfamiliar technology are intimidating and so discourage some people from using library services. Bureaucracy and the "user interface" can also be intimidating or inconvenient (Harris uses "user interface" to mean not only computer screen displays but also opening hours and the perceived approachability of staff). A library is an institution and therefore may suffer negative connotations by association with other institutions. This may be a further barrier to use. These problems run counter to Ranganathan's First Law.
Regarding the First Law he states:
A library authority should countenance no factor likely to obstruct or minimize the use of books ... lt should nip in the bud even the slightest inroad of the spirit of bureaucracy into any affair connected with the use of the library. (12)
The inroad of bureaucracy might be termed "institutionalization" which is characterised thus:
Libraries as institutions tend to become self serving and inhibitive of social change; they tend to erect barriers to protect their own interests and to represent stability at the expense of accessibility and flexibility and responsiveness. (13)
This situation runs counter to Ranganathan's Fifth Law which recognises that libraries must change and grow in order to best provide the information upon which democracy is apparently based. These barriers to access demonstrate that although there is access to information through the public library system it is not necessarily free and equal.
Public libraries are beginning to make increased use of Information Technology.
8 Does this technology improve access to information and promote equality or does it create new inequalities? Some observers have noted that online communication flattens social distinctions such as gender, colour and class through the equalising tool of the computer keyboard. However, it is still possible to identify an individual's membership to a particular group through content, phrasing, spelling, use of slang etcetera. The simple fact that a number of women who use online communications do so under a masculine disguise to avoid sexual and sexist comments advises us that the online world is not an electronic utopia.
At present computers for use by the public are not provided in the majority of public libraries in the UK. Theodore Roszak states that this is because the library enjoys low visibility in the "Information Age"; because public libraries are aimed at the working class whilst computers are aimed at the middle class; and because librarianship is seen as a female profession whilst computers are aimed at and associated with men (14). Because of this lack of public provision, the biggest barrier to I.T. increasing the freedom of access to information is the cost to the individual of a computer and related equipment and charges. There is also a large section of the population who want to have nothing to do with computers. These people may be women who have low self esteem for handling technology, or the elderly who feel that to learn new skills is too difficult or not worthwhile. We may label these people "the technophobic" but it is also apparent that those on a low income, women and the elderly are some of the groups who would benefit most from increased access to
9 information. As Roszak says, ..... if computerized information services have any
natural place in society it is in the public library." (15). In his article "Shadows
on the screen',' Bob Usherwood also asks us to consider the structure of the
information industry and to ask ourselves who owns and controls it and how
I r this might affect the messages we receive (16). Media and computing giants like Sky television and Microsoft surely have the power to deny us information
or to corrupt the information we receive in their own interests. Our right to
information could be compromised even by the exclusion of minority interests
in favour of the mainstream ..
It has been stated that information is the currency of democracy but it is also
necessary to establish what is meant by information. In his book The cult of
information Theodore Roszak attacks the canonization of information in the
"Information Age":
Information has taken on the quality of that im palpable, invisible, but plaudit winning silk from which the emperor's ethereal gown was supposedly spun. The word has received ambitious, global definitions that make it all good things to all people. Words that come to mean everything may finally mean nothing; yet their very emptiness may allow them to be filled with a mesmerizing glamour. .. Like all cults, this one also has the intention of enlisting mindless allegiance and acquiescence. People who have no clear idea what they mean by information or why they should want so much of it are nonetheless prepared to believe that we live in an Information Age, which makes every computer around us what the relics of the True Cross were in the Age of Faith: emblems of salvation. (17)
This rebuke was a much needed antidote to the over enthusiasm surrounding
the "Information Age" and the "Information Super-Highway" during the late
1980s and early 1990s. Roszak destroys the idea that information has a value
10 independent of the meaning it mayor may not carry. He traces the change in the meaning of the word "information" from something which has meaning, to any communication regardless of meaning, back to 1948 when Claude
Shannon established "information theory". If scientists use the word in its technical sense and the public use it in its common sense then it is entirely
understandable that confusions have arisen (18). Roszak notes that the terms
"information" and "knowledge" are sometimes used interchangeably.
Information must be sorted and sifted (one role of the library), then processed
by the brain in order to create an idea. This idea must then be disseminated
(another role of the library) and widely read. It is only when the idea becomes
accepted by society that it can properly be called "knowledge" (19). He also
challenges the accepted idea that more information is necessarily a good thing.
He claims that governments' techniques when faced with unflattering facts have
changed from denial to countering with their own contradictory "facts". Thus
more and more information is produced and disseminated until the public is
overloaded and numbed. Not only are facts not necessarily factual but freedom of information proves to be a hinderance to democracy rather than a
precondition (20).
11 REFERENCES
1. The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989.
2. Ranganathan, S.R. Library manual, 1960, p.8.
3. Office of Arts and Libraries. Setting objectives for public library services, 1991, p.12.
4. Goodall, Deborah & Margaret Kinnell, "Fiction services". In: Kinnell, Margaret, ed. Informing communities, 1992, p.211.
5. Harris, Kevin. "Freedom of access to information". In: Kinnell, Margaret, ed. Informing communities, 1992, p.47.
6. Usherwood, Bob. "Community information". In: Kinnell, Margaret, ed. Informing communities, 1992, p.28.
7. Usherwood, Bob. The public library as public knowledge, 1989, p.33.
8. Roberts, Kenneth. The library in tomorrow's society: a literature review, 1987, p.41.
9. Usherwood, Bob. The public library as public knowledge, 1989. p.12.
10. Ibid., pp.8-9.
11. Office of Arts and Libraries, ref. 4, pp.48-49.
12. Ref. 1, p.25.
13. Office of Arts and Libraries, ref. 4, p.52.
14. Roszak, Theodore. The cult of information, 1986, p.173.
15. Ibid.,
16. Usherwood, Bob. Shadows on the screen. Audiovisual Librarian, 1984, 10(1),29.
17. Roszak, ref.14. p.x.
18. Ibid., p.12.
19. Ibid., pp.130-132.
20. Ibid., pp.162-163.
12 CHAPTER 2 : SCIENCE FICTION
To attempt to define science fiction (SF, as we will refer to it) is to enter into an arena filled with problems. Despite the fact that the genre, or mode, did not
become the object of serious academic study until the 1960s and 1970s
definitions are abundant. The term science fiction evolved from the word
"Scientifiction" coined by Hugo Gernsback in 1926, who used it to refer to, "the
Jules Verne, H.G.Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story - a charming
romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (1). Such an
assessment is inaccurate, however, as this type of story rarely contains
anything of "scientific fact", which H.G. Wells himself admitted when he wrote
that he substituted the conventional magic of the fantasy tale with "scientific
patter" (2). Also, it has come to be accepted that SF is an unreliable predictor
of scientific development, and that this is not really what SF writers are
interested in.
Unsatisfactory definitions, concerned mainly with describing the content of SF
and delineating it from it sibling genre, fantasy, continued to be produced up to
the 1960s and 1970s. Brian Aldiss made the first step forward in Billion year
spree and his updated version of that book Trillion year spree which defined SF
as, "the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is
characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode" (3). At last the
emphasis shifts from science to humanity. SF is not interested in science in or
13 of itself, but only as it effects people and their societies. The other advance which Aldiss made was not to consider that SF began with Hugo Gernsback in
1926, or at the other extreme, with Lucian of Samosata (c.120 - c.180 AD).
Instead, he argued that SF came from the Gothic tradition and, specifically, that the first SF novel was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), written before she reached twenty years of age. This restored the academic interest in the text which had been eroded by numerous popular films which degraded the subtleties of the novel in favour of the shock value of the creation of the monster.
Darko Suvin is another influential critic, who has attempted to define SF thus,
"a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment"
(4). This definition attempts to differentiate SF from naturalistic fiction on the one hand, which does not exhibit estrangement, and from fantasy, folk tale and myth on the other, forms which do not exhibit cognition (meaning that they cannot be explained empirically). Suvin has called the estrangement condition the "novum", a new thing, and states that SF is not to be judged on its prophecy, characterisation or any other feature, but only on the consistency with which the novum is developed to its logical end. John Griffith's concurs with Suvin's assertion by defining SF in the following way, " ... a science fiction story is one in which the suspension of disbelief depends on the plausible development of a central technical or scientific idea or ideas" (5). This
14 insistence upon plausibility creates an awkwardness when we consider
historical perspective. H.G. Wells's "scientific patter" which explains the workings of the time machine may have been plausible in 1898, but it is doubtful that many readers in the 1990s find it so. To exclude The Time
Machine from the SF canon on these grounds seems churlish. Rather, it is
preferable to adopt Suvin's dictum that the novum be consistent only with the
reality as expressed within the text.
The definitions of Aldiss and Suvin together give us a good basis for
understanding what constitute the theme and method of SF. To arrive at a
perfect definition is not possible as the genre grows and changes constantly.
Issac Asimov has commented that SF, "includes everything" (6) whilst other writers and theorists have stated that it is nothing more than a publishing category (7). The fact remains that most people know to what they refer when they say SF, and whilst it is necessary to know what a thing is before one can discuss it, as Aldiss says, "Definitions are to assist, not overpower, thinking"
(8).
Aldiss stated in his definition of SF that its purpose is to explore the identity of mankind. As this is a rather broad statement perhaps it would be wise to examine the purposes, or functions, of SF more closely. Most SF commentators agree that SF is written as a comment on the society in which it is written. John Griffiths states that by the 1950s SF had become, "firmly established as a particularly sensitive form of literature for reflecting the moods
15 and psychoses of its host society" (9). Suvin goes further in stating that this adherence to the context in which the work was produced gives SF a, "doubly historical character ... born in history and judged in history" (10). The most significant SF, according to Suvin, is that which has no final solutions, which is open ended. In this way it mimics the open ended nature of history. That a genre which so often makes use of a futuristic setting should be known as historical is slightly surprising until we perceive the reason for the distanCing of time and space:
Even where SF suggests - sometimes strongly - a flight from that context, this is an optical illusion and epistemological trick. The escape is, in all such significant SF, one to a better vantage point from which to comprehend human relations around the author. (11)
SF, then, gives us an unfamiliar perspective on the familiar, which brings us back to Suvin's notion of estrangement. SF writer Clifford Simak gives the purpose of SF as one in which it, "encourages us to re-examine our ideas, institutions and beliefs to see if they have outlived their usefulness, to see whether they are still relevant and valuable to us now" (12). It is in this role that the true value of SF is revealed.
