Tunel Infinity, Mirror Into Mirror: a Reading of William Gibson's Cyberspace Trilogy, Reading the Trilogy As An Allegory of Literary Postmodernism's … more

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Postmodernism's Historical Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Development of Literary Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Cyberpunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 A Short Science Fiction Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Cyberpunk Poetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Cyberpunk and Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Analysis of the Cyberspace Trilogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Neuromancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Count Ze ro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Mona Lisa Overdrive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Model Reader of Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 The Model Reader and SF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Model Readers for the Cyberspace Trilogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Characters in the Trilogy as Model Readers for Postmodernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Resumé på Dansk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Supervision: Bent Sørensen Aalborg University, 2000 Acknowledgments My supervisor Bent Sørensen, for showing me that this kind of work is actually possible and for the use of his books. Brit Jørgensen, Jesper Larsen, Jesper Pedersen and Torben Poulsen, a great many thanks for reading this paper, over and above the call of duty, while being busy with their own lives and studies. And again a thank you to Brit Jørgensen, for putting up with me while I was writing this. Introduction The cyberspace trilogy by William Gibson, consisting of Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, has been seen by a lot of people as the ultimate expression of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk has been examined many times as being a place where science fiction and postmodernist fiction meet (McHale, 1992, p. 245). The intention of this paper is to investigate this relationship and how it might work. My claim is that the trilogy exhibits traits which, when analysed detail, actually describe the development of literary postmodernism. This is done through a variety of means, the primary being that each book has a dominant textual strategy and that this parallels the postmodernist evolution. If this holds true, one could also postulate that the trilogy has a view of the Model Reader of postmodernist literature as a whole. The Model Reader is a concept developed by Umberto Eco, as the 'ideal reader' for a text. I believe that it is possible to locate a Model Reader for postmodernist literature by looking at the characters in the trilogy. The use of the Model Reader means that this paper will have a slightly different structure than what is usual. I choose to wait presenting Eco’s idea of the Model Reader until late in this paper, since it will first be used at this point. This means that after the main analysis, a new section of theory is placed. I wait so long, in order to make it more clear what use the Model Reader has. Here it is also necessary to note that the reason why I put such an emphasis on the reader, is the fact that my overall method is that of reader-response theories. That does not mean that I will not use close readings or other approaches, simply that the guiding hand will be the reader-response theory as Wolfgang Iser employs it. But let us look at the structure of the paper. First, I will look at the development of literary postmodernism, especially as seen from an American point of view. The cultural reasons for the change from modernist to postmodernist writing will be examined alongside more textual aspects. I will give brief examples and references to some authors who exemplify the development. However, I will refrain from giving detailed analyses, as this would retract from the focus of the paper. In the chapter on cyberpunk, however, it will be necessary to analyse some works and authors more closely, in order to get a detailed description of cyberpunk, something which has not yet been done in textual criticism. The closest is Brian McHale's work in Constructing Postmodernism. 2 Having examined cyberpunk from a general point of view, I will turn to the specific analysis at hand. The cyberspace books will each be analysed in turn and the chapter will close with a view of whether the proposed allegory works or not. In the sections on each text, special attention will be given to the construction and use of cyberspace. This paper will conclude its analytical work with an analysis of how one could say that the model reader for postmodernism is constructed in the three texts. This will be done by looking at the characters presented in the trilogy, to see if some of them exhibit traits of a model reader. I will also look at how the texts themselves might give an answer. In the analysis of the trilogy, Neuromancer will be the most closely analysed text, while the others will be held up against Neuromancer to see how they differ from the first work. It is by examining these differences and developments that I intend to see if a uniting factor can be traced. I will also present close readings of the three works compared to each other, in the sense that I will take a part from each text and investigate the differences between them at a detailed textual level. Here it must be said that the readings which I present are my readings, and that many others could be said to exist. However, in this paper the interest follows the proposed allegory of the trilogy, and so I have chosen to disregard other readings of the trilogy. Such is the nature of selection and the focus of my work. 3 Postmodernism In this chapter I will look at postmodernism, how it has evolved and how it differs from and relates to modernism. The main focus of the chapter will be the development of postmodern literature, since this is the main focus of this paper. Also, the version of postmodernism will mostly be the American incarnation of it, since William Gibson is an American/Canadian writer. That is not to say that other aspects of postmodernism will not be investigated, merely that it will be the American progression and the American thematics and poetics which will be the main issue. In order to examine postmodernism, one will have to choose from a wide variety of critical and theoretical sources, as well as discard others which do not add useful tools to the task at hand. Such selection will always be somewhat arbitrary, but I have tried to present as varied a view of postmodernism as possible. I use three main theorists, the first being Matei Calinescu, who is interested in modernity and how different artistic expressions can be said to constitute a 'face' of modernity. The second theorist is Brian McHale, who is important in this connection because he has dealt with the links between postmodernism and science fiction. Besides, his contributions to the field are quite valuable, especially his use of the ‘dominant’. Here one must note that the two theorists are not aiming for the same view of postmodernism, but that does not mean that their works cannot be compared and provide valuable insight. Calinescu is mainly interested in the cultural-aesthetic meanings of modernity and postmodernism, while McHale deals exclusively with literature. There are two other academics who are important to my study, the first of which is Paula Geyh, who is one of three editors of the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction. Here she has presented an introduction which gives a historical view of how American literature has developed as the American culture has changed from post-World War II and onwards. While her presentation is quite lucid, one must keep in mind that it is an introduction and so chooses the longer view at the expense of depth and detail. The second academic is one who has been very