DOCSLIB.ORG

Architecture”: Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’S Parties

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Architecture”: Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’S Parties Chapter Six 6.William Gibson’s “Architecture”: Virtual Light, idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties William Gibson’s latest publication, All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999), serves as a “prequel” to the two previous novels, Virtual Light (1993) and idoru (1996). Its significance lies in the fact that all three seem to share many common motifs and themes, even characters, without being sequential. Gibson, when interviewed about the literary intentions behind writing All Tomorrow’s Parties, stated: Without my having intended it, it seemed that both Virtual Light and idoru emerged with more than the usual number of inexplicable connectors hanging off them. They were clearly connected to each other, but there was something that suggested that both of them were connected even more profoundly to some nonexistent third. They sort of triangulated on a nonexistent book – All Tomorrow’s Parties is it.1 This sort of intertextual hybridity, fuelled by the recycling of themes explored in the three novels, is also reflected in their narrative structures, which follow a layered pattern of storylines and character formations. Each novel is comprised of a number of separate story plots, appearing in a serial form and developing in parallel, before intersecting and fusing into a cognitive whole where the voids and hollow spaces of narration are filled with the valid explanations and connections required. The process of structuring and restructuring data and images finds these novels caught up in a mechanism of compulsive repetition, giving rise to what Anthony Vidler calls an “uncanny sense of déjà vu” (1992: 13). The depictions of digital technologies and the cyberspace representations, which were so 1 Therese Littleton. ‘Going Random with William Gibson: An Interview’. On line at: www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/23040 (consulted 20.10.1999). PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.pdffactory.com 176 Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson evident in Gibson’s previous novels, and especially in ‘The Sprawl Trilogy’, seem in the last three novels to be going through a process of restoration. The evolution of all the motifs into different patterns and textures of representation makes them converge into a new mode of communication, which is reflected in the visual linguistic codes of the diverse architectural forms appearing in the novels. Such an interest, as Ross Farnell explains, marks a transition to “more “organic” structures […] in relation to the changing science fiction aesthetic of the early nineties, where after a decade of dominance, cyberpunk was on the decline” (1998: 459). When referring to Gibson’s Neuromancer, one of the key novels in the ‘Sprawl Trilogy’, Scott Bukatman states: “Neuromancer itself represents a “consensual hallucination” – an abstraction and reduction of the complexities of cybernetic culture to a kind of reckless, but sensible, cognitive experience” (1993: 152). Gibson’s novels are viewed as literary manifestations of the revolutionary cybercultural scene of the eighties and they constituted a radical way of describing the evolving contemporary socio-political and cultural reality (cyberpunk). In other words, his ‘Sprawl Trilogy’ represents cyberpunk’s speculative and contemplative nature in its descriptions of the alienation but also the fear of an anticipated future of cyborg and posthuman identities engaged in a quest for information control through the computer terminal. However, the acceleration of information technology in the nineties facilitated the fusion of cyberpunk aesthetics with everyday reality, which resulted in diminishing the textual potential of its narrative. This left behind, as Gibson notes, “a pop culture flavour”(in Farnell 1998: 460), since more emphasis was placed on the staging of the virtual spectacle due to the marketability of cyberpunk’s cyberspatial image power, making it seem as an empty and substanceless cultural signifier. Though regarded as limitless, cyberspace is endowed with a particular architectural quality, since it is nothing more than a ‘representational’ construct of the programmes and data of the world. Even though it initially appears to be pure image, cyberspace is a digital assemblage of layer upon layer of codes and mathematical calculations. Though located within the arbitrary realm of the computer medium, cyberspace is endowed with certain architectural qualities, since it is described as a construct built out of textually tangible (typed on the PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.pdffactory.com.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • ENGL 279 Course Title: Science Fiction and Dystopic Literature Units