Other functions of SF include helping us to deal with rapid technological change. When science becomes too complicated for the lay person to understand SF becomes necessary as a "protective myth" (13). Arthur C.
Clarke believes SF encourages the flexibility of mind which Alvin Toffler expounds as essential for living in the modern world (14). The final purpose of SF is, of course, to entertain. The science part of the genre title apart, it is
16 still fiction, and popular fiction at that.
A consideration of the genre title brings us to the fundamental conflict between two words which might reasonably be supposed to be opposites, or at least to
have nothing in common, "science" and "fiction". Aldiss explains that before
Victorian times science and art had not been divided into the opposite
disciplines in terms of which we tend to think today, and which gap, he claims,
SF attempts to bridge (15). It is out of this pre-Victorian mind-set that SF
sprang, according to Aldiss's history of the genre, beginning with the works of
Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's grandfather) who was both a scientific
experimenter and a writer of fiction; and the paintings of Joseph Wright of
Derby who portrayed scientific experiments on his canvases. Aldiss thinks it
probable that Mary Shelley was exposed to Wright's paintings and that they
may have had some influence on her novel Frankenstein. Griffiths has
commented that SF might almost be called "knowledge fiction" as it deals with
that most contemporary kind of knowledge, science (16), and that the hero of
SF is not the protagonist (often poorly realised) but the idea (what Suvin would
term the novum). Aldiss also emphasises knowledge in his definition. If SF
deals with knowledge then it appropriate that Frankenstein should be identified
as the first SF novel. Its concern with knowledge and the responsibilities that
go with it permeate every page, from the framework of the Walton story, to the
body of the text dealing with Victor's time at university, his experiments, and
their terrible consequences.
17 If it is appropriate that Frankenstein was the first SF novel it is also ironic. It is ironic in that its author was a woman. The history of the genre from that point up until the 1970s shows that the SF establishment has effectively excluded women, not only as writers, but also as readers and as protagonists.
It was for this reason that I wanted to include some SF written by women in this study. However, for methodological reasons I was compelled to use as main texts only that SF which could be said to be representative and therefore canonical. In the 1970s feminism responded to this exclusion from SF by producing a wealth of material. This material is characterised by social SF and the separatist utopia which allowed feminists to explore gender relations.
Writing of this period has been attacked by SF critics for not engaging with technology (17) a challenge which has not yet been met to any great degree.
Jenny Wolmark comments, however, that the most masculine, innovative and controversial of sub-genres, "cyberpunk", owes much to the influence of feminist SF, an influence which it exhibits through its, "anxieties about gender relations" (18).
Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of SF which made its debut in the early 1980s.
Subsequently it has been hailed as both the saviour and the destroyer of the genre; as brilliant innovation and as juvenile fantasy; as emissary of the streetwise technological age and as empty, glossy hype. Kim Stanley
Robinson sums up the recipe for cyberpunk :
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
18 Reaganesque hype and Ramboesque aggressiveness. Bake at full heat for three years, then let simmer. Serves two good writers and several hangers-on. (19)
The aspect of cyberpunk most emphasised by Robinson is its derivativeness.
For some this is a criticism, for others it leads to the assertion that cyberpunk
is self-referential to a degree not seen in other types of SF, which are self-
referential themselves, using "codes" from one novel to the next which only the
experienced reader of SF can "break" (20). Self-referentiality is a characteristic
of postmodern literature, and this association prompted Istvan Csicsery-Ronay
to call cyberpunk, "the apotheosis of postmodernism, its truest and most
consistent incarnation, bar none" (21). If cyberpunk is a type of postmodernism
then surely it deserves to treated as seriously as postmodernism, and if
postmodernism borrows from other texts, genres and historical periods why
cannot cyberpunk do the same? In the 1990s the influences of cyberpunk,
postmodernism, SF, horror, detective fiction and film noir have distilled
themselves into a new millennial brew characterised by Chris Carter's television
programme "The X-Files" and its abiding paranoia.
The usefulness of SF as a means of investigating libraries and information does
not lie in its unreliable pediction of the future, but in its ability to allow
hypotheses (the novum) to be tested and in altering our perspective on our own
society. The informational character of both "science" and "fiction" and the
historical nature of the genre (and the library) means that SF is an apt material
for the study of libraries and information not only in its content, but also in its
form.
19 REFERENCES
1. . Clute, John & Peter Nicholls, eds. The encyclopedia of science fiction, 1993, p.311.
2. Aldiss, Brian W. Trillion year spree: the history of science fiction, 1986, p.26.
3. Ibid., p.23.
4. Suvin, Oarko. Metamorphoses of science fiction, 1979, pp.7-8.
5. Griffrths, John. Three tomorrows: American, British and Soviet science fiction, 1980, p.25.
6. Ibid., p.23.
7. Clute, ref. 1 , p.314.
8. Aldiss, ref.2.
9. Griffrths, ref.5, p.53.
10. Suvin, ref.4, p.81.
11. Ibid., p.84.
12. Griffrths, ref.5, p.23.
13. Ibid., p.39.
14. Ibid., p.76.
15. Aldiss, ref.2, p.34.
16. Griffrths, ref.5, p.22.
17. Wolmark, Jenny. Aliens and others: science fiction, feminism and postmodernism, 1994, p.4.
18. Ibid., p.5.
19. James, Edward. Science fiction in the twentieth century, 1994, p.195.
20. Broderick, Oamien. Reading by starlight: postmodern science fiction, 1995, p.62. t
20 21. Wolmark, ref.17, p.109.
21 CHAPTER 3 : CONTROL
The main novel analysed in this chapter is Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Its theme is the control of the individual and the ensuing discussion aims to demonstrate that this control is achieved through the use of information and misinformation in such a way as to prevent the possibility of democracy. The shockwave rider and The difference engine are also briefly analysed to reinforce and develop the ideas which resulted from the analysis of Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was recently voted second in the
Waterstone's 100 books of the century poll (1). This may be the result of an educational policy which results in Orwell's novels being made set texts in schools as Germaine Greer suggests (2), but the list does at least point to the high profile this novel still commands in Britain. Paul Chilton also ascribes the novel's ubiquity to its presence in schools and states that:
... the present generation, and anyone else who may not have read it, cannot avoid it because its key words have entered daily speech. After 1066, 1984 is perhaps the best known date in English history. In fact, "1984" is less a date than a symbol. (3)
The terms "Big Brother" (and the phrase "Big Brother is watching you") and
"Thought Police" have entered daily parlance, whilst "Room 101" has become the title of a BBC Television programme about dislikes. The reason for the pervasiveness of the novel's terminology lies in the fact that "1984" is a symbol which stands for fear of both fascism and communism, and for resistance
22 against these political systems (4), systems which are also resisted by the existence of the public library (see chapter one).
Some readers may be tempted to dismiss Nineteen Eighty-Four. After all 1984, the year, proved itself to be unlike the world which Orwell had predicted. But social and scientific prediction were not what Orwell was about when he wrote
Nineteen Eighty-Four (see chapter two). Basia Miller Gulati gives Orwell's purpose as being to "mithridatise" the reader, "the small dose of poison arming him against a fatal one" (5). Orwell failed to foresee the emergence and importance of computers and information technology. Instead his future is rigidly mechanical rather than electronic, and the machine becomes a metaphor for the operations of both the society and the individuals within it. Chilton comments that Orwell would have seen electronic proceSSing and transmission of information as another kind of mechanisation (6). If this is the case it does not much matter that Orwell did not foresee electronic information systems as his treatment of the control of information would have been fundamentally the same.
Throughout the novel control of information is depicted as the most effective means of controlling the individuals who make up the SOCiety of Oceania, "If the
Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened - that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?" (7).
It is information regarding the past which is consistently altered in order to bring it into line with current events. These acts of falsification are perpetrated in
23 defiance of the memory of the individual:
At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. (8)
The narrator satirically brings to the reader's attention the way in which the citizen of Oceania is expected to deliberately submerge his or her memory in order to remain politically orthodox and therefore avoid the tender ministrations of the Ministry of Love. This act of deliberately forgetting involves a mental activity that is dubbed in Newspeak "doublethink". The novel's protagonist,
Winston, has not mastered doublethink and the few memories he retains allow him to have subversive thoughts. However, the Party aims to control thought too which it achieves in three ways: through language; through the alteration and destruction of documents and artifacts; and through torture.
At the pOint in time at which the action in the novel is set the Party is working on the final version of its artificial language, Newspeak. The language has not yet been fully implemented and only certain political buzz words from
Newspeak are used on a daily basis, though it is foreseen that in the future
Newspeak will be the only language spoken in Oceania. The purpose of
Newspeak is to restrict thought to politically orthodox matters. The premise on which Newspeak rests is that thought is not possible without language, so that it is not possible to think about a concept for which there is no name:
24 The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds". It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free" since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. (9)
The implementation of Newspeak would also affect all communication and information. Just as Newspeak makes unorthodox thoughts unthinkable it also makes them unwriteable. Works originally written in English would be translated into Newspeak and be made innocuous. Only information which is consistent with the Party line could be communicated, destroying any possibility of democracy.
Winston's job is in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth. It is his task to alter certain records in order to preserve the perceived infallibility of the
Party or to incriminate a disgraced individual. All evidence of the "correction" is destroyed:
This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were named memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. (10)
It is with typical irony that the disposal holes are called memory holes as they aid forgetting rather than remembering. Winston frequently bemoans the absence of any documentary proof. Without proof anything that he thinks he
25 remembers could be "a myth", "guesswork" or "imagined" (11). The memory holes lead to a furnace. Burning books is a common identifying mark of a repressive society both in science fiction (Fahrenheit 451) and in real life (Nazi activity during World War Two) and so Orwell's use of it here serves to trigger the association in the mind of the reader.
Although all communications are controlled by the Party Winston believes he has finally found an unadulterated text when he secretly receives a copy of the book supposedly written by the traitor Goldstein. O'Brien says of the book:
There are not many in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunt them down and destroy them almost as fast as we can produce them. It makes very little difference. The book is indestructible. If the last copy were gone, we could reproduce it almost word for word. (12)
O'Brien suggests that in the case of the book it is memory which would ~ preserve it should the last copy be destroyed, underlining the importance of the ! memory which is denied Party members. The preservation of information through word of mouth is also a theme of Fahrenheit 451 and Canticle for I, Leibowitz, and although oral history is unlike the written history stored in a library, it serves the same function as the memory of a society (see chapter one). ,. 4 I. , • Within the novel the text of.the book is reproduced as though it were an actual artifact which the reader can hold in her hands. The text is so long that the reader forgets she is readiQg Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel by George Orwell, • and believes she is reading the book by Emmanuel Goldstein. The device of
26 a book within a book jars the reader into reconsidering the relationship of reader to text and makes explicit that information is both the novel's form and content (see chapter two). As the book is an illicit text full of truths which
Winston can only organize in his mind after reading it, so the readers relationship to the novel mimics this state. When Winston is taken to the
Ministry of Love and O'Brien admits that he wrote the book as a means of catching traitors and that it contains "nonsense", the reader feels that she has been betrayed by the novel. The narrator of the novel now appears unreliable.
