“Dead Channel”: Writing Cyberpunk
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“Dead Channel”: Writing Cyberpunk Daniel “Dann” Lewis, B.A. (Hons) Submitted in the fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University June 2017 Acknowledgements My thesis would not be possible without the love and guidance of my intelligent and lovely supervisors Ann Vickery and Sean Redmond. They have dealt with me for the past four years and have helped me grown into the writer I am today. I cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel, so hopefully top-billing in the acknowledgements section helps to convey my heaping admiration for them. A special thank you to Christopher Moore for helping me cultivate my ideas. Though our time together was short-lived, I will always remember gaming and talking about Frank Herbert’s Dune with him in his office covered with posters of The Dark Crystal and Adventure Time. I’d be remiss if I ignored the diligence of the library staff at Deakin University for sending me many a book through the mail. For every book, paper and overdue notice sent, I thank you. And finally, my family, fiancée Heather Funk, and friends—I thank you for the love, encouragement, support and kindness. Without all of you, I would likely be institutionalised by now. Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii His Beautiful Ones 3 Exegesis Introduction 215 Chapter One: ‘C’mon, Deckard, show me what you’re made of’; Redefining the Human & Regeneration in the Posthuman City 226 1. Regeneration 226 2. The City is Alive! 238 Chapter Two: ‘Neuro from the nerves...Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead. But no, my friend...I am the dead’; Sprawl, Technology and A.I. in William Gibson’s Neuromancer 243 1. The Wired Humans 243 2. The Revenant 252 3. The Consensual Hallucination 260 Chapter Three: ‘I can buy you, grow you, sell you, cut you into bits. Your screams: my music’; The Body in Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus. 265 1. The ReShaped 265 2. The Mechanised Body 274 Conclusion 286 Bibliography 295 Abstract When the keen reader, theorist or critic is reminded of cyberpunk, they are often met with images soaked in the vivid neons that permeate the urban sprawl. A far deeper examination, however, will find that the genre deals with apprehensions of the self and waning interest of the meaty body. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has advanced exponentially beyond the veil of human reason and logic. We are future-haunted by an ever-expanding force of inhuman labourers that will leave most blue-collar workers unemployed just as we are of genetic chimeras that will one day supply us with freshly harvested organs. We wonder how technology is not only affecting our brains and those of the next generation, but also determining the future. With a melding of anxieties of past and present, His Beautiful Ones invokes classics, such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, William Gibson’s Neuromancer (and Sprawl series) and Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix Plus, yet is also inspired by the current global climate of the 21st century. With a close examination and contrasting of the above texts, this thesis aims to survey the genre as a terrifying form that not only crosses the boundary of the Gothic to scrutinise the metamorphosis from meat to metal, but understand it as a technophobic genre that yearns for memories of green. i His Beautiful Ones 2 First there was light, life, hatred, fire and finally, static. 3 1 – Human, after all She stunk of meat. She felt like meat. She tasted of meat. She sat by her rig. Red eyes. Fierce. Striking. She was hungry. Savage. She was going to pounce on him. Devour him. After she coded, of course. She puckered her violet lips and straightened her tall hair. She purred as she typed with lean fingers, nails caked with grime and cheap concealer. She scratched the sores on her cheeks and continued to type. The muck streaked against the plastic, neon keys, her eyes fixed to the isometric lines that permeated the LED screen. He squeezed her breasts. Her arms shivered. Lips open. She moaned as he tightened his grip around her waist. His fingers jacked into meagre flesh. Scraped her plugs. Licked her plugs. A jolt. It felt good. He loved it. Loved her. Her eyes shut tightly as he jacked his nails into her back. His cheeks flushed with the pigment of blood. Real aortal blood. This was it—this was how it was supposed to be. Flesh against flesh, sweat against sweat. This was how cavemen fucked. This was how they