interested in and quite active in the developing debate regarding postmodernism, namely Ihab Hassan. His points will be examined more closely later, so here it will just be mentioned that his work revolves around literature, not just AngloAmerican works but all of the Western tradition. The present chapter will begin with a more historical view of modernity, what it is and how it rose. This is essential to the debate which Calinescu is interested in. I also find it necessary 4 to discuss modernity when examining postmodernism. From this, I will present a historical view of postmodernism, dealing with a mix of the cultural and aesthetic programmes which postmodernism is concerned with. This will lead into a view of the textual strategies which postmodernist literature evidences and how these may have changed and developed. Modernity When one looks at postmodernism, the term has become so difficult to handle that it is useful to keep Ihab Hassan's point in mind, when he states that we are dealing with POSTmodernISM, emphasising that we are dealing with an -ism, something created arbitrarily by academics (quoted from McHale, 1987/96, p. 5). However, this seems to problematise those who call postmodernism an ahistorical term (such as Umberto Eco in his Postscript of the Name of the Rose), or those who claim that postmodernism began in the 1870s, certainly before modernism ever had its heyday. It seems that in order to get a handle on this difference, we have to go back to the rise of modernity. As Mikhail Bakhtin has said, the novel is always modern, but not always modernist. Here he deals with the antique/modern dichotomy, a notion which has been around since the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, the split between the idea of the ancient and that of the modern was beginning to shift. Previously, antiquity had been favoured but now people such as Francis Bacon were beginning to argue that it was actually his contemporaries which were the ancients, since they had a foundation built on a far larger history than was available to the antique people (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 25). The reason for arguing such a point was to break the belief that the ancient times were better than the present. However, it was not until mid-18th century that the terms 'romanticism' and 'modern' were used almost as synonyms. This reveals how, while a schism had previously existed between antiquity and modernity, people had now begun to favour modernity (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 36). However, at the same time there began to develop a conflict between two separate ideas of modernity. One understanding of modernity is a continuation of earlier notions, namely the idea of technological advancement and the progress of civilisation (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 41-42). This notion of modernity has remained relatively unchanged all the way to our current society. The second idea of modernity is a rebellion against middle-class bourgeois society and is the origin of what can be termed the avant-garde. This means that in essence we have two conflicting modernities, one that we can call modern, which is socially progressive, rational and technologically oriented and the other, 5 anti-modern, which is culturally critical and self-critical (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 265). The main problem is that literary modernism is in itself both modern and anti-modern. This obviously complicates matters when one tries to look at postmodernism, which seems inevitably to be defined by how it is different from modernism. Postmodernism's Historical Development It is interesting that when one traces the beginning of postmodernism, you often end up as early as the 1870s, where historian Arnold Toynbee, writing in the 1950s, places the shift from the Late Modern Age to the post-Modern Age (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 134). Toynbee is interested in culture and society and the most useful thing about his theory is that it introduces the concepts of 'mass society', 'mass education' and most importantly, 'mass culture'. This is a valuable addition to the discussion because these concepts are important both for modernism and postmodernism. It has often been said, that modernism is, in a way, a defence against the encroachment of mass culture: ... [Clement] Greenberg believes that modernism has been throughout its history nothing more than an endeavour to maintain the high standards of the old masters against the intrusions of commercialism and corrupt market criteria. (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 290). This is not to say that modernism does not use parts of popular culture in its works, but rather that to modernists high art is different and must be inherently ‘better’ than popular art/culture. This is very different from one postmodern claim, proposed by Leslie Fiedler: “... a new democratic art which would bridge the gap between high and mass culture and undo the elitist 'autonomy' of Modernism. (Waugh (ed.), 1992, p. 2)” This certainly shows a shift of focus in the concerns of what could be said to be the voice of the counter-culture (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 268). As part of the counter-culture, postmodernism was at first obviously anarchic and contradictory, as such things must be. The traditional novel was proclaimed dead, although what was meant was the serious art novel, rather than the novel as form (Waugh (ed.), 1992, pp. 34-35). This counter-course of the novel would obviously begin with questioning the conventions, in many ways exactly what modernism itself had done, with the poet Ezra Pound's rallying-cry 'Make it new'. Some of the things questioned could also seem to be simply what modernism had already done, interrogating such things as coherence and closure (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p xiii), prompting Micheal Bérubé to the ironic comment that postmodernism is "30 percent more modernism for your money (more uncertainty, more fragmentation, more playful self- 6 consciousness)" (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. 596). Of course, as Micheal Bérubé is quick to ascertain, that is not the real aim of postmodernism. For Bérubé, it is more that postmodernism problematises what it is to be avant-garde. However, here it must be mentioned that although I use the term ‘avant-garde’ below, it is not something I wish to deal with in any length. Too many and long discussions have been made over this term and detailing these would only detract from the issue at hand. This is something Umberto Eco has also been dealing with in his Postscript to The Name of the Rose. The main point for both Bérubé and Eco is that postmodernism has realised that it is no longer possible to be avant-garde since it means destroying the past, a feat which is impossible in itself. This realisation then results in the fact that one must rather revisit the past, but this is also problematical. In Umberto Eco's way of solving the problem, it is done by visiting the past with irony, since innocence will not do (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. 622). Bérubé sees a different solution. He emphasises the decenteredness of postmodernism, claiming that: “In the 1990s, when you can't tell anymore where the garde is, it's a fair bet that you don't know whether you're avant of it or not. (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. 