Optical Prose: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Leonard Sanders

59 Optical Prose: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Leonard Sanders ... like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. John Milton, Paradise Lost 1. 287-291 Cyberspace.... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding ... William Gibson, Neuromancer 'Bobby, do you know what a metaphor is？' 'A component？ Like a capacitor？' Willson Gibson, Count Zero I Optic Glass Of all the telescopic observations made by Galileo during the seventeenth century, the most popular and sensational was that of the moon, an event recalled in a memorable passage in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) through the famous comparison of Satan's shield to the moon1. Milton had met Galileo during his visit of 1638 to Italy; Galileo was in Tuscany under house arrest by the Inquisition, and "whether or not he 60 ever looked through Galileo's telescope, Milton seems to have been fascinated by it" (Potter, 40). In the poem Satan's shield is compared to the disc of the moon as it is seen not with the naked human eye but "through optic glass"2. Alastair Fowler's annotation for this passage in Paradise Lost notes that Galileo's findings provide an "evidential basis" for the world in which the action of Milton's 'cosmic' poem is to take place. Milton's concern with astronomy is that he "draws analogies from the observable rather than the theoretical nature of the heavens in order to illustrate his philosophical and theological statements" (Broadbent, 133). As commentators on this passage have shown, the famous comparison of Satan's shield to the moon says more than the obvious fact that both objects are large, round and shiny. Satan's shield is of "ethereal temper", but as we draw nearer to it through the 'optic glass' it turns out, like the moon, to be a 'spotty Globe' and the spots and irregularities indicate a loss of perfection. In Paradise Lost Milton was able to use both the new astronomy of Galileo, and the old astronomy (based on a traditional, earth-centered view of the universe) "to point a contrast between the fallen and unfallen world" (Potter, 42). This image, according to Harinde Marjara in Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost, "like many other scientific images in Paradise Lost is not drawn from everyday experience, but needs to be mentally visualized by readers. Unless the readers are familiar with Galileo's astronomical observations, they will not register the full impact of the image" (60-1). As has been pointed out by Broadbent, "Milton's sense of cosmic perspective is expanded by Galileo's discoveries" (134). Yet we must also keep in mind the metaphorical link, that the appearance of the moon as a continent has no direct relationship to Satan's shield; it is the extended simile that enhances the imaginative impact of its gigantic size, forming an image which is beyond everyday human experience. Thus space in Paradise Lost becomes much more than topical scientific reality; it is also forms the aesthetic shape of the poem. Marshall McLuhan has remarked "that the personal and social consequences of any medium － that is, of any extension of ourselves － result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology" (226). In our own time we can perhaps take the example of the Hubble telescope, which has provided a wealth of information to astronomers since being delivered to space by the shuttle Discovery in April 1990. The telescope captured the best views of Mars ever obtained from Earth. It also provided the first convincing proof by an optical 61 telescope of the existence of black holes. Astronomers credit Hubble with a long list of noteworthy observations and discoveries, as "it uses a collection of instruments to pick apart the universe, one observation at a time. ...'who we are and our place in the cosmos'" 3. Another significant example, and the topic of this paper, can be found in the creation of cyberspace. Cyberspace, according to Katherine Hayles, "represents a quantum leap forward into the technological construction of vision" (38). The implications have been explored in the genre of writing known as cyberpunk, and the two writers most often associated with it, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Science fiction critic Darko Suvin has noted "Gibson and Sterling, who, by both accessibility and the critical attention paid them, seem to be the most popular, and who are taken to be the most representative, writers of this trend ... as the positive and negative poles of cyberpunk"(351). In the introduction to Burning Chrome, a landmark collection of cyberpunk short stories by Gibson, Sterling notes the presence of "a complex synthesis of modern pop culture, high tech, and advanced literary technique" (x). What is of particular interest here is the interrelation between a new technology and representation; the passages quoted above use a simile － Satan's shield is 'like the moon', Gibson's cyberspace 'like city lights receding'. Sterling's preface to the cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades notes "Gibson's extrapolative techniques are those of classic hard SF, but his demonstration of them is pure New Wave" (xi). In this paper I will explore this relation further through a sampling of passages from Bruce Sterling's Crystal Express, together with William Gibson's fiction, in particular Neuromancer. Central to the discussion concerning the evocation of cyberspace is the 'virtual' image. In The Vision Machine Paul Virilio has defined the virtual image as "the formation of optical imagery with no apparent base, no permanency beyond that of mental or instrumental visual memory" (59). He also identifies "one of the most crucial aspects of the development of new technologies of digital imagery and of the synthetic vision offered by electron optics: the relative fusion/confusion of the factual (or operational ...) and the virtual: the ascending of the 'reality effect' over the reality principle" (60). II Visual Mechanisms In many ways cyberculture is an environment saturated by electronic culture. This 62 has produced a new language and image repertoire to describe it. In an article entitled "Literary MTV" George Slusser takes up cyberpunk as a new style, "a mode that is to traditional narrative as MTV is to the feature film" (in McCaffery, Storming the Reality Studio, 334). He finds, citing Gibson's Neuromancer as an example, therein images "condensed, sharpened, creating an optical surface" 4; that this is "optical prose" marked by "images no longer capable of connecting to form the figurative space of mythos or story" and that it is proof that words have succumbed to the "fragmenting speed, the instantaneity and monodimensionality of the visual image" (334). Thus "language, in the sizzle and flash, loses its narrative moorings" (340) and "the body of narrative is giving way to the disembodied image" (343). Cyberpunk style is characterized by "words that float right out of any syntactic or semantic structure capable of organizing them into a sustained narrative or message" (340-1). For cyberpunks "technology is inside, not outside the personal body and mind" (Suvin, 352). Bruce Sterling has employed the term "visual mechanisms" in order to describe the prosthetic devices implanted in the body. In a piece of writing in Crystal Express entitled "Twenty Evocations" we find the following description: Optic Television: It was astonishing how much room there was in the eye socket, when you stopped to think about it. The actual visual mechanisms had been thoroughly miniaturized by Mechanist prostheticians. Nikolai had some other devices installed: a clock, a biofeedback monitor, a television screen, all wired directly to his optic nerve" (104). There are numerous examples in cyberpunk writing which refer to a direct neural link between the brain and the computer through eye implants (Crystal Express, 103) and implanted lens. In Neuromancer we find one of the characters with eyes which were "vatgrown sea-green Nikon transplants" (33); in the short story "Burning Chrome" Rikki is anxious to get hold of Zeiss Ikon Eyes; the eye monocle or monocle rig is a feature of Idoru (338). Another example are the 'mirrorshades' which Darko Suvin finds to be "a two-way transaction between the wearer and his social environment" and "both mask the gaze and distort the gaze"(358). In Neuromancer Linda wears mirrorshades: "the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lens seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones" (36). 63 Another technology of perception that features prominently in cyberpunk is holography. The earliest piece of Gibson's writing is "Fragments of a Hologram Rose". The story concerns a man named Parker reminiscing alone in an apartment during a "brownout," defined as a temporary decrease in power supplied to network devices. Having been left by his girlfriend, he fills in his time accessing an ASP (Apparent Sensory Perception) deck, a device which can record physical, emotional, and sensual states happening and then play them back. The experience leads him into a philosophical dimension, where a postcard of a hologram rose shredded in the waste disposal unit seems to symbolize the fragmented nature of the self: "we're each other's fragments." At the end of the story Parker lies in darkness recalling the thousand fragments of a hologram rose. Gibson adapts the terminology and visual effects of holography to convey an updated metaphysical complexity whereby each fragment which reveals the whole image of the rose "reveals the rose from a different angle".

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