fucked for centuries. ‘I love you,’ he blurted alongside a mottled moan. But she didn’t like it that way. She took his trembling hand and kissed his palm gently. Mr Peyton came for the first time tonight. Real cum, like the cavemen. Real cum, like humans. *** She stunk of meat. She felt like meat. But she didn’t taste of meat. 4 The quasi-Americansi state was a bombastic mess of wastelands, bayous and metal— an ecumenopolis—the country infected with megacities, plastic titans and neon giants that leer as refugees of all colours and languages gnaw on cables and inject shit into their eyes. Mr Peyton lay down, his eyes buzzed with the ghastly, physical sounds. His life was effervescent, much like the food and drink. The Shang was subliminal. Shangrila was a bang. More sleep in the Shang. More caffeine in Shangrila. Everything was plastic or Kevlar in the Shang, not metal or concrete like its sister. Smart-plastic, less paint and more light. Kevlar, more protection and less wounds. Living in the Shang was living in a plastic vat. Living in Shangrila was like living in a literal shithole. That much was known to everyone. But shitholes have that extra special something. Was it a soul? No, souls are dead. A cockroach crawled above Missey’s polished brow. She stroked the carapace as the bug’s feelers caressed her chromium fingertips. She laid it by the windowsill and watched it closely. ‘They say they have personalities. Some are shy, some are cheeky and some are careful,’ she giggled, her lips thickened with collagen, smacked. Her voice was inhuman—but that didn’t mean much—and smooth like the currents of jazz. It was slow and wispy, an attempt at being sexy. She moved like a stop motion figure but with the grace of a ballerina. Tiptoed, she jumped and danced. Tiptoed. Stop. Plié. Repeat. He watched the dolly aided by the currents of juice coursing throughout her body. Mama Sün’s dollies were a thing of genius. Agile wax dolls, the dollies were humanised rigs full of pistons and pullies and oil and juice and even rubber bands. They ran limply on minute amounts of battery power and only remembered their subroutines with primitive cards and plastic disks. But there was something else. A secret. It irked him that the Chinese madam kept it hidden behind her phony teeth. Everything had to follow orders and from what he understood, there was no way the dollies were able to function as they did. The possibility of the soul crept 5 up on Mr Peyton, but he pushed that thought aside with a slap on his cheek. If there was a soul in any machine, dolly or rig, then he was a murderer. There were no dollies in the Shang. Just executives. Suits. Lawyers. Doctors. Engineers. Scientists. Mr Peyton, the techie. And his ex-wife, Mrs—Ms Peyton. Ms Peyton would have slept in a prettier bunker, one lined with pink lace and expensive fabrics. All his bits were spent on fabrics, linen and Americansi décor. All the Americansi décor she could find. His ex-wife would have swatted the insect—killed the bug, washed her hands and then taken a sip of coffee from her Mickey Mouse mug. That was Mrs—Ms Peyton, an inauthentic Americansi grin clothed in a meticulously designed housewife costume, sipping a coffee whilst picking out poorly ground beans from her luminescent teeth. He slapped himself again and brushed the thought of Ms Peyton away. Gone. Missey was great. Soft to touch. He needed her again. And again. He needed to be inside her again. And again. That was a lie. He didn’t want Missey. he needed her. But she was never coming back. ‘Ten bits, that’s the deal?’ She pawed at his stomach. ‘Precisely. For an extra twenty, we get some extra alone time in the spa. I clean you, you clean me, does that sound like fun, Mr Peyton?’ An extra twenty was rich for a dolly—he might as well fuck a real human for that price. He ignored the pitch and scratched her like a pet. Business as usual. Mr Peyton stroked his arm and the Tower’s symbol shimmered in blue light as he tapped into his R&D funds. It lagged for a moment, they’ll force him to upgrade soon. ‘But I don’t want to,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Ten—no, fifteen. Should be sufficient for a nicer cot. Correct?’ She didn’t have any time to react as he swiped the display with finely trimmed nails. Another laggy interface injected Mama Sün’s account with real, but not so physical, currency. 6 She continued to paw at his stomach again—a poor oversight, who’d think this was charming? He needed to come again, but this wasn’t the way. Not inside her. Not inside this doll. ‘Make sure Mama Sün gets you serviced.