597, author's italics).” Here we can see how there has been a shift in postmodernism. From being a countermovement, it has begun to create its own identity. This shift begins with the beginning loss of unity and belief in the 'grand narratives'. Lyotard has said that modernity legitimated knowledge by virtue of the 'grand narratives' and then goes on to say that the postmodern condition is exactly a rejection of these grand narratives (Calinescu & Fokkema, ed., 1987/1990, p. 5). What it rejects, then, is not so much modernism anymore, but rather modernity and modernity's belief in a universal reason. What postmodernism does instead is to foreground the aesthetic in a movement to find alternatives to reason. This results in a decentred consciousness unable to anchor itself in any universal truth or reason, which in turn creates a form of art which is no longer an expression of human spirit, but rather a commodity. This can be said to be part of the Counter-Enlightenment which is obviously as old as the Enlightenment itself. There have been other manifestations of the Counter-Enlightenment and critiques of reason, such as romanticism. However, the main difference between postmodernism and romanticism is that whereas romanticism created an alternative to reason (imagination), postmodernism denies doing so, even claiming that we no longer need trutheffects (Waugh (ed.), 1992, p. 3). 7 It is probable that this reaction against reason set in due to the Second World War, where the full effect of reason was displayed in the Holocaust. As Calinescu states: World War II, with its unprecedented savageness and destruction, with its revelation of the brutality at the core of high technological civilization, could appear as the culmination of a demonic modernity, a modernity that had finally been overcome. (Calinescu, 1987/1996, p. 267) While it is probably excessive to put the blame of WWII on the back of modernity, it is certain that a questioning of historical progress and the belief that our society has become rational and civilised arose (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. xi). Also, this is evident in the fact that WWII, the Holocaust and the atom bomb is often found to be a metaphor of the failure of reason. It is interesting that we find in Calinescu the notion that while art has been proclaimed rhetorically dead, so that it could be re-born in a more pure form (the avant-garde project), postmodernism takes its point of departure in a post-apocalyptic framework. Calinescu quotes Guy Scarpetta: The question is to create within the horizon of this death [of art], within the hypothesis that this death is possible - to create even from this death (we find the idea already in Adorno: "The notion of a culture resuscitated after Auschwitz is a pitfall and an absurdity", which could mean that the only possible culture today is post-apocalyptic). All naïveté, all innocence in this regard would be totally anachronistic. (Calinescu, 1987/1996, pp. 277-278). We again find that innocence is impossible, just as Eco said above. It is of course easy to connect this post-apocalyptic society with the death of the grand narratives, but it is more interesting to look at what Calinescu has said about hypothesis and palinode. First, the use of hypothesis refers to Douwe Fokkema's claim that modernism uses the poetical device of hypothesis to fill in the gaps in knowledge which may exist. This is where postmodernism disagrees with modernism, in the sense that postmodernism denies the possibility of any foundation to base these hypotheses on. In turn, postmodernist writers write from impossibility, having a sense of “epistemological nihilism”, as Calinescu calls it (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 305). This is where the ontological dominant enters, as opposed to the epistemological, but this is a subject I will not deal with now, preferring to wait until dealing with the postmodernist poetics. Returning to the issue of the palinode, it becomes interesting to look at what it might be that postmodernism wants to deal with. According to Calinescu, this term is used to refer to the withdrawing of a statement, in whatever form it may take (admission of mistake, playful or serious lie etc.). Originally, the term palinode was meant to be used for a very specific purpose, namely the retraction of what one has said in an ode or song of praise (Calinescu, 1987/1996, p. 309). Calinescu wishes to extend the category to be not only the general retraction of a statement, but a direction within postmodernism which insists on using palinode or retraction as a rhetoric. This is quite interesting, but it holds a certain danger to 8 expand the use of a very specific use of the word palinode to a usage which covers far more ground. The first and most obvious danger is that the word loses its usefulness in the process, since it is applied to so many different ideas. One could expect that it would be very different goals that the writers had in mind when they use the retraction rhetoric and hence the term is stretched so much that it becomes too diffuse to say anything useful about the texts. If the term is to be useful, it must at least be somewhat the same goal the writers have in mind, even if the ways it is used differs. While it is easy to take the use of this retraction as the postmodernists' constant use of unreliable narrators and general uncertainty about truth, it might also indicate another, more serious and deeper, meaning. While postmodernism constantly uses playful irony, parody and similar devices to aim at uncertainty, what the postmodernists may be actively doing is trying to retract modernity. By retracting modernity they may be able to prevent another failure of reason. Of course, as we have seen, destroying the past is impossible in postmodernism and one cannot innocently visit the past and so the postmodernists must use irony in order to achieve their goal. As Alan Wilde has stated: Postmodern irony, by contrast [to modernism], is suspensive: an indecision about the meanings or relations of things is matched by a willingness to live with uncertainty, to tolerate and, in some cases, to welcome a world seen as random and multiple, even, at times, absurd. [...] ...anxiety is exactly what the postmodern artist ought to be aiming at, as a way 'of undermining the detectiv e-like expectations of the positivistic mind, of unhoming Western man'. (Waugh (ed.), 1992, p. 17) It is clear that postmodernism is not interested in repeating the mistakes which they feel modernism has committed, to advocate man's ability to make hypotheses about a world which is random and absurd. Instead, one could argue that the suspensive irony of postmodernism serves a different purpose than simply re-visiting the past. I would say that postmodernism is probably aware that retracting modernity is as hopeless a project as modernism's destruction of the past, so instead they attempt to suspend modernity. As Wilde argues, postmodernism should undermine the positivistic belief that reason can provide any useful insight. Obviously, postmodernism should not be seen as completely counter-intelligent, seeking to utterly destroy sense in the world. However, what it does is to suspend it for a while, in order to problematise the usefulness of such sense. This anti-logic is probably most evident in William Burroughs' mantra 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted' and 'Rub out the word', which runs through his entire oeuvre. While his cut-ups are to be taken seriously on some levels, it is also a way of questioning the way we normally read novels. He and Thomas Pynchon are the two main American authors who have experimented with the 'paranoid readings', but more about that in the section on postmodernism's textual strategies. 