    Course name: ENGL 279 Course title: Science Fiction and Dystopic Literature Units: 3 Course Description: This course is designed to increase students’ knowledge of the literary genre known as Science Fiction. Emphasis will be on the study of literature--novels and short fiction--that depicts our future world, visionary scientific endeavor, and conflicts between humans, aliens, and sentient technology. Students will study the history, exciting contemporary trends, and the relevant contemporary issues in Science Fiction, including dystopia vs. utopia, artificial intelligence, current theory concerning technology, cloning and physical science, human psychology in a futuristic environment, and the rise of Cyberpunk and new Alternate Reality literature within the genre. Prerequisites: Completion of ENGL 101 Course Objectives: l. Analyze the role of literature as a means of reflecting and shaping thought and behavior. 2. Recognize and employ literary terminology and the language of literary criticism. 3. Identify, interpret, and compare and contrast specific leitmotifs and character types of the Science Fiction genre. 4. Practice critical reading and writing skills. 5. Conduct research and synthesize material from outside the given text in developing a written or oral project. 6. Recognize the attributes that make literary works universal and timeless, as well as unique to certain genres. 7. Demonstrate the ability to discuss literature using relevant support from the text. 8. Evaluate a literary work objectively, being able to understand and analyze critical responses to the works read. Course Content: I. In discussing the roots of many essential elements of Science Fiction, the instructor will guide students in: A. Distinguishing the important archetypes of Science Fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • The Brain in a Vat in Cyberpunk: the Persistence of the Flesh
    Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 35 (2004) 287–305 www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc The brain in a vat in cyberpunk: the persistence of the flesh Dani Cavallaro 1 Waterside Place, London NW1 8JT, UK Abstract This essay argues that the image of the brain in a vat metaphorically encapsulates articu- lations of the relationship between the corporeal and the technological dimensions found in cyberpunk fiction and cinema. Cyberpunk is concurrently concerned with actual and imaginary metamorphoses of biological organisms into machines, and of mechanical appara- tuses into living entities. Its recurring representation of human beings hooked up to digital matrices vividly recalls the envatted brain activated by electric stimuli, which Hilary Putnam has theorized in the context of contemporary epistemology. At the same time, cyberpunk imaginatively raises the same epistemological questions instigated by Putnam. These concern the cognitive processes associated with the collusion of human and mechanical creatures, and related metaphysical and ethical issues spawned by such processes. As a philosophical trope, the brain in a vat would appear to pivot on the notion of a disembodied subject consisting of sheer mentation. However, literary and cinematic interpretations of the image in cyberpunk persistently foreground the obdurate materiality of the flesh—often in its most grisly and grotesque incarnations. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Brains in vats; Materiality; Disembodiment; Cyborgs; Cyberpunk What is here proposed is that the brain in a vat image, an important trope in contemporary epistemology, is also an intriguing metaphor for one of cyberpunk’s pivotal preoccupations: namely, the relationship between the body and technology.
    [Show full text]
  • The Disappearing Human: Gnostic Dreams in a Transhumanist World
    religions Article The Disappearing Human: Gnostic Dreams in a Transhumanist World Jeffrey C. Pugh Department of Religious Studies, Elon University, Elon, NC 27244-2020, USA; [email protected] Academic Editor: Noreen Herzfeld Received: 25 January 2017; Accepted: 18 April 2017; Published: 3 May 2017 Abstract: Transhumanism is dedicated to freeing humankind from the limitations of biological life, creating new bodies that will carry us into the future. In seeking freedom from the constraints of nature, it resembles ancient Gnosticism, but complicates the question of what the human being is. In contrast to the perspective that we are our brains, I argue that human consciousness and subjectivity originate from complex interactions between the body and the surrounding environment. These qualities emerge from a distinct set of structural couplings embodied within multiple organ systems and the multiplicity of connections within the brain. These connections take on different forms, including structural, chemical, and electrical manifestations within the totality of the human body. This embodiment suggests that human consciousness, and the intricate levels of experience that accompany it, cannot be replicated in non-organic forms such as computers or synaptic implants without a significant loss to human identity. The Gnostic desire to escape our embodiment found in transhumanism carries the danger of dissolving the human being. Keywords: Singularity; transhumanism; Merleau-Ponty; Kurzweil; Gnosticism; AI; emergence; technology 1. Introduction In 1993, the mathematician and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge gave a talk at the Vision 21 symposium sponsored by NASA introducing the idea of the Singularity, an evolutionary moment when we would create the capacity for superhuman intelligence that would transcend the human and take us into the posthuman world (Vinge 1993).