The r~ader must now doubt the truth of any element of the text. Nothing is known for sure. This puts the reader in the same position as Winston and forces her to realize the horror of a society in which no information is to be trusted. The reader thereby learns to be sceptical of information and the nature of truth and is provided with the small dose of poison to arm against a fatal one
(13).
It is whilst he is being held in the Ministry of Love that Winston is tortured into believing that there is no such thing as objective truth. The human being can only experience the world through his or her own mind, therefore if reality does
not perform in the way in which the Party says it does then it is the mind which
is at fault. Reality is whatever is believed by the collective mind:
"If I wished," O'Brien had said, "I could float oft this floor like a soap bubble." Winston worked it out. "If he thinks he floats oft the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens." ... Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens. (14)
At the beginning of the novel Winston believes that, "Nothing was your own
27 except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull" (15). By the end of the novel the Party controls even this. The great triumph comes for the Party when it succeeds in making Winston believe that two plus two can equal five.
Bertrand Russell noted that mathematics deals with the ideal, which does not exist in nature. Therefore thought is nobler than sense and the objects of thought are more real than those of sense perception (16). Winston had dreamed of passing on "the secret doctrine that two plus two make four" (17) as a legacy for the future but under torture he realizes that four can be five.
Basia Miller Gulati draws attention to the novel's preoccupation with numbers
(18). The title itself is numerical, Winston is reduced to a number, "6079 Smith
W' (19), and there is much debate over what two plus two equals and how many fingers O'Srien is holding up. Gulati notes the particular prevalence of the numbers one and zero. For her the initial 0 of the names Ogilvy, O'Brien,
Oceania and perhaps even Orwell stands for Winston's lack of morality. The number one appears in the name "Airstrip One" (the Newspeak name for
England), in the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary and in the repetition of the times 1300 (one o'clock) 1100 and 2300 (eleven o'clock). The one, then, refers to the few tangibles in Winston's existence (Winston always seems to know what time it is even if he doesn't know for sure what the year is; Airstrip
One is the ground beneath his feet whilst Oceania is a vast intercontinental state; Newspeak is well understood by Winston as he uses it in his daily work, and even gets some pleasure from understanding its intricacies). If the number one represents tangibles then zero should represent the intangible; Ogilvy is a
28 man who Winston makes up in the course of his work; whilst O'Brien and the
Orwell-narrator are fundamentally ambiguous and unknowable. What, then are we to make of "Room 101" (significantly, Orwell instructs our pronunciation to be "one-oh-one" rather than "one hundred and one". thereby separating and emphasising the individual digits)? Its interpretation ought to be, the intangible bounded by the tangible. The intangible could be Winston's fear of rats which
O'Brien somehow knows about. The room contains that which a person most fears in the same way that the zero is contained by the ones. The tangible is then the room itself, or the rats (there are two of them) who would be eminently tangible were they allowed to burrow into Winston's face as O'Brien threatens.
The digits one and zero seem to have a further significance. They are opposites and underline the ironic use of the words love, truth and plenty in the names of the ministries which deal in hate, lies and starvation and the ironic use of opposites in the party slogans, "WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS
SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" (20). Also, the numbers one and zero are the units which make up binary code. Binary code is the only information which a computer can process. Although Orwell did not consider the role which computers might play in 1984, the modern reader cannot help but compare Newspeak to a computer programming language: a language with a limited vocabulary intended to control the behaviour of a mechanized "mind".
Furthermore, as binary code is the material of all computerized information
(although on a level which most of us do not usually see) so we can see the layers of information within the novel itself: Newspeak is the basic unit of
29 information, the book is a larger unit of information, and the novel contains both these systems whilst being a system in its own right, bringing about the realization that the novel is not only about information but is information, as was postulated at the end of chapter two, and therefore subject to the same rigorous critical analysis that the novel encourages.
Within the Ministry of Truth Winston's acts of falsification are performed in order that the records should reflect the "truth" which the Party wishes to be preserved. Orwell describes the scale of the undertaking as "vast repositories" manned by "armies of reference clerks" (21). What is left unstated is who these records are to be read by. There is no mention of there being free access to this information, and according to the society which Orwell describes such a freedom would seem unlikely. The system might be operated to preserve the illusion of free access. A citizen theoretically might ask to look at certain records, but to do so would mean his removal to the Ministry of Love and his almost certain execution. Therefore no citizen who valued his life would apply for access. This barrier to information is the logical extreme of certain information practices in our society, where obtaining access involves so much practical difficulty that information is effectively barred from consumption, whilst the illusion of free access is preserved. The comments in chapter one regarding barriers to access and the institutionalisation of libraries are especially pertinent to Orwell's vision of information control.
The main way in which information is transmitted to Party members is through
30 the telescreen. The Proles have their own information created for them:
Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section - Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak - engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at. (22)
Orwell accurately describes today's mass media, complete with tabloid newspapers and production line pop songs. It would appear that these
"harmless" and "empty" forms of information are produced in such abundance in order to fill the void where no "real" information is being circulated. This is a criticism which has been levelled at our own mass media, and most recently the discussion has flared up regarding the quality of information to be found on the World Wide Web and the censorship of that medium. The ownership of the tabloid press could be said to effect the content of publications in a similar way to the "ownership" by the Party. The information provided for the Party members via the telescreens has a much more respectable air to it, consisting mostly of news items and government statistics:
The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies - more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards. (23)
The problem with this information is not just that it is literally too good to be true, but that the quantity is overwhelming. The statistics "pour", and we are
31 treated to a long list of examples to emphasize the amount of information, concluded ironically with books and babies. The unreliable nature of statistics is well known and Orwell plays on this fact and the already established mendacity of Big Brother in order to warn the reader against trusting them.
Theodore Roszak identifies this information overload in both Oceania and modern America and Britain as a deliberate policy of the government to numb the attention of the electorate (24) as discussed in chapter one (p.11).
Perhaps the best known aspect of Nineteen Eighty-Fourcomes from the phrase
"Big Brother is watching you". The phrase has gained considerable currency in recent years, as the functionality of the computer has allowed surveillance of the population on a larger and much more efficient scale than Orwell foresaw:
Citizens of Oceania feared the telescreen because they never knew when the Thought Police might switch in to their particular monitor. But this was still active surveillance ... In reality, computers excel in passive surveillance, alerting the controlling authority to any deviation from the expectable pattern ... (25)
In Nineteen Eighty-Four the possession of personal details and control of all information sources and the individual's memory makes it possible for the state to make an individual an "unperson", someone who never existed. These are perhaps the twin fears of the "information society": that computer records make it simultaneously possible for strangers to know or infer the most intimate details about one's life, and that if those records were erased one would cease to exist.
32 Being erased, or "deeveed", is a principal concern of the characters in John
Brunner's 1975 novel The shockwave rider. Brunner was inspired to write the novel after reading Alvin Toffler's book Future shock (1970) which is a non- fiction treatise about rapid change and what the future might hold. To a certain extent Brunner depicts a world rather like ours in which every trend is predicted by computers and in which a computer network operates which is related to our own World Wide Web:
The nation was tightly webbed in a net of interlocking data channels, and a time-traveller from a century ago would have been horrified by the degree to which confidential information had been rendered accessible to total strangers capable of adding two plus two. (26)
Here Brunner, consciously or unconsciously self-referential, invokes the matter of basic mathematics which concerned Orwell, and mentions time travel, bringing to the foreground the novel's relation to other SF texts and to both history and the history of the genre. Self-referentiality is a feature of SF, and the evoking of the wider canon highlights the importance of the reader's knowledge of other SF texts and the interconnectedness of all information (see chapter two p.19). Brunner, however, does not agonize over what constitutes objective reality but concentrates on information overload, the ways in which information can subvert democracy and the solutions to these problems.
Toffler argues that as the speed of change in society accelerates, so it is necessary for the individual to absorb increasing amounts of information increasingly rapidly in order to cope with that change (27). Furthermore, there are limits to how much information a person can absorb:
33 In the words of George A. Miller of Rockefeller University, there are "severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember." By classifying information, by abstracting and "coding" it in various ways, we manage to stretch these limits, yet ample evidence demonstrates that our capabilities are finite. (28)
Classifying, abstracting and coding are traditional pursuits of libraries and other information agencies and Toffier clearly identifies their purpose as relieving the informational burden placed on the individual. In this way a library can be said to be the memory and the collective mind of a society. SF can similarly be said to aid the individual in coming to terms with the fact that science is too complicated and too vast a subject for the ordinary person to hope to be able to comprehend, as identified in chapter two (p.16). SF and the library therefore share a common aim in making information manageable.
Brunner identifies the grip of information overload on his fictional society:
"In this age of unprecedented information flow, people are haunted by the belief they're actually ignorant. The stock excuse is that this is because there's literally too much to be known." (29)
Libraries, however, are absent from mainstream future America. Instead the populace relies on computer terminals to allow them to access information.
However, money, influence, political power or technological know-how can exclude information from being accessible in the public domain. Once again the illusion of free access is preserved whilst censorship is effectively performed. Information becomes the property of the powerful. It is in this respect that information is power, for the power to with-hold information makes
34 action against it impossible, therefore compromising democracy (see Bob
Usherwood's comments, chapter one, p.6).
The mainstream culture of Brunner's society is typified by what he calls the
"plug-in life-style": almost pathological transience in the areas of geographical location, employment, child-rearing and personal relationships. This is his dystopia. His utopia comes in the form of "Precipice", a "community" in a sense that has disappeared from the mainstream culture. Precipice is what
Toffler termed an enclave of the past: a place in which the pace of change is deliberately slowed in order to allow people to "cope with tomorrow" (30).