9 That postmodernism is not interested in creating unity is evident in the multiplicity and fragmentation which is so strongly advocated in postmodernism, and also evident in the fact that so many different voices began to emerge in the mid-70s, where women, gay and lesbian and ethnic writers began moving in different directions than what had been done earlier, simply due to the ambivalent cultural legacy of the modernist and early postmodernist writers (Paula Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, pp. xviii-xix). There are two other events in the Twentieth Century which can be said to characterise postmodernism, and perhaps to have aided its development. The first is the move to suburbia and the so-called 'edge cities'. This shows a decline in the city, something which can be called the major subject of modernism, the relationship of the city and modern life in the city. In the postmodern era, the city becomes decentred, in an almost symbolic change, showcasing the postmodern decentredness of life and text. The second change is that of technological change, the fact that tv has entered practically every household in America. One change which this fact created, could be said to be that due to television (and film), literature had to adapt to the visual arts in new ways. More importantly, however, the collapsing of space and time which Marshal McLuhan spoke of in the 60s, as well as alleged dehistorising effects. That the introduction of the tv has been an important one is also evident in the fact that so many postmodernist texts utilise the television in a wide variety of ways; from Donald Barthelme to Thomas Pynchon to Mark Leyner and Laurie Anderson (Paula Geyh et.al. (ed.), 1998, pp. xiv-xv). One other cultural/technological change in recent years which seems rather pertinent for this paper, must be that of the personal computer and the Internet. However, when looking at the cyberspace trilogy, one comes to realise that the last instalment was written in 1988, before the enormous rush of PCs we know today, and certainly well before the Internet revolution. So, although this development has informed several recent authors (such as Michael Joyce), it cannot be said that cyberpunk of the time nor William Gibson could know of this. This is not to say that computers do not have an impact on his work, for obviously they have, but as will be shown in the cyberpunk chapter, it is more on a metaphorical and literary level. On that note, I will turn to look at the development of literary postmodernism. The Development of Literary Postmodernism Having looked at the historical development of postmodernism, I will turn to the development of the literary devices which postmodernism uses which makes it different from 10 modernism and other periods. This will be done with a focus on the literature, as previously stated, but to a degree one will sometimes have to look beyond literature in order to find some of the developing trends. This is connected to the often-stated 'mongrelisation' of high and low culture, and the belief that influences may come from anywhere, not just other authors. Postmodernism first began to enter literature in the 1960s, ever so slowly. It first entered the academic debate through architecture, however, where one Charles Jencks began to speak of it, to distance himself and others from the Bauhaus project of modernism. However, this was not the only place where artists were beginning to change their ways from earlier decades. The questioning of literary conventions began to develop, not only in the sense of making them new, but investigating whether they can be used at all anymore. This is what created the 'death of the novel' debate. This should not be seen as, and was probably never meant to be seen as, the literal death of the novel, but rather as a provocative statement, akin to the 'death of art', meant to provoke a debate and possibly see if new ways could be created. This can be compared to the concept of the palinode, which I discussed earlier, retracting the form of the novel itself, at least in the traditional form. When Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse Five, claims in the first chapter "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time" (Vonnegut, 1966/91, p. 2), he is raising a lot of different issues which were never questioned before. The first obviously is that he is moving out of the normal role of the author, but there is a lot more to it. He suggests, by also revealing the ending of the book in the first chapter, that the reader has to begin to relate differently to the way novels are normally read. By placing the abovementioned quote in the first chapter rather than an introduction or preface, he questions how books should be written and what kind of information the author should give to the reader and in what fashion. This is merely one example of how literature began to alter its perception of itself and the perception of readers. In many ways, this is probably the major difference between modernism and postmodernism; how the reader is perceived. While modernist novels may easily be fragmented and incoherent, playfully self-conscious, the novel will always be coherent from an interpretative point of view. The 'good' reader, or more properly the model reader, will be able to decode the fragments and the self-consciousness and make of it all a unity, in some sense a truth. The postmodernist text will have many of the same elements, but will revolve 11 around the concept of indeterminacy1, where a final solution is not possible, and certainly not desirable. The reader is not given any direct clue as to which interpretation is best or even better, but rather it is left for the reader to decide. One could of course say that this is also a way of creating a final solution, but it does emphasise the fact that finality is something special in postmodernism. This view of the reader, coupled with other beliefs, created what is known as metafiction, something which can be said to have its heyday in the 60s. Metafiction was and is preoccupied with textuality, inter-textuality and the construction of fictions. In order to investigate these devices, it was necessary to investigate the conventions of literature and narratives. This is done in a variety of ways, most of which concern the way reality and fiction interconnect. Revealing fiction to be fiction was a favourite method of many metafictional writers, such as Vonnegut, as were frame-breaking and language games. Many of these devices and concerns have been examined in a wide variety of critical works, such as Patricia Waugh's Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. It is important to note here that postmodernism and metafiction are obviously not the same, but metafiction was certainly used to a great extent in the 60s. Certainly this mode did not disappear during later incarnations of postmodernism, but it was sometimes passed over in order to use other textual strategies. What instead begins to occupy postmodernism as the object of attention is that of multiplicity and fragmentation. Of course, fragmentation existed before as well, both in romanticism and in earlier postmodern works, but now as America realised that it was becoming culturally fragmented, the literature also became more pluralistic, as women, gay and lesbian and ethnic writers began to create their own voices in opposition to the earlier postmodernist writers who were invariably white males. We find that 'second generation' postmodernist writers de-emphasise formal difficulty and Western tradition in favour of noneclecticism and non-European roots (Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. xix). Another device which began to emerge even during the 60s but probably came to fruition in the 70s especially, is that of the paranoid reading and how postmodernist writing related to that. As McHale has mentioned, modernist readings can be called paranoid readings (McHale, 1992, pp. 81-82). While this is of course a pun to a certain degree, there is little doubt that modernist readings are very focussed on pattern-makings which would create an 1 Indeterminacy is used by Ih ab Has san as one of his ways of describing postmodernism, but more of that later. 