    [Show full text]
  • Oblivion's Edge Jeremy Strandberg
    Lawrence University Lux Lawrence University Honors Projects 5-12-1998 Oblivion's Edge Jeremy Strandberg Follow this and additional works at: https://lux.lawrence.edu/luhp Part of the Fiction Commons, and the Liberal Studies Commons © Copyright is owned by the author of this document. Recommended Citation Strandberg, Jeremy, "Oblivion's Edge" (1998). Lawrence University Honors Projects. 53. https://lux.lawrence.edu/luhp/53 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by Lux. It has been accepted for inclusion in Lawrence University Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of Lux. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ivion's Jeremy Strandberg Submitted for Honors in Independent Study 5/12/98 Prof. Candice Bradley, Advisor The year is 2042 ... ( Tech no Io g y i s a part of us ... High tech is stylish and chic. Computers have crept into every aspect of life, and billions of users are jacked brain frrst into the internet. Biosculpting can make people look any way they desire. Cybernetic implants-eyes, ears, and prosthetic limbs-break the limits of the human form. Biotechnology feeds billions while saving the lives of millions more. The train from New York to Miami takes under three hours, and there's a bustling tourist trade on Luna. The Veil has thinned ... Supernatural and paranormal phenomena are on the rise. There has been a resurgence of spirituality and superstition. Meditation is taught in grade school Psychic powers are accepted as fact, and most people have encountered a ghost or spirit at least once. Alchemists and fringe scientists are kept on salary by corporations.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogue 147: Science Fiction
    And God said: DELETE lines One to Aleph. LOAD. RUN. And the Universe ceased to exist. Then he pondered for a few aeons, sighed, and added: ERASE. It never had existed. For David Catalogue 147: Science Fiction Bromer Booksellers 607 Boylston Street, at Copley Square Boston, MA 02116 P: 617-247-2818 F: 617-247-2975 E: [email protected] Visit our website at www.bromer.com n the Introduction to Catalogue 123, which contained the bulk of a In his fifty years as a bookman, David naturally recognized the signifi- science fiction collection he had assembled, David Bromer noted cance of the early rarities, the books that laid the groundwork for the that “science fiction is a robust genre of literature, not allowing authors of the modern era. He was pleased to discover, when cata- one to ever complete a collection.” The progressive nature of sci- loguing Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Comical History of the States and enceI and the social fabric that it impacts means that the genre itself Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and the Sun, that its author de- has to be fluid, never quite getting pinned down like a specimen under scribed a personal music player–anticipating in the year 1687 the cre- glass. ation of the Walkman and iPod three centuries later. In this regard, it is entirely fitting that David has been drawn to science Ultimately, science fiction primed the human imagination to accom- fiction as a reader, and as a collector. He is a scientist by training, hav- plish what is perhaps its greatest achievement: the exploration of ing earned a PhD in Metallurgy from MIT and worked in research fields space and the mission to the moon in 1969.
    [Show full text]
  • Mirrorshade Women: Feminism and Cyberpunk
    Mirrorshade Women: Feminism and Cyberpunk at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century Carlen Lavigne McGill University, Montréal Department of Art History and Communication Studies February 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies © Carlen Lavigne 2008 2 Abstract This study analyzes works of cyberpunk literature written between 1981 and 2005, and positions women’s cyberpunk as part of a larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews critical reactions, and subsequently outlines the ways in which women’s cyberpunk altered genre conventions in order to advance specifically feminist points of view. Novels are examined within their historical contexts; their content is compared to broader trends and controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed to be visible reflections of feminist discourse at the end of the twentieth century. The study will ultimately make a case for the treatment of feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for the examination of contemporary women’s issues, and for the analysis of feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas. Cette étude fait l’analyse d’ouvrages de littérature cyberpunk écrits entre 1981 et 2005, et situe la littérature féminine cyberpunk dans le contexte d’une discussion culturelle plus vaste des questions féministes. Elle établit les origines du genre, analyse les réactions culturelles et, par la suite, donne un aperçu des différentes manières dont la littérature féminine cyberpunk a transformé les usages du genre afin de promouvoir en particulier le point de vue féministe.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hugo Awards for Best Novel Jon D
    The Hugo Awards for Best Novel Jon D. Swartz Game Design 2013 Officers George Phillies PRESIDENT David Speakman Kaymar Award Ruth Davidson DIRECTORATE Denny Davis Sarah E Harder Ruth Davidson N3F Bookworms Holly Wilson Heath Row Jon D. Swartz N’APA George Phillies Jean Lamb TREASURER William Center HISTORIAN Jon D Swartz SECRETARY Ruth Davidson (acting) Neffy Awards David Speakman ACTIVITY BUREAUS Artists Bureau Round Robins Sarah Harder Patricia King Birthday Cards Short Story Contest R-Laurraine Tutihasi Jefferson Swycaffer Con Coordinator Welcommittee Heath Row Heath Row David Speakman Initial distribution free to members of BayCon 31 and the National Fantasy Fan Federation. Text © 2012 by Jon D. Swartz; cover art © 2012 by Sarah Lynn Griffith; publication designed and edited by David Speakman. A somewhat different version of this appeared in the fanzine, Ultraverse, also by Jon D. Swartz. This non-commercial Fandbook is published through volunteer effort of the National Fantasy Fan Federation’s Editoral Cabal’s Special Publication committee. The National Fantasy Fan Federation First Edition: July 2013 Page 2 Fandbook No. 6: The Hugo Awards for Best Novel by Jon D. Swartz The Hugo Awards originally were called the Science Fiction Achievement Awards and first were given out at Philcon II, the World Science Fiction Con- vention of 1953, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The second oldest--and most prestigious--awards in the field, they quickly were nicknamed the Hugos (officially since 1958), in honor of Hugo Gernsback (1884 -1967), founder of Amazing Stories, the first professional magazine devoted entirely to science fiction. No awards were given in 1954 at the World Science Fiction Con in San Francisco, but they were restored in 1955 at the Clevention (in Cleveland) and included six categories: novel, novelette, short story, magazine, artist, and fan magazine.