Precipice has both a library, "characteristically, the largest single building in
Precipice" (31) and a librarian. Love of Precipice is the catalyst which provokes the novel's protagonist, Nickie Haflinger (a name which places him half in the past and half in his present, our future), to use his computer expertise to dramatically alter the way in which information is disseminated and received in the mainstream culture. It is Precipice's access to unbiased information which allows it to exist and therefore allows Haflinger to once more make democracy possible. He achieves this by programming the computer network to automatically provide information which is perceived to be in the public interest:
"Specifically, whether or not anybody has required a printout of it, information concerning gross infringements of Canadian, Mexican and/or United States legal enactments respecting - in order of priority - public health, the protection of the environment, bribery and corruption, fair business and the payment of national taxes, shall be disseminated automatically to all the media." (32)
Information will be deliberately disseminated, rather than resting passively in a
35 repository, waiting for someone to ask to look at it, as is normally the case in libraries. This system is designed to force democracy on the society. Not only does it overcome information overload by sifting information for that which is
"relevant", but it does away with censorship and with another barrier to access and democracy, the indifference of the population. However, Brunner's solution contains the same moral difficulty as that encountered by the librarian who wishes to disseminate information; that is that neutrality is not preserved. (The neutrality of the librarian is discussed in chapter one, pp.6-7.) Haflinger's order of priority may not be the same as everyone else's; democracy cannot be forced; and so Brunner's solution is as much an infringement of free access as the problem it is intended to supplant.
The difference engine is a novel written by eminent cyberpunk authors William
Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It tells of a Victorian England in which the computer has been developed, albeit a mechanical rather than an electronic computer. This is the eponymous "difference engine". The genre has been dubbed "steam punk" and it shares some similarities with cyberpunk including its concentration on information as a commodity and its setting of urban decay.
However, whilst cyberpunk is set in a post information revolution world steam punk is set in a post industrial revolution world. This prompts the reader to compare these two "historical" periods in terms of their importance to humanity, and has an interesting symmetry in terms of the rise of the SF novel from the industrial revolution (as suggested by Brian Aldiss, see chapter two)
(Frankenstein) to its culmination (at the moment) in the information world which
36 produced cyberpunk (Neuromancer). However, whilst in the features mentioned above The difference engine belongs to the same sub-genre as cyberpunk, in some other important aspects it is allied to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Firstly, both novels have a preoccupation with the past and the way in which information, be it true or false, comes to be regarded as history. In Nineteen
Eighty-Four this concept informs both the content and the form of the novel.
In The difference engine the idea is rather less explicit in the content of the novel but far more explicit in the form. For this is science fiction which deals not with a possible future but with an alternative past. If the reader asks herself where this past comes from, very likely the first answer will be that it comes from the imagination of the authors. However, if the reader has been dosed with a little sceptical poison by Orwell, then the reader may, hypothetically at least, begin to consider that this is the real past and that history as we know it has been rewritten as it was in Oceania. Once again the reader is asked to reconsider her relationship to the novel she holds in her hand and to information in general.
The protagonist of the novel is Dr Edward Mallory. The fact that he is a palaeotologist gives reference to the importance of history. Historical figures have had their roles reassigned: Byron is the Prime Minister and Keats is a
"clacker", a kind of information professional. Most of the novel is concerned with the various quests for a set of "kinotrope cards" (a type of information storage device) which are said to contain the only successful betting system
37 ever invented. Ultimately it is revealed that Mallory has hidden them inside the skull of a dinosaur skeleton in the museum where he works. The placing together of a dinosaur, representing history; a skull, representing memory; and the kinotrope cards, representing information of dubious value is hard to misinterpret. That the library and information profession is responsible for storing history and for becoming the memory of society is again made evident.
Secondly, both Nineteen Eighty-Four and The difference engine show the manipulation of data as mechanical rather than electronic. Gibson and Sterling could have made their computers electronic if they had wanted to, after all they were re-writing history. That they chose mechanical computers indicates that they wanted to take advantage of the metaphorical significance of machines.
Industrial machines and information machines merge in the mind of the reader and the equivalence between the ownership of the means of production and the ownership of information is realized. The information machines are said to be,
"spinning out history" (33) and the allusion to the textile industry is evident (as is the suggestion that the machines create history, almost as if they had a will of their own). Again, the whole of the history of SF is encompassed in this image and the gap between Frankenstein and Neuromancer is closed.
The difference engine also echoes Orwell's comments about the quality of information provided once it has been polluted by both censorship and mechanisation:
"It doesn't say anything," Mallory said. "Who in Parliament? What state of the Thames, specifically? What did Parliament
38 say about it? Wise things or foolish things?" Fraser grunted. "There is a wicked pretence that one has been informed. But no such thing has truly occurred! A mere slogan, an empty litany. No arguments are heard, no evidence is weighed. It isn't news at all, only a source of amusement for idlers." (34)
Mallory's use of the words "wicked pretence" suggests that poor quality information is as much a deliberate ploy of the owners of information to keep the population uninformed as Roszak believes information overload to be (see chapter one p.11). Again the parallels with our own mass media are evident.
The three novels I have discussed in this chapter are each concerned with the ways in which information can be used for control; control of the individual, to prevent democracy; and control of the past. Control of the past is a consistently important theme, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past" (35) as the Party slogan says. A concern with the future is just what one would expect from science fiction, but a concern for the past is a little more surprising. However, as the Party slogan suggests it is necessary for us to understand the past before we can imagine the future. To be sceptical of information is the main message of these texts.
This scepticism is bred from the knowledge that those who control information will use it for their own ends, ends which usually run counter to democracy.
39 REFERENCES
1. Waterstones. The 100 books of the century. W Magazine, 1997,8,12.
2. Ibid., p.9.
3. Chilton, Paul, ed. Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984, 1983, p.1.
4. Ibid.
5. Gulati, Basia Miller. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four : escape from doublethink. International Fiction Review, 1985, 12 (2), 79.
6. Chilton, ref.3, p.4.
7. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1983, p.34.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p.258.
10. Ibid., p.37.
11. Ibid., p.20.
12. Ibid., p.157.
13. G ulati, ref. 5.
14. o rwe 11, ref.7, p.240.
15. Ibid., p.27.
16. Roszak, Theodore. The cult of information, 1986, p.110.
17. Orwell, ref.7, p.188.
18. Gulati, ref.5, p.83.
19. o rwe 11, ref.7, p.36.
20. Ibid., p.9.
21. Ibid., p.41.
22. Ibid., pp.41-42.
40 23. Ibid., p.55.
24. Roszak, ref.16, p.163.
25. Roper, Ref.3, p.60.
26. Brunner, John. The shockwave rider, 1988, p.66.
27. Toffler, Alvin. Future shock, 1970, p.312.
28. Ibid.
29. Brunner, ref.25, p.219.
30. Toffler, ref.26, p.346.
31. Brunner, ref.25, p.172.
32. Ibid., p.258.
33. Gibson, William & Bruce Sterling. The difference engine, 1996, p.10.
34. Ibid., p.187.
35. Orwell, ref.7, p.213.
41 CHAPTER 4 : ELECTRONIC INFORMATION
The sub-genre title cyberpunk came into existence in the early 1980s. It was first used by Bruce Bethke in his story of the same name (1). However, its influences can be traced back to the works of J.G.Ballard and Philip K.Dick.
John Brunner's The shockwave rider (1975) could be said to be an early example of the sub-genre. The dense visual detail which the novels provide owes much to the Ridley Scat! film "Blade Runner" and perhaps also to
Cronenberg's "Videodrome". William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer was, and remains, the definitive cyberpunk text. The sub-genre was greeted with much enthusiasm at first, but in more recent years has been criticized as being substanceless, adolescent and as being nothing more than a marketing strategy (see chapter two for further comments on cyberpunk). However, cyberpunk may be able to give us insights into a particular attitude towards information technology, which may well become the basis of the information profession of the near future.
In the world of Neuromancer (and its sequels Count Zero and Mona Lisa overdrive) information technology is the drug of a young streetwise populace, the punks of cyberpunk. Information is the currency of this society, to be bought, sold or stolen. Most information is, however, owned by extensive multinational corporations which are legitimate on the surface, but beneath the surface have enough power, wealth and information to behave illegally. Case and Molly, the novel's protagonists are hired by an unknown agency to steal
42 information from the Sense/Net research library. Case is a hacker, a
"cyberspace cowboy", who can breach the "ice", the library's computer security, in order to allow Molly to steal the information. Throughout the novel no information is ever shown as being freely available as it protected by ice. If information is wanted it must be bought, or more usually stolen by Case using his special talents. Even the so-called "public library" is protected by ice.
Some critics (Samuel Oelany, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay and Oarko Suvin (2)) have suggested that the commercial pushing of cyberpunk literature (specifically by
Bruce Sterling) makes the movement complicit in the informational status quo which the novels portray rather than opposed to it as the "counterculture" tag of the sub-genre would have us believe. Jenny Wolmark disagrees:
The ironic detachment of cyberpunk enables it to gesture, however tentatively, to collective and cultural possibilities for communication and interaction which challenge the global information networks of multinational capitalism. In this sense, cyberpunk's negative critique can be regarded as the expression of a properly utopian moment in contemporary science fiction. (3)
Neuromancer achieves this, perhaps, by seeming to show what the near future will hold, rather than what it might hold (4) forcing the reader to think again about the ownership of information and the power it confers.
If Case procures information for people it is possible to consider him as a kind of librarian, albeit a rather hip one. But Case is a criminal. Not only does he steal information for profit, but prior to the beginning of the novel he has murdered three people for the small amounts of cash they carried. Case ought
43 to be an anti-hero but instead he appears as a victim of the machinations of
Wintermute, the artificial intelligence which is using various pawns to gain its freedom. lstvan Csicsery-Ronay states that the emotions of the characters are used by Wintermute (or by Gibson's plot) as "functions and commands" (5).
This makes explicit that the plot operates as a computer program of which
Wintermute (or Gibson) is the programmer able to predict that a certain command (or character) will behave in a certain way, and so the program will run. Wintermute is an A.I., and this is the only way in which he is capable of thinking of human behaviour. In a wider sense the metaphor of the computer program works for the whole novel: the characters are two dimensional ciphers which Gibson uses because he knows the reader (conversant with popular fiction) will be able to predict and understand their actions. In this way the characters, plot, author and audience are all part of one vast program.
Gibson Signals the mechanical status of his characters in a number of ways.
Molly has mirrored lenses implanted over her eyes. The eyes are traditionally thought of as the windows to a person's soul, and that Molly has shuttered these windows with pieces of shiny metal indicates that she is soulless, less than human, part of the machine, "The lenses were empty quicksilver, regarding him with an insect calm" (6). She also has razors implanted under her finger nails which she can extrude and withdraw at will. This feline ability also marks her as being less than human. Linda Lee's features were "reduced to a code" (7) and Armitage's eyes "were tiny monitor screens" (8).