12 intelligible meaning in many texts. However, with regards to many postmodernist texts, this is not true and an attempt to create these patterns will result in misreadings. As previously mentioned, Pynchon and Burroughs can be said to represent this refusal of paranoid readings particularly well, especially since they represent two opposite poles. Pynchon's way of dealing with the paranoid reading is to create so many possible interpretations that one cannot keep track of them and they begin to contradict each other. This is obviously Pynchon's very point; if you choose one door, so many other doors close and who is to say that you have chosen the right one? Of course, Pynchon is still aware that one must try to connect things when he writes in Gravity's Rainbow: “If there is something comforting - religious, if you want - about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long." (Pynchon, 1973/95, p. 434).” Here he plays with the fact that it is impossible to read a text without attempting to connect things and if some of them did not make sense, it would be impossible to read. It is exactly this paradox which Pynchon is aiming at, among other things, since it emphasises the fact that reason can easily fail, if it is too rigid. Burroughs' method is quite different, in the sense that he employs paranoia as a metaphor for a great number of things, even claiming that paranoia is a useful way of perceiving the world, since the word is 'out to get you'. However, this creates a paradox that if you believe the word is out to get you, and that it conspires against you, you should not read and definitely not write. However, as the author of approximately 20 books, certainly Burroughs does not feel that one should not write or read. Again we reach a paradox which ends up saying that you must simply be aware of the condition of language and what is so easy to do, namely make a number of connections which may easily be wrong. This multiplicity and decentring is probably one reason why the 'official story' begins to be questioned, and by the 80s, we find that a shift has occurred, from the aesthetics of playful irony and parody, to a pervasive loss of faith in the progressivist and speculative discourses of modernity. This is most famously proclaimed, of course, by Jean-François Lyotard in his The Postmodern Condition (translated into English in 1984), but that is not to say that it had not entered earlier discussions, for it had, it was simply implicit. (Waugh (ed.), 1992, p. 3). This implicitness was evident in the way that fragments were used by authors such as Donald Barthelme, who claimed that fragments are the only trustworthy form. The focus was more 13 on the new pluralistic nature of the American culture, attacking the unitary nature of the national culture (Geyh et. al. (ed.), 1998, p. xiii). One would then reasonably ask if this proclamation and the others which followed suit are not simply new creations of a grand narrative, one which places postmodern thought at the top. This could certainly seem so, but if a difference is to be found it must be in the concept of indeterminacy. This is one of the features used by Ihab Hassan to describe postmodernism, along with ten others. To list them; indeterminacy, fragmentation, decanonisation, selfless-ness and depth-less-ness, the unrepresentable, irony, hybridisation, carnivalisation, performance and participation, constructionism, immanence (Calinescu and Fokkema (ed.), 1987/90, pp. 18-23). This is not the place to examine each point individually, but rather the point of Hassan's listing becomes evident. Postmodernism is nothing if not plural, it is difficult to say that postmodernism is specifically one thing. Because of this, and its continual denial of presenting answers but only questions, one might say that the story of postmodernism does not present a grand narrative in the Lyotardian sense, simply because it is not one but many narratives, it is not a unitary whole but rather a mosaic. However, the strength of Hassan's list of postmodernist features is also its weakness. While one may easily agree with these features and say that they are surely to be found in postmodernist fiction, it seems that not every text will show all of these features. Although Hassan is aware that these features do not readily define postmodernism, there is little discussion regarding how many of these features a text should evidence in order to be postmodernist. Worst of all, as Hassan notes himself, it is not possible to distinguish postmodernism from modernism by using these features. It is interesting to note that this actually creates the same kind of paradox which postmodernism is so interested in. One can use the list which Hassan has created, but it will not give a complete answer. Apparently, postmodernism continues to remain an elusive form, refusing any type of definition one might come up with. It seems that we must go further in order to find a difference between modernism and postmodernism. I have previously mentioned that modernism used as its most preeminent poetical device that of the hypothesis. This has resulted in what Fokkema describes as the epistemological dominant. The dominant is that which the fiction in question is most occupied with. In other words, what occupies modernism the most is knowledge, who knows what and how this access to knowledge is created. It is exactly this factor which postmodernism disagrees with, and this could be termed an epistemological nihilism, something probably best expressed 14 through William Burroughs' "Nothing is true, everything is permitted", a phrase which runs through many of his works. This denial or suspension of reason is what I have already said to be one of postmodernism's foremost claims. This epistemological concern is also something which occupies Brian McHale, or rather, he presents it as the defining aspect of modernism in order to show that the ontological dominant is what defines postmodernism (McHale, 1987/96, p. 10). McHale's use of the dominant comes from Roman Jakobsen, where it serves as the focus of a piece of art, something which the other devices revolve around (McHale, 1987/96, p. 6). In many ways, the concept of the dominant is a useful one since it allows one to relatively easily part modernism and postmodernism. As McHale admits himself, there are times when the two dominants blur together and become inseparable, but it does not happen so often as to make the theory useless. The most useful part of the theory is probably that it allows us to gather a wide variety of texts under one roof. Having seen the pluralist nature of postmodernism, this is certainly a positive and necessary thing. Also, McHale's theory allows other theories of postmodernism to work with it, to create a more diverse view of the text. Here we can see how postmodernism has developed into a style which is suddenly beginning to question something very basic, namely the production and perception of reality. While it can be said that this has always been the aim of postmodernism, all the way back from the metafictional texts which examined the relations between fiction and reality, we can now more easily get a complete view of postmodernism's aim. Certainly modernism and earlier periods are also interested in reality, but postmodernism's view of reality is quite different from those views. The reason is that postmodernism claims that the very foundation of reality is removed, or rather turned into a fiction, a story (Calinescu, 1987/96, p. 299). Concluding Remarks Having examined postmodernism in the light of modernity and to some extent in the light of modernism, it seems that we must gather the threads to see if we can get a clearer view of postmodernism now. As I have tried to argue in the chapter, the most important device of postmodernism is to question the abilities of reason, to see whether this most grand narrative of them all can still prove useful. Postmodernism attempts to do so by problematising the notion that everything may be viewed in oppositional terms: masculinity/feminity, body/mind, etc. One could argue that modernism had an inherent logic which is 'either-or', while postmodernism defies this attempt at an inherent logic and prefers the inconclusive 'both-and' 15 (Calinescu, 1987/1996, p. 284). While this is simplifying matters greatly, it does go well in hand with the proposition I made earlier that postmodernism attempts to retract or at least suspend reason, refusing to give any answers to the questions which arise. This is also why postmodernism can survive even though many have pointed out the contradictory and paradoxical elements (such as Calinescu, 1987/1996, p. 268); postmodernism promotes these values as something positive, or at least as something necessary. Here we can