    [Show full text]
  • The Virtual Worlds of Japanese Cyberpunk
    arts Article New Spaces for Old Motifs? The Virtual Worlds of Japanese Cyberpunk Denis Taillandier College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto 603-8577, Japan; aelfi[email protected] Received: 3 July 2018; Accepted: 2 October 2018; Published: 5 October 2018 Abstract: North-American cyberpunk’s recurrent use of high-tech Japan as “the default setting for the future,” has generated a Japonism reframed in technological terms. While the renewed representations of techno-Orientalism have received scholarly attention, little has been said about literary Japanese science fiction. This paper attempts to discuss the transnational construction of Japanese cyberpunk through Masaki Goro’s¯ Venus City (V¯ınasu Shiti, 1992) and Tobi Hirotaka’s Angels of the Forsaken Garden series (Haien no tenshi, 2002–). Elaborating on Tatsumi’s concept of synchronicity, it focuses on the intertextual dynamics that underlie the shaping of those texts to shed light on Japanese cyberpunk’s (dis)connections to techno-Orientalism as well as on the relationships between literary works, virtual worlds and reality. Keywords: Japanese science fiction; cyberpunk; techno-Orientalism; Masaki Goro;¯ Tobi Hirotaka; virtual worlds; intertextuality 1. Introduction: Cyberpunk and Techno-Orientalism While the inversion is not a very original one, looking into Japanese cyberpunk in a transnational context first calls for a brief dive into cyberpunk Japan. Anglo-American pioneers of the genre, quite evidently William Gibson, but also Pat Cadigan or Bruce Sterling, have extensively used high-tech, hyper-consumerist Japan as a motif or a setting for their works, so that Japan became in the mid 1980s the very exemplification of the future, or to borrow Gibson’s (2001, p.
    [Show full text]
  • WAYS to USE SCIENCE FICTION in the SCIENCE CLASSROOM by Connie Willis, David Katz, and Courtney Willis ©1999 by Connie Willis, David Katz and Courtney Willis
    WAYS TO USE SCIENCE FICTION IN THE SCIENCE CLASSROOM by Connie Willis, David Katz, and Courtney Willis ©1999 by Connie Willis, David Katz and Courtney Willis. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of the authors. Reproduction for classroom use must contain the original copyright. Originally presented as part of a symposium on Science and Science Fiction, National Science Teachers Association national meeting, Boston, MA, March 25-28, 1999. 1. SF can be used to teach science concepts Many stories explain and incorporate science concepts. --Arthur C. Clarke's "Silence, Please" discusses wave interference --Larry Niven's RINGWORLD shows us a Dyson sphere --the setting in Connie Willis's "The Sidon in the Mirror" is based on Harlow Shapley's theory of red giants --H. Beam Piper's "Omnilingual"'s plot revolves around the periodic table --George Gamow's MR. TOMPKINS IN PAPERBACK dreams of relativity and quantum effects --Anthologies such as THE UNIVERSE, THE PLANETS, AND THE MICROVERSE (edited by Byron Preiss) put essays by eminent scients and stories by noted sf authors side-by-side --Hal Clement, a retired high school chemistry teacher, has written a number of stories, including the classic MISSION OF GRAVITY, about all those things you learned in high school science classes. Bad science in science fiction (especially in the movies) can teach science concepts, too. --Why is it impossible for the spaceship in CAPRICORN ONE to make it back from mars in a mere three months? --Why does the strength to mass ratio make King Kong and Godzilla impossible? --What about all those loud explosions in outer space? And those spaceships that bank and turn just like fighter planes? 2.
