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The Evolution of Cyberpunk Into Postcyberpunk

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The Evolution of Cyberpunk Into Postcyberpunk Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Doctorat en Filologia Anglesa Los sistemas participativos en las políticasThe evolutionde gestión of cyberpunk de into RSU postcyberpunk The role of cognitive cyberspaces, wetware networks and nanotechnology in Ejemplos de best-practicesscience fiction y el caso español Doctoral Dissertation By Rafael Miranda Huereca Proyecto de Final de Carrera Licenciatura de Ciencias SupervisedAmbientales, by Dra. UAB Sara Martín Alegre Autor: Roger JulyGiménez 2011 Piedra Tutora: Nuria Font The present dissertation was written with the kind support of Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), México. Table of Contents Introduction: the 1980s scene, cyberpunk and its derivatives ................................1 Chapter I: Socialized computer networks: the reaction of The Diamond Age to cyberpunk’s technophobia..............................................................................17 Plot summary of The Diamond Age ......................................................................17 I.1 The male struggle for supremacy: technocracies and post-nation states ........................................................................................................................22 I.1.1 Bud and Harv: lowlife cyborgs and other vestiges from cyberpunk ............22 I.1.2 Victorian education and technologies: the imperialist methods to perpetuate power ..................................................................................................38 I.1.3 The Confucian world: the Eastern contributions to Western technological mores .............................................................................................58 I.2 Hackworth: the corporate domain and the socialized ‘wet-nets’ .................71 I.2.1 The Drummers’ Society: the aporia about collective production vs. manipulation .........................................................................................................71 I.2.2 Cryptnet, a waking ‘Wet-Net’: the cybernetic struggle for consciousness ........................................................................................................85 I.2.3 Oppressive simulations and deceiving virtual realities: a comparison of The Diamond Age with other sources ..........................................94 I.3 The feminine spheres of The Diamond Age: complexity behind female history and the new educational paradigms ..........................................108 I.3.1 Oppressed motherhood: the noxious influence of technology and patriarchy on reproductive issues .......................................................................108 1.3.2 Miranda, the holistic tutor: the cybernetic paradigm of motherhood.........115 I.3.3 The role of Nell and the Primer in the consolidation of postcyberpunk: the evolution of cyberspace and socialized forms of education ............................................................................................................125 Chapter II. Immersive virtual atmospheres and digital cosmologies: in silico philosophy, mythology and science in Greg Egan’s Permutation City and other sources.......................................................................................................147 Plot summary of Permutation City ......................................................................147 II.1 Late capitalism and thanatophobia: the influence of cyberpunk in the early stages of Permutation City.....................................................................152 II.1.1 The hegemony of corporate capital: computer hardware and the body as allegories of monetary power ...............................................................152 II.1.2 The instruments of corporate domination: militarism, financial legislations and cybernetic surveillance in Permutation City ...........................164 II.1.3 Body anxiety, immortality and identity: the power of virtual settings as magnifiers of consciousness ..............................................................173 II.2 Cybermythologies: Immortality, religion and perception in Permutation City and other works .......................................................................185 II.2.1 Permutation City and The Matrix: The influence of Gnosticism, Platonism and Baudrillardism in virtual constructs ............................................185 II.2.2 Upgrading religious symbolism: cybernetic myths and digital epics........196 II.2.3 Utopias, immortality and absurdism: the influence of Christianity and other philosophies in Permutation City........................................................206 II.3 The virtual embodiment of knowledge: the cognitive power of computer-generated worlds..................................................................................219 II.3.1 Immersive simulations, hyperrealism and cognitive techniques: time and reincarnation in Permutation City, The Matrix and other works .........219 II.3.2 Virtual realities as digital libraries: knowledge in the era of computer-generated environments ......................................................................231 II.3.3 Paraverses and quantum mechanics: complex arrangements of matter and ideas...................................................................................................242 Chapter III. Wetware and psychic networks: the mind, information and computer technology in Greg Bear’s Queen of Angels and other works .............255 Plot summary of Queen of Angels .......................................................................255 III.1 The mind and the social: free-will and the influence of computer technology and information on ordinary life in Queen of Angels, The Fortunate Fall and Transmetropolitan.................................................................259 III.1.1 Slacker culture and the death of humanism: the problem of unoriginality and repetitiveness in art .................................................................259 III.1.2 Authoritarianism and social determination: syncretic mythologies, practopias and economical uprising as the dictatorial methods of Hispaniola ...........................................................................................................269 III.1.3 The democratized propagation of information: control, freedom and political agendas in The Fortunate Fall and Transmetropolitan .................280 III.2 Identity, technological biopolitics and free will: the construction of the social and the individual mind in Queen of Angels..................................290 III.2.1 AI: the birth of self awareness and identity .............................................290 III.2.2 Massive institutional control and collective behavior: the influence of desire and technology on free-will..................................................302 III.2.3 Hypertechnologized societies and the dementia virus: a morphology of ‘postmodern possession’ ............................................................313 III.3 Oneiropunk: the analogy of the mind with fields of information ............324 III.3.1 The postmodern mind: archetypes, religion and mental hierarchies........324 III.3.2 Oneiropunk, a nascent category: the mind, the subconscious and cybernetic phenomena.........................................................................................336 Conclusions ...............................................................................................................349 Filmography ..............................................................................................................361 References .................................................................................................................363 Introduction: the 1980s scene, cyberpunk and its derivatives Science fiction became prominent in the 1920s and 30s with the publishing of Hugo Gernsback and John Campbell’s pulp magazines, Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, respectively, both of which focus for the first time exclusively on the genre. From that point onwards, diverse stages in the development of science fiction (sf) predicated a strong critique on human institutions and took up again the old concerns of philosophy in regard to the meaning of life and the definition of human nature. Following the so-called ‘pulp era’, the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1940s and 50s developed a blind faith on technology as the solution to the human plight, and examined diverse figures such as robotics, space opera1, cutting age weaponry and time travel as a way to explore the potentials of defamiliarized new worlds. Subsequently, the period known as the New Wave in the 1960s and early 70s produced a radical shift in the scopes of sf, and centered its attention on social and human issues rather than on sheer technology: “In place of a rationalist belief in the effectiveness of technology and machinery to solve all human problems, [with the New Wave] there came an avant-garde ‘experimental literature’ fascination with the artistic possibilities of those very problems, and in particular a paranoid aesthetic in which large systems were seen as the enemies of individual difference” (Roberts 2000: 81). Nevertheless, the late 1970s and the early 80s engendered an important and thoroughly different type sf focused on urban scenarios in near futures, and whose 1 Space Opera: The subgenre of sf dealing with space travel by means of faster-than-light shuttles. 1 main subject is the influence of computer technology on daily life, leaving behind space opera,
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