44 It is Case who is most clearly marked as mechanical. His name implies an empty husk waiting to be filled (9) with mechanical parts or computer components and Case experiences this explicitly under the effects of drugs,
"His bones beneath the hazy envelope of flesh, were chromed and polished, the jOints lubricated with a film of silicone" (10). An earlier Gibson protagonist,
Johnny Mnemonic, also experiences this emptiness:
And that was the nature of my game, because I'd spent most of my life as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people's knowledge and then drained, spouting synthetic languages I'd never understand. A very technical boy. (11)
As his name suggests Johnny deals in memory. He has a memory which can be filled and erased in the same way a computer's memory can. What he is filled with is knowledge, but it is meaningless data to him; it is an artificial language which he doesn't understand. In these ways he mimics a computer.
Johnny calls himself a "technical boy" thus denying his own humanity. Case recognises this lack of humanity in others, but fails to ascribe it to himself:
Case had always taken it for granted that the real bosses, the kingpins in a given industry, would be both more and less than people ... He'd always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism. (12)
Case aspires to be both more and less than human. This involves leaving the flesh behind in order to become a disembodied entity in cyberspace.
Cyberspace might be described as a virtual reality version of the World Wide
Web, with blocks of information represented by differently coloured geometrical shapes around which an individual can navigate using a "deck" or computer terminal. It is in cyberspace that Case is really at home, and where he is
45 empowered:
It was good ice. Wonderful ice. Its patterns burned there ... Its rainbow pixel maze was the first thing he saw when he woke. He'd go straight to the deck, not bothering to dress, and jack in. He was cutting it. He was working. He lost track of days. (13)
Case pref!9rs living in cyberspace to living in the "real" world. At some points in the novel cyberspace is described as being as real or more real than the
"real" world, in the same way that mathematics is more real than sense perception in Nineteen Eighty-Four (see chapter three). His corporeal form, his flesh, is derisively termed "meat" and he thinks of it as a prison from which he escapes whilst in cyberspace. According to Plato it is the corruption of the flesh which separates us from the highest forms of knowledge. Therefore if we can leave behind the flesh or obtain mortality (by having our mind imprinted onto a computer like the Dixie Flatline, Case's mentor) then we will know everything (14).
Nature also exhibits an "accommodation of the machine". The opening sentence of the novel is, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (15). Neuromancer, another A.I., transports Case to a cyberspace beach where he can be with his dead girlfriend Linda Lee. Life on the beach is as real as "real" life but a beach is made of sand which is silicone which is the substance of microchips, and Case finally realises that the beach and everything on it is part of the machine:
... she pulled him down, to the meat, the flesh the cowboys mocked. It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that
46 only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read ... and then he was in her, effecting transmission of the old message. (16) like a computer Case cannot understand the data but his body responds to it in the same way that hardware responds to software: "blindly". The act of sex, even, is just another way for the machine to transmit the data which is contained in human DNA. The suggestion here is that God is a cosmic computer in which people are just bytes, or bits. This idea is borne out by a message from Wintermute to Case which reads:
CASE: 0000 000000000 00000000 (17)
Case is equal to a string of zeros which suggests both that he is a piece of binary code in a vast machine, and that he is fundamentally unimportant. His only value to the A.I. lies in the functions he performs, his ability to move through cyberspace, his "God given" talent, perhaps given by an artificial God.
As Armitage, the mouthpiece of Wintermute says, "We invented you" (18).
Whilst on Neuromancer's artificial beach Case experiences the turning pOint of the novel. By rejecting Linda Lee and the electronic paradise of the beach he fulfils the purpose Wintermute had "invented" him for. Wintermute and
Neuromancer are simultaneously destroyed and recreated as a single free electronic entity. Case's consciousness may have been on the beach, but his body was in the Villa Straylight's library, a place of which he has no understanding :
She'd passed many things that Case hadn't understood ... a
47 room filled with shelves of books, a million flat leaves of yellowing paper pressed between bindings of cloth or leather, the shelves marked at intervals by labels that followed a code of letters and numbers. (19)
This description of a decaying library in an "illiterate" future strongly resembles the passage in H.G. Wells's The time machine where the protagonist's understanding is again baffled by what is seen :
... at the first glance [it) reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it I presently recognised as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. (20)
For the time traveller the tale is wholly bleak, symbolised by his mistaking books for military artifacts. However, Gibson, by placing Case in a library at the turning point of the novel appears to be validating that institution. The library contains a whole world where the dead live on, and so performs a function recognisable as that of a library in preserving history and the thoughts of authors who may no longer be alive. The library contains information, the
Turing code "Neuromancer" and knowledge of the informational nature of the universe. It also contains a world of fiction, a world which Case would like to retreat to but which he ultimately rejects. Finally, this old fashioned paper library contains electronic information symbolising the probable future for libraries.
Memory and history are important elements in the novel. Case's memories of
Linda Lee are tapped by Neuromancer and are what allow him to be trapped
48 on the beach. The ending of the novel suggests that there are now two Cases: one lives on in the real world, and the other lives with Linda on the beach. The reader is even given a short "future history" of each implying that life goes on in both physical and electronic worlds. "Johnny Mnemonic" ends in a similar way, describing that he and Molly are partners. However, Molly's memories in
Neuromancer take back the "future history" of "Johnny Mnemonic" when she tells Case how Johnny was killed. Gibson recants his happy ending, and also, in a way, alters history, prefiguring his novel The difference engine.
Gibson alters history in another significant way. The addition of Neuromancer to the genre has altered the future of science fiction. Gibson overtly recognises the significance of both the past and the future of science fiction by his references to other genre works. Part three of Neuromancer is titled "Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne" and is set in a hollowed out cylinder in which artificial gravity holds buildings and people to its inside surface. This appears to be a reference to Verne's Journey to the centre of the Earth:
"Welcome to the Rue Jules Verne," Molly said. "If you have trouble walking, just look at your feet. The perspective's a bitch, if you're not used to it." (21)
Molly's statement accurately describes the disorientation a non-SF reader might feel on finding herself in Gibson's novel, whilst the perspective is just what would be enjoyed by someone who is "used to it". It is this disorientating perspective which we have said allows SF to be used so effectively to examine the content in which it was written (see chapter two). It is apt that it is Molly who should be giving the advice, after all she has appeared in SF before and
49 knows all about the perspective. Back in Freeside Case reflects on the difference between the two locales:
This was it, the local action. Not the high-gloss facade of the Rue Jules Verne, but the real thing. (22)
This could be interpreted as Gibson reflecting on the difference between cyberpunk science fiction and traditional science fiction. He seems to be saying that the "high-gloss facade" belongs to traditional science fiction, but this is an accusation more frequently levelled against cyberpunk. In these ways
Gibson makes memory and history relevant to both the form and the content of the novel, if not the whole genre.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a novel written in the cyberpunk tradition.
Stephenson pays homage to the history of the sub-genre by invoking the first sentence of Gibson's Neuromancer in the first sentence of his own novel. It appears as part of a dictionary definition explaining the novel's title:
snow n. ... 2.a. Anything resembling snow. b. The white specks on a television screen resulting from weak reception. (23)
This recalls Gibson's words likening the colour of the sky to that of a television screen. However, the "snow" in Stephenson's novel proves not to be, "Just static. White noise" (24) but to be a presentation of information:
"What was it?" Hiro says. "I just glimpsed some snow at the very end." "You saw the whole thing," Da5id says. "A fixed pattern of black-and-white pixels, fairly high-resolution. Just a few thousand ones and zeroes for me to look at." "So in other words, someone just exposed your optic nerve to, what, maybe a hundred thousand bytes of information," Hiro
50 says. "Noise is more like it." "Well all information looks like noise until you break the code," Hiro says. "Why would anyone show me information in binary code? I'm not a computer. I can't read a bitmap." (25)
If "snow" is really a representation of binary code then the first sentence of
Neuromanceris reanalysed in the mind of the reader. The informational nature of the universe is exposed from the first, if one has the "code" to break the reference. That the code should lie in the future of the genre is appropriate in light of the comments which science fiction makes about re-writing history and about using the future to understand the past or the present. The word
"Neuromancer" is also a code, which can be broken down into other codes; neuro for nerves, which carry information to the brain; necromancer, for the raising of the dead which occurs both in books (and libraries, in that dead peoples thoughts are preserved) and in the electronic realm; and New
Romancer, for 1980s popular culture. The importance of codes is reinforced by Stephenson. Not only does Hiro refer to it explicitly, but his name is "Hiro
Protagonist", a "code" for his role in the novel. Furthermore, the reader interprets the name Da5id as "David" as the former is unpronounceable. If the letters of the alphabet are labelled numerically backwards, with "a" being "26" and "z" being "1", then "v" represents "5". Yet another code. Binary is also a code. Da5id pOints out that he can't "break" it because he's not a computer.
However, it is revealed that on a subconscious level his mind can break binary code because he is a computer hacker. Therefore, according to Da5id's own comments he is a computer. In this way he is allied to the dehumanised
51 characters of Neuromancer and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In a larger arena the reader needs codes derived from other SF texts in order to understand the references in a specific SF text. For example, in Snow Crash L. Bob Rife's ship is called Enterprise as a reference to "Star Trek"; whilst the name L. Bob
Rife is a knowing nod towards the SF writer and founder of the church of
Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.
Computer programs which cause a computer to crash are called viruses because they operate in a similar way to a biological virus, causing a "crash" in the human body. This is the same kind of analogy which caused a computer to have a "memory". Roszak traces this trend back to the early 1960s:
... it became commonplace for people to speak not only of their genes but of their minds and private psyches as being "programmed". If it was not yet the case ... that cybernetic machines would become more like people, certainly people were coming to see themselves more and more as a kind of machine: a biocomputer. (26)
In the novel the virus "Snow Crash" has both a biological and an electronic
"format". Only a computer hacker can be infected by the electronic format, which is what happens to Da5id when he breaks the binary code. It is appropriate that Da5id should be infected by electronic information not only because of the comparison he makes of himself to a computer but because when he is infected he is inhabiting an electronic realm called the "Metaverse".