    [Show full text]
  • 3 Sprawl Space
    3 Sprawl Space The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists the following under “sprawl”: 1 v.i. Orig., move the limbs in convulsive effort or struggle; toss about. Now, lie, sit, or fall with the limbs stretched out in an ungainly or awkward way; lounge, laze. […] b Of a thing: spread out or extend widely in a straggling way; be of untidily irregular form […]. (New Shorter OED 1993) The second part of the entry refers to the transitive verb, for which the agency has shifted semantically and lies elsewhere, as “sprawl(ing)” is inflicted on something, and “usu[ally] foll[owed] by out” (ibid.), sig- nalling the expansiveness of the motion. As a noun, “sprawl” also oc- curs in combination with “urban” (meaning “Of, pertaining to, or con- stituting a city or town”) which renders “urban sprawl” as “the uncon- trolled expansion of urban areas” (ibid.). Considering the etymology, one might think that the notion of “sprawl” has relaxed with regard to living subjects as actants. When it comes to things, however, dead matter comes to life, things seem to appropriate agency and expand, taking up more space; or they already are where they should not be. The resulting form is a disorderly one that deviates from an established order: “Sprawl” usually refers to an outward movement and is not perceived as very pleasant or becoming. In short, most of the above may already explain why “sprawl” is of in- terest to cyberpunk and to William Gibson in particular: matter ac- quires lifelike agency and potentially decenters the subject; it moves in space and upsets a given order; it is messy.
    [Show full text]
  • "The Infinite Plasticity of the Digital"
    "The Infinite Plasticity of the Digital" http://reconstruction.eserver.org/043/leaver.htm Ever since William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his debut novel Neuromancer , his work has been seen by many as a yardstick for postmodern and, more recently, posthuman possibilities. This article critically examines Gibson's second trilogy ( Virtual Light , Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties ), focusing on the way digital technologies and identity intersect and interact, with particular emphasis on the role of embodiment. Using the work of Donna Haraway, Judith Butler and N. Katherine Hayles, it is argued that while William Gibson's second trilogy is infused with posthuman possibilities, the role of embodiment is not relegated to one choice among many. Rather the specific materiality of individual existence is presented as both desirable and ultimately necessary to a complete existence, even in a posthuman present or future. "The Infinite Plasticity of the Digital": Posthuman Possibilities, Embodiment and Technology in William Gibson's Interstitial Trilogy Tama Leaver Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. --- Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto" She is a voice, a face, familiar to millions. She is a sea of code ... Her audience knows that she does not walk among them; that she is media, purely. And that is a large part of her appeal. --- William Gibson, All Tomorrow's Parties <1> In the many, varied academic responses to William Gibson's archetypal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer , the most contested site of meaning has been Gibson's re-deployment of the human body. Feminist critic Veronica Hollinger, for example, argued that Gibson's use of cyborg characters championed the "interface of the human and the machine, radically decentring the human body, the sacred icon of the essential self," thereby disrupting the modernist and humanist dichotomy of human and technology, and associated dualisms of nature/culture, mind/body, and thus the gendered binarism of male/female (33).
    [Show full text]
  • Space and the Re-Purposing of Materials and Technology in William Gibson's Neuromancer and Virtual Light Submitted by Grigori
    Space and the Re-Purposing of Materials and Technology in William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Virtual Light Submitted by Grigorios Iliopoulos A thesis submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English and American Studies. Supervisor: Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou June 2020 Iliopoulos 2 Abstract This thesis explores the relationship between space and technology as well as the re-purposing of tangible and intangible materials in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Virtual Light (1993). With attention paid to the importance of the cyberpunk setting. Gibson approaches marginal spaces and the re-purposing that takes place in them. The current thesis particularly focuses on spotting the different kinds of re-purposing the two works bring forward ranging from body alterations to artificial spatial structures, so that the link between space and the malleability of materials can be proven more clearly. This sheds light not only on the fusion and intersection of these two elements but also on the visual intensity of Gibson’s writing style that enables readers to view the multiple re-purposings manifested in thε pages of his two novels much more vividly and effectively. Iliopoulos 3 Keywords: William Gibson, cyberspace, utilization of space, marginal spaces, re-purposing, body alteration, technology Iliopoulos 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou, for all her guidance and valuable suggestions throughout the writing of this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to my parents for their unconditional support and understanding.
    [Show full text]