perhaps find some form of answer to the question 'what is postmodernism?' It seems that instead of valuing absolutes, postmodernism has decided to find alternatives to reason and to modernity, and it has chosen the aesthetic dimension to be the best option, since it would claim that we no longer need any foundation for truth. By way of bridging the gap between this chapter on postmodernism and the next chapter on cyberpunk, I will briefly investigate how McHale's dominant can be used in relation to science fiction, since this will be crucial to my paper. The first thing to note about this fact is that McHale distinguishes between modernist and postmodernist science fiction. At the same time, he claims that science fiction is the ontological genre par excellence. Since ontology is also the way he distinguishes postmodernism from modernism, through the use of the dominant, it seems that some problems may arise (McHale, 1987/96, p. 59). McHale gives certain examples of what he calls modernist science fiction, and that is the new wave science fiction and especially J.G. Ballard's early trilogy, The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World.2 What McHale claims is that while there are many ontological displacements in these works, they are all framed by an epistemological framework and this would make the text modernist. Here it seems that McHale's arguments begin to falter, however, since the purpose of the dominant is to foreground one of the implications of the text and delay the effects of the rest. It would then seem that in these works, the dominant would still be ontological, since the epistemological thrust acts only as a framework for the ontological displacements. The next question which must then be clarified is whether the above makes Ballard's work postmodernist. As already mentioned, McHale calls science fiction an ontological genre, but this should not be taken as a statement that all science fiction is postmodernist. In the case of Ballard, we cannot be sure that these works are postmodernist, because the model reader of science fiction would recognise the ontological displacements as belonging to the 'mega-text' 2 There will be more on science fiction and the new wave in the next chapter. 16 of science fiction and not as part of postmodernist devices. Such a reader could be expected to note the epistemological framework rather than all the ontological displacements, since they are part of the genre. Here it would be fruitful to examine the case of another science fiction work, one which McHale calls postmodernist in nature; Samuel Delany's Dhalgren. Here the claim seems more reasonable, for there are ontological displacements in the text which cannot be said to belong to science fiction conventions. McHale refers to the fact that in the beginning of the text we are told that a women's commune leaves the city permanently. Then at the end of the novel, the same commune leaves again (McHale, 1987/96, p. 71). This is not part of science fiction conventions, but rather part of a larger framework which makes the entire text cyclical in nature, even beginning with a sentence fragment which can be said to be the continuation of the sentence fragment at the end of the text, obviously reminiscent of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It is here that we can find the kernel of difference between science fiction and postmodernism. While science fiction uses ontology as part of its very nature, these ontological displacements are never problematical for the reader, since they are part of the genre's conventions. They are expected to occur and no reader of science fiction will find them strange. However, other types of ontological displacements may occur in a science fiction novel, where they are not part of science fiction conventions. The displacements could possibly be called ‘meta-displacements’, since they refer to elements outside the sf world presented. The example given above with Dhalgren is one where the reader familiar with the science fiction conventions would not know how to decode the problem. Here the science fiction text acts just like any other text with these features; it begins to slide into the postmodernist mode. These features are then the ones which must be noted when trying to analyse postmodernist science fiction. Here the dominant can still be a useful tool, as long as one remembers to separate the science fiction conventions from the postmodernist conventions. On that note, I will investigate science fiction and cyberpunk, to see what the conventions are in these texts. 17 Cyberpunk This chapter will deal with cyberpunk and a description of its poetics. This cannot be done without also comparing it to postmodernism. As such, I will break the chapter into three main parts; one of cyberpunk definition, one of the similarities between cyberpunk and postmodernism, how cyberpunk relates to postmodernism and the third and final part to conclude on the two previous parts to see what the two poetics have to do with each other and what that says about cyberpunk. In order to do this, I feel that it is necessary to look at some definitions of science fiction (sf) in general, since cyberpunk is a sf subgenre and relates to the sf tradition and poetics. A Short Science Fiction Terminology This will be a short overview of science fiction, since little more is required. Dealing with sf, it becomes pertinent to look at sf's relation to reality and realism. Too often it has been claimed that sf should be about the future and be truly interested in predicting or prophesying about the future. This notion is difficult to expel because some sf writing is interested in such objectives. However, it must be said that serious sf is about the present and the events which take place in the present. In such a way, sf is a very allegorical and metaphorical literature. The most important thing to note about sf, though, is its double nature in this sense, for although many of its images and symbols serve as metaphors or allegories of our world, they must also be taken literally in order for the text to make sense. It may be that this accounts for the difficulty which non-sf readers have with sf texts, since this double-awareness is not required for most fiction. The most typical example is when sf writer Robert Heinlein writes 'the door dilated', which is in fact a very literal metaphor (quoted from Broderick, 1995, p. 57). This doubleness is probably the main similarity which sf and postmodernism shares; the realization that words, sentences and images can serve multiple purposes, not only as symbols but also on very 'realistic' levels of the text. Another example is ‘Her world exploded’, which can be seen as the fact that her world collapses and makes no sense, or the very literal meaning that the world in fact explodes. This is something which will be examined more closely later in the paper. With regards to realism, it seems that there is a strange incoherence in sf. Normally, realism is closely related to mimesis, but how can a text set in the future fulfill the normal expectations of mimesis, where art imitates life. Although sf may be about our world, it 18 practically always ostensibly takes place in worlds somehow different from our own. Does mimesis then make sense and is it even relevant in the case of sf. I would claim that it is very relevant; unless sf texts were to be regarded as avant-garde, experimental texts, and few of them are, they must create a believable world. Indeed, most sf is interested in creating believable worlds, known as the 'lived-in future', especially connected to sf-writer Robert Heinlein (Broderick, 1995, p. 81). In many cases science or mock-science may enter in order to explain the differences between the sf world and our world, but the main point which I want to make is that sf is not so much mimetic in relation to our world, but rather what has been dubbed the sf 'mega-text' (Broderick, 1995, p. 58) a sort of hyper-text consisting of all sf texts written. When an sf text invokes the words and images of space ships, ftl (faster-thanlight) travel, hyperspace travel, rayguns etc, it does not evoke our reality but rather all previous sf texts where such words and images have occurred. This is the training which an sf reader has to undergo, the realization and recognition of these words. Note that this invoking is not the same as intertextual references, in the metafictive sense of the word since no single, specific text is invoked but rather the entire field. This is not to say that sf cannot use direct intertextual references inside or outside the field, only that many of the inherent sf tropes do not serve this function. Rather, one could compare this with Gérard Genette's idea of the archetext. This is not to enter into a deep discussion of Genette's theories, simply to state that the function of these words is comparable to the status of a form of intertext, but serving more like a genre indicator. This is a very interesting feature of sf, especially when one realises that all these tropes (or 'icons', as Broderick and others label them) actually are empty signs with an absent signified. While a space ship rings true to any sf reader's ears, there are a multitude of different space ships which have very little connection with each other as such. Think of the differences of the space ships presented in Star Wars, A Space Odyssey 2001 or Close Encounters of the Third Degree. They have no real similarities with each other, yet all would take the place of the 'space ship' sign. One could say that 'car' functions in much the same way but the point is that the sign of 'space ship' does not refer to reality but to fiction and this is unique for sf and fantastic literature. It is exactly this semiotic peculiarity which is unique to sf and which is of great interest to for example Samuel Delany. Note also that it is not always known signs which can be said to refer to the mega-text. When reading an sf text, the reader will expect to encounter unknown signs and will see them as enforcing the feeling that this is a sf text. This means that unknown signs can be inserted into sf, even without explaining them, since 19 they are part of the code of sf. Obviously, these empty signs become a potential source for parody by other sf texts, since they are such a staple of the genre. In order to be able to discuss sf, it is necessary to look at these empty signs. This is actually what Ernst Bloch and Darko Suvin are talking about when they use the term novum. The novum is the 'new' of the sf text, that which makes the sf world different from our world, be it a technological advancement or other methods, such as parallel worlds or time travel. This notion of the novum ties in with another aspect of wide use in sf; extrapolation, first used widely by Robert Heinlein who defined sf in the following way: [R]ealistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method. (Heinlein 'Science Fiction: Its Nature, Faults and Virtues', 1959, quoted from Parrinder, 1980, p. 16). This cannot be said to be a proper definition of current sf, since it would exclude far too many texts. However, it does provide a good view of what extrapolation means and how it is used in sf. Science Fiction Su bgenres Science fiction contains many different subgenres, and cyberpunk may be classified as one of them. The other types of subgenres are investigated here, even if not all critics agree that all of these subgenres exist. Especially soft sf, new wave and cyberpunk are very contested issues, sometimes even ignored. I include them all in order to to be able to investigate how these subgenres may inform cyberpunk and how cyberpunk relates to these subgenres. One thing which is important to keep in mind with regards to these subgenres is that their names are more metaphors than anything else. The names emphasise the ways the subgenre tends to organise and use its metaphors. In this sense 'hard sf' should not be seen as 'difficult', but rather as dealing with the 'hard sciences'. Scientific romances are the earliest texts which can be classified as sf writing. These texts use science or a pseudo-science as an excuse to write a Gothic or Romantic tale. The science or technology cannot be considered extrapolatory, being far more fantastical than scientific in nature. In Shelley's Frankenstein, for example, the creation of the monster is not based on 'adequate knowledge of the real world', as Heinlein put it above. However, it does take its point of departure in a new discovery, namely electricity. This new discovery acts as the justification for the creation of the monster, such as it is. The scientific romances might not be considered true sf due to this use of technology, but they remain important due to their way of using new discoveries to justify their stories, without being specifically oriented towards 20 technology. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are the most important writers of scientific romances, although writers like Mary Shelley and Robert Stephenson can be said to have written texts in a similar vein. Hard SF is probably that which most people really connect with sf, the space travels, the concern with technology and so on. Hard sf is concerned with logical extrapolation and 'hard sciences', or natural sciences. Looking at the texts, we usually find flat, simplistic characters. This is because the orientation of the hard sf tradition is not so much characters, what one could call psychologically oriented, but rather oriented towards technology and Mankind's relation to the cosmos. In this respect, hard sf could be said to be philosophically oriented, being concerned with what happens when man meets aliens or similar plots. Of course, space is often used as a psychological representation of the human mind, and in that respect one could also claim that hard sf deals with human psychology, but the characters are rarely believable. (Carol McGuirk in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 115) The relation to science, technology and progress is very straight-forward and positivistic in hard sf. Science will set man free, technology will always be a help to the world and progress is positive, always making the world more pleasant, closer to a utopia. How technology is developed and why it works are often large issues in hard sf, where one could reasonably expect long explanations of why a piece of equipment works. Authors are often scientists themselves (such as Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov), or at least scientifically interested. As one could expect, the hard sf tradition had to give way to a counter-reaction. This is what is called Soft SF. It deals with the so-called soft sciences rather than the hard. The interest has been shifted to characterisation and a concern with the psychology of man, instead of his relation to the cosmos. These texts usually deal with how human society may develop, rather than how technology may develop. (Carol McGuirk in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 115) The relation to science, technology and progress is typically pushed in the background and implicitly critical of technology. Science and technology may have developed, but that is often incidental to the main thrust of the texts. Technology is more often used to augment the plot of the story. When Ray Bradbury writes Fahrenheit 451, he is dealing with aspects of human society rather than aspects of technology. With regards to characterisation in soft sf versus that of hard sf, it is significant to note the difference between having space be a metaphor for the human psyche as hard sf does, letting the human/alien and human/machine dichotomies play out on a grander scale, and then creating individual characters and in this way deal with the same dichotomies. The main 21 difference is that hard sf will create a very one-sided view of human psyche, while soft sf allows for greater diversity, which is important because this means that the soft sf texts begin to resemble mainstream literature. This movement of assimilating mainstream literature continues and flows into the New Wave of sf. In many