This is a place constructed out of information and is obviously the offspring of
Gibson's cyberspace. The biological version of the virus is disseminated as a street drug. The effect of the virus is to destroy the host's ability to speak a recognisable language. This situation is compared to the confusion of
52 language in the Biblical Babel which caused the Babylonians to, "stop building the tower because of an informational disaster - they couldn't talk to each other"
(27). Stephenson here recognises that the building blocks, literally, of information are, for the electronic mind, binary code, and for the human mind, language, just as Orwell had previously done in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Additionally, Babel before its "informational disaster" is described as a society capable of achieving the impossible. Therefore, it is comparable to Eden before the fall, a fall which was appropriately caused by eating from the tree of knowledge, another "informational disaster". In Gibson's Neuromancer the electronic beach is also an Eden, destroyed when Case is given the code word
"Neuromancer".
The virus isn't the only form of biological information. DNA also contains data, which is communicated via semen:
" ... from a modern standpoint, semen is just a carrier of information - both benevolent sperm and malevolent viruses. Enki's water - his semen, his data, his me - flow throughout the country of Sumer and cause it to flourish." (28)
In NeuromancerCase's semen is described as transmitting the "old message".
The "dissemination" of information has its root here in the word semen.
Stephenson makes a metaphorical connection between semen and water. This connection makes sense of the references to water in science fiction dealing with information. The electronic beach in Neuromancer consists not only of silicone but of water carrying data; in lain M. Banks's Feersum endjinn information is:
53 · .. a vast shining pipe on the surface of the plain, roaring like a waterfall. .. It reminded him of a river delta, where channels form, flood, silt and shift and islands seem to move, shuffled across the flood by the ever-weaving braid of waters. (29)
Information is the eponymous river in Nicola Griffith's Slow river, and a person is identified by an implant which is likened to a "tadpole" (30). Or perhaps information is likened to water only because it is said to "flow", or because information is thought to be vital to life (or democracy) in a similar way to water.
The Snow Crash virus is being disseminated by an information mogul called L.
Bob Rife through the electronic virus, the drug also called Snow Crash and through religion. He is disseminating it as a way of controlling people's minds through direct reprogramming. He first comes across the idea when trying to solve the "problem" of the individual's memory :
"... when I have a programmer working under me who is working with that information, he is wielding enormous power. Information is going into his brain. And it's staying there. It travels with him when he goes home at night. It gets all tangled up into his dreams, for Christ's sake. He talks to his wife about it. And, goddamn it, he doesn't have any right to that information. If I was running a car factory, I wouldn't let the workers drive the cars home ... " (31)·
The ownership and commodification of information (see chapter one) is taken to the logical extreme by Rife. Information can be owned in the same way that a car can be owned; in fact a memory can be owned in this way too. Because of the computerization of society Rife perhaps makes no distinction between information held in the memory of one of his computers and information held in the memory of one of his workers.
54 Stephenson recognises that information gives power and that systems like the
Metaverse (or the internet) whilst promoting the idea if increased access to information do not always deliver this, in the real world:
... there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. At any given time, most of them are making mud bricks or field stripping their AK-47s. Perhaps a billion of them have enough money to own a computer; these people have more money than all the others put together. (32)
As stated in chapter one the main barrier to electronic information provision on any significant scale in our own society at present is the cost to the individual, which makes a mockery of the claims that technology provides equality.
Stephenson continues to pare down the numbers of users to sixty millions who are, "a small, extremely literate power elite ... who understand that information is power and who control society" (33). Information technology is, then, the very opposite of a democratizing influence.
Hiro works freelance for the CIC gathering information. The CIC is the Central
Intelligence Corporation which was once the Library of Congress. Stephenson comments on the difficulty of defining what constitutes a library:
... even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form ... it approached the· point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency ... So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering. (34)
A library, as we recognised in chapter one, is not defined as a place but is defined by its service, providing information. We also recognised that a library
55 does not contain just books, but also multimedia information, and most information professionals agree that in the future information will all be held on computer, as the various digital library projects attest. However, Stephenson bursts the bubble, through his ingenuous narrator, Hiro, when he mentions the
CIA. The CIA is one of those organisations around which the paranoia which typifies the 1990s flourishes. Its involvement in various scandals has been suggested, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Watergate affair. The agency has been accused of covering up information, lying to the public, and even of killing to protect itself and the supposed interests of the
United States. That Stephenson should foresee such an organisation merging with a library, an institution devoted to freedom of information, produces a frisson of horror in the reader along with a delight at the irony. The suggestion that such a monstrous hybrid should then blatantly sell itself on the open market completes the irony.
It is Hiro's task to discover what Snow Crash is and why it is being disseminated. Most of the information he needs is provided by a computer program called "The Librarian". It, "looks like a pleasant, fiftyish, silver-haired, bearded man with bright blue eyes, wearing a V-neck sweater over a work shirt, with a coarsely woven, tweedy-looking wool tie" (35). This is an obvious stereotype of the male librarian, but as it is a computer program designed to resemble a person it is not surprising that the programmer resorted to an archetype. Perhaps the instantly recognisable form of "The Librarian" makes clients respond to him in a positive way. That Stephenson does not mean his
56 stereotype maliciously is evident from his description of The Librarian's prowess and limitations:
... he can move through the nearly infinite stacks of information in the library with the agility of a spider dancing across a vast web of cross-references. The Librarian is the only piece of CIC software that costs more than Earth; the only thing he can't do is think. (36)
"Earth" is a piece of geographical software, but its mention here fortuitously causes the reader to consider briefly that The Librarian costs more than the
Earth, an irony considering the general undervaluing of the library profession.
The Librarian is efficient and agile, learns from experience and "writes" himself, but he cannot think, understand metaphors, or summarize and his search results still contain irrelevant information (37). As Roszak says, "No database will ever be invented that answers the command: Show me everything that is true and relevant" (38). Despite this The Librarian is the real "Hiro" of the novel.
Cyberpunk fiction depicts a world in which information is of such vast importance that the informational nature of the whole world is constantly made evident. It Simultaneously rejects and fetishistically embraces information technology by representing it as dehumanising. Dehumanisation through information technology confers both animalistic/mechanistic and gOd-like features and abilities onto humanity. This betrays the conflicting feelings about information technology which both SF and society have, as yet, been unable to resolve.
57 REFERENCES
1. Clute, J. & P. Nicholls, eds. The encyclopedia of science fiction, 1993, p.288.
2. Suvin, Oar1 3. Wolmar1<, Jenny. Aliens and others, 1994, p.112. 4. Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan. Futuristic flu. In: Slusser, G. and T. Shippey, eds. Fiction 2000: cyberpunk and the future of the narrative, 1992, p.38. 5. Ibid., p.39. 6. Glbson, William. Neuromancer, 1993, p.41. 7. Ibid., p.15. 8. Ibid., p.250. 9. Slusser, George. The Frankenstein barrier. In: Slusser, G. & T. Shippey, eds. Fiction 2000: cyberpunk and the future of the narrative, 1992, p.66. 10. Gibson, ref. 6. p.184. 11. Gibson, William. Johnny Mnemonic. In: Alexander, Ric, ed. Cyber killers, 1997, p.354. 12. Gibson, ref. 6. p.243. 13. Ibid., p.76. 14. Roszak, Theodore. The cult of information, 1986, p.112. 15. Gibson, ref.6. p.9. 16. Ibid., p.285. 17. Ibid., p.227. 18. Ibid., p.39. 19. Ibid., p.247. 58 20. Wells, H.G. The time machine. In: Wells, H.G. Three novels, 1963, p.55. 21. Gibson, ref. 6. p.148. 22. Ibid., p.174. 23. Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash, 1993, p.1. 24. Ibid., p.68. 25. Ibid. 26. Roszak, ref.14, p.18. 27. Stephenson, ref. 23. p.101. 28. Ibid., p.241. 29. Banks, lain M. Feersum endjinn, 1994, p.164. 30. Griffith, Nicola. Slow river, 1995, p.4. 31. Stephenson, ref. 23. pp.1 07 -108. 32. Ibid., p.25. 33. Ibid., p.379. 34. Ibid., p.21. 35. Ibid., p.99. 36. Ibid., p.100. 37. Ibid., p.103. 38. Roszak, ref. 14. p.164. 59 CHAPTER 5 : PRESERVATION In this chapter I will be discussing the theme of preservation of information, which has been identified as a major function of the library (see chapter one). The texts I will be using are Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Waiter M. Miller, Jr. 's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Both novels were written during the 1950s and represent a post apocalyptic society. Fahrenheit 451 is one of a small number of SF novels which are widely known among readers of mainstream literature and my discussion will focus on this text. I will treat A canticle for Leibowitz as a secondary text. It exhibits some features which usefully develop the arguments made in Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury's novel is famed for being about burning books (the title refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire), but really it is a novel about the importance of books in our lives and the preservation of books. The image of burning books is a dramatic and provoking one, one which the novel is shackled to by the popular imagination. When the novel was published in 1954 the memory of book burning by Nazis during World War Two was fresh enough in the public mind for the novel to be associated with the condemnation of fascism. It should come as no surprise, then, that Fran~ois Truffaut's 1966 film version of the novel should star Austrian actor Oskar Werner as the protagonist Montag. Werner was an exceedingly Aryan looking actor and this, twinned with his Germanic accent and black SS type uniform, makes the allusion to Nazism evident. Archibald MacLeish (see chapter one) allies the three elements of 60 book burning, Nazism and an end to democracy. Fahrenheit 451 (and the library and information profession) is not ostensibly about Nazism, but it is, at least partly, about remembering the past to improve the future. With this in mind the appropriation of Nazi imagery is highly appropriate. Montag is a "fireman". Bradbury uses the term in an ironic manner as the job of a fireman is not, as we would understand it, to put out fires but to burn books. Clarisse McClellan, a young woman who Montag meets, questions the accepted wisdom that firemen have always started fires and states that they once put fires out. The reader then realises that this is our own future which is portrayed, but with history altered to protect the status quo as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This faked history goes as far as to name. Benjamin Franklin as the first fireman. At the end of the novel, when Montag escapes the city, he sees his own capture and death faked on television for historical record. The altered history cannot be challenged by the population as books are forbidden. Books can be said to function as the memory of a society, so that in this society where books are banned the population become amnesiacs. This failure of memory is represented by Montag's wife Mildred. The morning after she has tried to kill herself she can't remember having done it, and when Montag asks her where they first met she can't recall. Bradbury shows this failure of memory to occur because Mildred is subconsciously filled with unhappy memories, and further filled and over-filled with her diet of worthless radio and television. This identification of a person as a receptacle for memory 61 and information prefigures its use in the works of William Gibson. When Mildred has a blood transfusion after her overdose Montag considers its possible effects: Someone else's blood there. If only someone else's flesh and brain and memory. If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry-cleaner's and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning. (1) But this seems to be what has happened. In the morning Mildred can't remember what happened, is very happy and very hungry, symbolising that she has been emptied and is now ready to be refilled. Both her ears are, "plugged with electronic bees" (2) (miniature radios) which are replacing her unhappy memories with happy, though meaningless, new ones. In her process of having her memories cleansed Mildred has had one type of liquid exchanged for another: her stomach is pumped and then she is given a blood transfusion. The stomach pumping is undertaken by two anonymous technicians who come to the house during the night, and who claim that they undertake the same procedure many times every night, suggesting that Mildred's state of mind is a common one caused by the absence of books, and that the government knows and is partiCipating in secretive controlling measures. The stomach pumping operation is described thus: They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echOing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there. It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil. Did it drink of the darkness? Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years? (3) 62 If we assume that what is being removed is Mildred's memory ("old time", "the years") then memory is likened to water, albeit stagnant in Mildred's case. In a number of examples (see previous chapter) we have observed that water is a metaphor for information. This is also true in Fahrenheit 451, as memory is made up of information. The metaphor is even more explicit in Montag's description of his wife's habit of listening to the radio at night: And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time. (4) Not only is the information likened to water, but to an ocean which will bear you away and drown you, symbolising information overload. The name Guy Montag represents the character's role in the novel. "Guy" suggests an ordinary man, whilst "Montag" suggests "montage", something made up of parts, "Montag was cut in half. He felt his chest chopped down and split apart" (5). He is split into two parts: the fire half of him which loves to burn; and the water half of him which wants to read. However, the fire is not always the negative element and water the positive element. As we have already seen too much water at too great a pace is as bad as too little water. It is not until the end of the novel that Montag learns that fire can be a positive force as well as a negative one : 63 · .. a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him. It was not burning; it was warming! · .. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take. (6) Montag's friend Faber has criticized the mass media because it does not give a person time to think. This is the kind of information flow which drowns Mildred. Montag compares the frantic flow (of the mass media) to the gentle flow (representing books) of the river which helps him to escape the city: · .. the river was mild and leisurely ... The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood. (7) Therefore there are two kinds of water, the buoyant and the engulfing; and two kinds of fire, the destructive and the creative. Creative fire is represented by the Phoenix. The actions of the Phoenix in destroying itself only to rise up again are compared to the actions of humanity. Humanity destroys itself in war only to recover and start another war. At the beginning of the novel the Phoenix is described as the emblem on Montag's uniform, symbolising the folly of destroying books. At many paints in the novel Bradbury describes books as birds, for example, "A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering" (8). In a number of ways books are linked to the image of the Phoenix: they are likened to birds; they are specifically likened to pigeons of which the dove is a kind, symbolising peace, the opposite of the destruction which the Phoenix represents in one phase of its existence; and the Phoenix's rebirth represents the rebirth of knowledge which will come about from the memorisation of the burned books 64 and which, it is hoped, will eventually break the cycle. That fire should come to represent hope seems, at first consideration, paradoxical. However, the men who Montag meets when he escapes the city have learned that books in paper form are too vulnerable to destruction. For this reason they themselves burn books, but only after the contents have been memorised. This activity is similar to the committing of information to computer memory which digital library projects perform, and in both cases the preservation of the fragile book is part of the reason, the other reason being improved access. David Ketterer states that in some SF the destruction of the world by fire is a desirable happening, because only through this destruction can the New Jerusalem (a utopia) predicted in Revelation be created (9). In this way the fire of the Phoenix or of the apocalypse is truly creative. Owing to the destruction of the world by fire books are memorised. In the novel, once outside the city the memory is considered inviolate, an opinion not endorsed by other SF writers like Orwell. The books are passed on from one person to the next down the generations as an oral tradition to preserve the information they contain. It is congruous with Bradbury's comments about the damaging effects of technology such as television, radio and cars that even apparently benign technologies are destroyed. The book may be the ideal piece of technology, but even that must be destroyed to ensure the survival of human knowledge. 65 The negative aspects of technology are often signposted by Bradbury by the use of the metaphor of the insect. The Mechanical Hound which tracks criminals by their scent and then injects them with a lethal poison is superficially likened to a dog, but the description of it likens it to, "a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison" (10). The sound from the radio is that of a mosquito or a bee; the pOlice helicopters are butterflies; all cars are beetles; and the city itself is a hive. E.M. Forster in his short story "The machine stops" also abhors a world in which people live in "cells" like those found in a bee hive. The purpose of the metaphor is to liken the mind of the society to a hive mind, where there is no individual thought only a collective consciousness which is reduced to the lowest common denominator, or the, "paste pudding norm" (11) as Captain Beatty (bee-tty) puts it. That this insectoid way of life is damaging to knowledge is revealed when two of the threats to books are listed as, "moths" and "silver-fish" (12). Captain Beatty claims that the hive mentality evolved from a desire for equality and that books were first burned out of a sense of political correctness. Thus censorship was ordained, not by the government, but by the people. Freedom of information is essential for democracy (see chapter one). It is ironic that democracy should have allowed the censorship to occur, but that once the censorship has occurred the conditions which allow democracy to exist are removed. Owing to the distrust of technology engendered by the joint problems of destruction and mass communication, the holding of information in the mind is 66 deemed to be the ideal means of preservation: "The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?" "Here," Montag touched his head. "Ah," Granger smiled and nodded. "What's wrong? Isn't that all right?" said Montag. "Better than all right; perfect!" (13) Granger's name, meaning a kind of farmer, and the repudiation of all technology for a rural lifestyle and traditions give the ending of the novel a distinctly pastoral atmosphere. Such an apparently Luddite sensibility would appear contrary to the nature of SF. However, Darko Suvin identifies the pastoral as the closest genre to SF, saying that its approach, "relates to SF as alchemy does to chemistry and nuclear physics : an early try in the right direction with insufficient foundations" (14). In this pastoral world the memoriser of the book comes to embody that book: "Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?" "One. A man named Harris of Youngstown." "Montag." Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. "Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes ... " (15) The knowledge is incorporated into the flesh as well as the mind. Men become, "bums on the outside, libraries inside" (16). People are dehumanised as they were in Neuromancer in order that they become receptacles for information. However, in Fahrenheit 451 the body houses the information, whilst in Neuromancer the body is left behind in order to inhabit an electronic and mechanical world of information. Bradbury uses the image of Montag as a child attempting to hold sand in a sieve to represent the human struggle to keep information in the memory. Sand suggests computer technology and the 67 world of cyberpunk, connecting the two approaches to embodiment through the nature of information and through the pastoral and technological connotations of the word "memory". Carol McGuirk identifies Fahrenheit 451 and A canticle for Leibowitz as belonging to a sub-genre of SF known as humanism, whose principal identifying characteristics are the recognition of humans as the catalyst for change rather than technology (reflecting interestingly upon the embodiment issue), and the resulting heroism of the protagonists. This is appropriate in light of the comments made in chapter two about the concern of SF being humanity rather than science. She also notes that humanism has been cited as the ideal of SF in the arguments against the value of cyberpunk, and that humanist SF is the sub-genre whose status has been most eroded by the popularity of cyberpunk (17). The image of the dove or pigeon and the references to parts of the Bible bring Biblical stories and images to the mind of the reader. The pastoral world at the end of the novel invokes Eden; the many voices reciting books invokes Babel (a reference which is strongly reinforced in the Truffaut film by the use of multiple voices laid over one another); and Montag's closing reference to a tree which heals suggests the tree of knowledge, and the power of information to educate humanity despite its destructive impulses. Add to this the black cobra which sucks the evil memories (knowledge) from Mildred (Eve) and the novel contains a powerful range of Biblical imagery. I have stated that the insect imagery in the novel represents Bradbury's fear of the hive mind. Whilst I still feel this is true David Ketterer suggests that because a plague of locusts was 68 one of the seven disasters which occurs during the apocalypse, insects are a powerful image in apocalyptic literature (18). I have also stated that water represents information, but Ketterer comments that water in the Bible is a symbol of chaos and that the sea is destroyed by the apocalypse to symbolise the end of chaos (19). This chaos refers to the type of water which drowns, the water of the mass media and information overload. These seas will be destroyed in Bradbury's apocalypse and replaced by the tame waters represented in the book. That unorganised information should be seen to be such an evil that it should be destroyed by the apocalypse gives the institution of the library supreme justification for its continued existence, as the organisation of information is one of its prime functions, as stated in chapter one. All these images appear in other SF dealing with information and reveal the importance with which information is regarded in respect of achieving a perfect informational state or utopia. Use of Biblical images is common in Miller's A canticle for Leibowitz, as the story focuses on a religious order which considers the preservation of information to be its holy duty. But this high minded aim is frequently frustrated by human nature and deflated by Miller's use of irony. The novel is divided into three sections each six hundred years apart. In the first part a nuclear holocaust has occurred. Many people have blamed information for the destruction and so set about "the simplification", burning books and scholars. Leibowitz was a technician who decided to join holy orders and made it the aim of his abbey to smuggle and memorise as many books as possible in order to 69 ------ save the information as in Fahrenheit 451. This information makes up the "Memorabilia" which the "present day" abbey continues to protect at the opening of the novel. The amount of information lost during the simplification means that the monks find any "pre-deluge" writings difficult to understand. For instance, Brother Francis finds a fallout shelter during his Lenten fast in the desert. He has learned that "fallout" is the name of a terrible monster whose fearsome abilities are "recorded fact" (20). Other deflations of the monk's grand purpose include the preservation of betting slips, shopping lists, and other trivia, and Brother Francis's fifteen year long work of creating an illuminated copy of a circuit diagram which happens to have been drawn by Leibowitz. Ultimately this copy leads to Brother Francis's death. The irony here lies in the traditional martyr's death being caused by a document which is totally inscrutable to the monks and the value, or otherwise, of which they can only guess. The reader only perceives the irony of the monk's preservation policy when the narrator "innocently" mentions some item with which the reader is familiar. For the remainder of the time the policy appears to be a sensible one: if one does not know the potential value of the material then preserve it just in case (see chapter one). Roszak states that for information to become knowledge it must be well organised and its veracity must be agreed on by a broad consensus in society. Neither of these conditions are met for the Memorabilia as held by the monks in the first part of the novel. Miller recognises that knowledge becomes meaningless "noise" without the context of the society in which it was created 70 to enable one to "decode" it: It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now, was as inscrutable to the monks in some instances as it would be to an illiterate wild-boy from the hills; this knowledge was empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. (22) However, by the second part of the novel a large enough literate population exists to allow a consensus to be formed, at least amongst the academic community, and the Memorabilia has been organised into a library, albeit in the basement of the abbey. The placement of the library in the basement of the abbey engenders questions of access, as it is many miles of dangerous travel from the centres of learning. Access is reduced geographically and topographically according to Kevin Harris's list of barriers to access (see chapter one, p.7). That the library is placed in the basement does not reflect on the importance the monks place on the information, because nothing is more important to them, but it does reflect on the importance of the library in the western world, which is often marginalised. The monk's interests do not lie in access but in preservation, the two issues most often in conflict in modern librarianship: To Brother Librarian, whose task in life was the preservation of books, the principle reason for the existence of books was that they might be preserved perpetually. Usage was secondary, and to be avoided if it threatened longevity. (23) This is an unfortunate stereotype of the old-fashioned unhelpful librarian who has lost sight of the purpose of preservation, which is that the information preserved should be used, otherwise preservation is pointless. Ranganathan's 71 First Law is that, "books are for use" (24) and that no factor should obstruct usage, even preservation, which is listed as sixth out of seven library purposes (25). Access clearly takes precedence over preservation. For a situation where free and equal access to information exists to develop, potential library users must know that the information exists and is available to be consulted, a condition which is not met by the abbey: "We haven't withheld anything." "You haven't withheld it; but you sat on it so quietly nobody knew it was here ... " (26) This constitutes a barrier to information which libraries are increasingly meeting through the adoption of marketing techniques. The accusation above, levelled against the abbot Dom Paulo by the scholar Thon Taddeo, is truthful. However, it does not take into account the Abbot's motives. He does not sit on the information out of ignorance, laziness or perversity. He sits on the information because he has a knowledge of the power of information and a fear of the uses to which the information might be put. The church has these fears, whilst the scholars do not, because the monks do not have the pride of the scholars and, moreover, they know of and believe in the story of the fall of mankind after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The fear is of a fourth catastrophe : the first the fall from Eden; the second the Flood; the third the nuclear holocaust; the fourth being a repeat of the third, and so in into infinity. The fear of information being used for violent purposes is expressed through Dom Paulo's fear of the abbey being taken over to be used as a military garrison in the clan wars which afflict the area. The concept of the library being taken over by soldiers and their equipment mirrors the image of the library in 72 The Time Machine and the fate of the Library of Congress in Snow Crash. The cyclical nature of destruction and rebirth is as evident in this novel as it was in Fahrenheit 451. It is articulated through the three part structure of the novel: each part features the character of the Wandering Jew and each part ends with a description of buzzards feeding, symbolising the cycle of life and death (27). The buzzards could also be said to represent humanity, scavenging the knowledge of dead civilizations but never managing to create anything which does not similarly feed on death. The conclusion of the novel, set in a post-industrial society, has the nuclear holocaust occurring and a selection of the monks, together with some children, leaving with the Memorabilia, for another planet to start a new society. This is a deeply peSSimistic ending, in contrast to that of Fahrenheit 451, as the inclusion of the Memorabilia suggests that humanity will never escape from the cycle which compels it to destroy itself. Ketterer, however, sees hope in the tale. In his interpretation several scenes hint that humanity will transcend its destructive state. He cites the instance in the first part of the novel when Brother Francis will not lie to the abbot and say that he imagined the Wandering Jew. For this the abbot punishes him with a ruler. Each time he is hit he replies, "Oeo gratias!" in thanks for the lesson in humility. Ketterer comments: The translation of pain into a formalized repetition, a "painful litany", bears on the over-all theme, man's apparently helpless involvement in a seemingly endless cycle of destruction and reconstruction. By means of a sufficient repetition, a token of horror, mantra-like, may result in some form of transcendence. The "canticle" of Miller's title, a repetitive hymn of praise, allows 73 for such healing possibilities. (28) This interpretation relies upon those who will be in power in a society learning the lesson in humility in the way that Brother Francis does, which does not seem a likely occurrence in light of the reactions of Thon Taddeo to the story of the Fall from Eden later in the novel. However, the monks departure for another world in the final part of the book may provide the opportunity of teaching that society to learn from past mistakes. Ketterer locates his hope on the image of the shoreline which closes the novel which, he says, "from Wells to Ballard signifies new possibilities and new worlds" (29). Sands and waters are, as has been noted both in this chapter and in chapter four, representations of information and that this environment should be inhabited by more scavengers, sharks, which are described as, "very hungry" (30) does not leave the reader with a positive impression of humanity's future. It is made clear, however, that information is not in itself to blame for man's fall. Leibowitz is reported to have seen that, "great knowledge, while good, had not saved the world" (31), and that this is his reason for turning from worshipping knowledge to worshipping God. Rather, information is a tool which is used by humanity either for good or for evil, "It was no curse, this knowledge, unless perverted by Man, as fire had been ... "(32). Prometheus stole fire from the gods for the benefit of mankind. Mary Shelley makes use of the myth of Prometheus as a comparison for the forbidden knowledge which Victor uses to animate his creature in Frankenstein. Knowledge, like fire, is misused. Fire destroys knowledge (book burning) and knowledge creates the fires of the 74 (nuclear) apocalypse. In this same way knowledge was stolen in the Garden of Eden and led to the fall, and all subsequent falls. Information is saved from the fires of the book burners through the memorization achieved by the monks. When Brother Francis visits the Pope the Pope comments on the work of the monks: " ... Without your work, the world's amnesia might well be total. As the Church, Mysticum Christi Corpus, is a body, so has your Order served as an organ of memory in that Body ... " (33) As the Order is described as the memory to the body of the Church, so we see the relationship of the library to society. The continuing existence of human learning and its preservation and organisation is therefore validated despite the knowledge that it will lead to ongoing destruction and suffering. The themes of the novels discussed in this chapter reveal a love of the book and a corresponding fear of technology. Information, however, is a tool which can be used for either good or evil (in the same way that technology can be said to be a tOOl). Whilst Bradbury believes that humanity will ultimately respect knowledge, Miller is much more pessimistic, representing no escape from the cycle of misuse and destruction. Miller particularly displays an understanding of issues relating to the information profession : the crisis between access and preservation, and the possible responsibilities of the information professional. 75 REFERENCES 1. Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451, 1957, p.23. 2. Ibid., p.25. 3. Ibid., p.21. 4. Ibid., p.19. 5. Ibid., p.20. 6. Ibid., p.140. 7. Ibid., p.135. 8. Ibid., p.42. 9. Kettere r, Davld. New worlds for old, 1974, p.7. 10. Bradbury, ref. 1 , p.30. 11. Ibid., p.58. 12. Ibid., p.136. 13. Ibid., p.145. 14. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of science fiction, 1979, p.9. 15. Bradbury, ref. 1 , p.145. 16. Ibid., p.147. 17. McGuirk, Carol. The "New" Romancers: science fiction innovators from Gernsback to Gibson. In: Slusser, George & Tom Shippey, eds. Fiction 2000 : cyberpunk and the future of narrative, 1992, pp. 117-118. 18. Ketterer, ref.9, p.6. 19. Ibid., p.7. 20. Miller, Jr., Waiter M. A canticle for Leibowitz, 1993, p.23. 21. Roszak, Theodore. The cult ofinformation, 1986, pp. 130-132. 22. Miller, ref. 20, pp. 75-76. 76 23. Ibid., p.210. 24. Ranganathan, S.R. Library manual, 1960, p.8. 25. Ibid., p.21. 26. Miller, ref. 20, p.239. 27. Ketterer, ref. 9, p.144. 28. Ibid., p.142. 29. Ibid., p.147. 30. Miller, ref. 20, p.356. 31. Ibid., p.199. 32. Ibid., p.303. 33. Ibid., p.123. 77 CONCLUSION There are a number of issues of importance in the library and information profession, but the issue which every other returns to is the importance of access to information and the reliance of democracy on this precondition. This subject is treated thoroughly by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, though he focuses as much on the reliability of the information as the access to it, though reduced access is implied by the society he represents. The reliability or otherwise of information held in libraries is not one with which the library and information profession often engages. There is more than one purpose or function of SF as literature, but the preeminent one is that SF reflects the context in which it was written. SF does represent a number of the issues surrounding the library and information profession, and whilst it does portray information very thoroughly as vital for life and even as the material of which the universe is constructed, what is most apparent from this study is that SF does not represent the library itself in many instances. It is disconcerting that a genre which is said to represent the SOCiety in which it was written ignores that institution of society which is purported to perform the important function of maintaining democracy. Where the library is portrayed it is most often as a relic of a bygone age, as in The Time Machine and Neuromancer, or as having been superseded by electronic information as in Neuromancer again or in Snow Crash. That SF wishes to emphasise the importance of information whilst de-emphasising the importance of the library 78 profession shows that the genre does not have as firm a grasp upon the role of the library as might have been hoped. It seems that superficially the genre espouses the goal of free access as desirable, whilst it removes significance from the profession which supports this goal. In light of this it must be concluded that libraries are not portrayed positively in SF, although th¥ ~ functions that they perform are. (Exceptions to this conclusion are found in the engagement of Miller to the issues of access and preservation, and the use Stephenson makes of The Librarian.) The other main conclusion of this study relates to the portrayal of technology as it relates to information. As was expected humanist SF portrayed technology negatively while cyberpunk SF portrayed technology positively. However, close analysis reveals that cyberpunk has reservations about the dehumanising effects of information technology and is ultimately unable to resolve the ambiguity of its depiction. However, as this representation accurately mirrors the ambiguous feelings SOCiety has towards information technology, cyberpunk can be said to be reflecting the context in which it was written. 79 BIBLIOGRAPHY Aldiss, Brian W. Trillion year spree: the history of science fiction. London: Victor Gollancz, 1986. Alexander, Ric, ed. Cyber-killers. London: Orion, 1997. Asimov,lssac. Robot visions. London: V.G.S.F., 1991. Aubrey, Crispin & Paul Chilton, eds. ~!neteen Eighty-Four in 1984 : autonomy, control and communication. London:';Comedia Publishing Group, 1983. Banks, lain. Feersum endjinn. London: Orbit, 1994. Banks, lain. The state of the art. London: Orbit, 1991. Bear, Greg. Strength of stones. London: V.G.S.F., 1988. Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. London: Corgi, 1957. Broderick, Damien. Reading by starlight: postmodern science fiction. London: Routledge, 1995. Brunner, John. The shockwave rider. London: Methuen, 1988. elute, John & Peter Nicholls, eds. 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