ways, these authors were essentially second-generation soft sf writers, which has often caused the two to be mixed and confused with each other in the critical reception. The major difference between the two is that the new wave, while still interested in characterisation, is a lot more concerned with literary values, something which was never really present in either hard or soft sf (Carol McGuirk in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 121). This obviously means that the texts become more experimental in nature, and some, such as McHale, have even called it a modernist period in sf. However, I feel that while it is of course easy to see that the textual experiments begin to flourish, naming it modernist is slightly excessive. The most interesting aspect of the new wave is the fact that technology and other ways of using the novum is now often used as a way of creating these textual experiments. When Samuel Delany invents the city Bellona in Dhalgren, he is not doing so to deal with how Bellona came to be or how it can exist in what is contemporary America, but uses it instead as an excuse or possibility to create the textual play that is the main thrust of the book. He goes on to use Bellona in other texts as well, such as Trouble on Triton, where it serves as an intertextual reference to his earlier work, among other things. Having examined the subgenres of sf, it must be said that they are really transhistorical terms. While the new subgenres obviously grew out of the old, that does not imply that the earlier subgenres have ceased to exist or that texts bearing these features are no longer written. The only subgenre which could be said to have waned, is that of the scientific romance. However, that is a point which I will problematise at the end of this chapter. Cyberpunk Poetics Cyberpunk has been disputed ever since it came out, by both authors, critics and readers. Many have tried to kill off cyberpunk as a label and others have been happy to use it. The name was created by Bruce Bethke, who wrote a story called 'Cyberpunk'. The term was used by sf critic Gardner Dozois to describe William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Pat Cadigan and Greg Bear. He called it "bizarre hard-edged, high-tech stuff" (Shiner in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 17). By those who agree that cyberpunk exist, authors William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner and John Shirley are said to be the founders of 'the Movement', 22 people who shared a common view of how sf should be written in order to be 'good', in the sense of an aesthetic judgement. This was obviously a very subjective definition, but they were also interested in creating a new form of sf which went against the grain of other sf. Gibson: "When I was starting out, I simply tried to go in the opposite direction from most of the stuff I was reading..." (McCaffery, (ed.), 1991/1994, p. 274). Here it would be interesting to look at what two members of the Movement feel sf should be in order to be 'good'. This is interesting since it reveals that their programmes are not the same, as one could expect. It is first notable to see that they chose the name to be 'the Movement', which was what the modernists referred to themselves as. It is interesting in two ways, the first is obviously the desire for a radical break with previous sf, and not just in the form of sf but also in the sense of a break with the typical 'gutter-level' of sf. This can be aligned with the new wave, where the writers wanted to create more textual experiments in the sf works. Here, in the case of cyberpunk, this is in a way more of the same, but with a focus explicitly aiming out of sf, instead of inwardly changing it. One could expect that 'the Movement' writers wanted to write sf out of the field it resides in. Certainly that is the impression one gets when looking at Lewis Shiner's proclamations. His claims are that the Movement was never interested in technology as such, seeing technology more as something to be played with rather than as the focus of the texts (Shiner in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 18). Here it is evident that he employs technology as the vehicle for metaphors instead of employing technology as the justification for his setting. What he emphasises as the factor which binds the Movement literature together is that of music, counter-culture rock’n’roll more specifically. This focussing on counter-culture rock’n’roll is very interesting for it is the only thing which can be said to connect Shiner's opinions to those of Bruce Sterling's, other than the obvious desire to make sf new, "a modern reform" as Sterling puts it (Sterling in McCaffery, 1991/1994, p. 348). Sterling's focus is entirely different, almost opposite that of Shiner. Sterling feels that technology is the vital area for sf to investigate and the impact it has on society (Sterling in McCaffery, 1991/1994, p. 346). Cyberpunk must also deal with the new, radical breaks which technology creates. It is interesting to note the disparate opinions which the two writers have, especially regarding so central a subject as technology in sf. One reason is obviously the personal agendas of the individual writer and the gap between the two statements. Sterling's view was written in 1986, while Shiner's was written in 1992. Six years may seem a short time, but it 23 was time enough for the label 'cyberpunk' to be cast into doubt. Also, Shiner may have wanted to lose the sf label which he had acquired and this is something he admits in the paper: "The novel - and probably the mainstream novel - remains my weapon of choice" (Shiner in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 25). Sterling, on the other hand, seems to have no interest in leaving the sf field and so does not need to justify his motives and previous occupations. It is telling that the newest Shiner novel is not sf (Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story), while Sterling's newest novels (Zeitgeist and Distraction) are sf novels.3 With regards to their shared view of the importance of music, this is something I will return to when investigating the name 'cyberpunk'. The desire to make sf new, even if this is something which has often been claimed, must be seen as something positive so it is surprising to find people who feel that cyberpunk does not truly exist. I believe that one of the problems is that when the term was coined, very few cyberpunk texts existed. Neuromancer was taken to be the ultimate cyberpunk text and all texts would then have to be like Neuromancer, which is counter to cyberpunk's desire to be innovative and resist formula. The main problem seems to be the speed with which imitationcyberpunk came forth. This imitation-cyberpunk has been termed sci-fiberpunk (Shiner in Slusser and Shippey, 1992, p. 22), where the window-dressing is like cyberpunk, but the use of imagery in the texts is different and aimed at adventure-style stories. This creates a problem in distinguishing between the two without close readings of the texts, and this obviously dilutes the cyberpunk term. Otherwise, let us look at what can be said to be the defining characteristics of cyberpunk, to see if it can be called a separate subgenre. Since it is sf, one would suspect that cyberpunk relates to other sf and defines itself within those borders. Cyberpunk plots are generally very simple, and often very action-oriented. Certainly, they all have a definitive 'drive', which sometimes comes from gung-ho action, but at other times more peaceful activities. What is important is this drive of cyberpunk. However, the simple plots are quite typical of a lot of sf, most of which can be said to be directed at an adolescent audience. Characters in cyberpunk are often cartoonish in style, very stereotypical with little detailed characterisation. This is again very common practice for hard sf, while soft sf and new wave sf were both more oriented towards detailed characters. The cyberpunk protagonists are also 3 Researched through amazon.co.uk 24 usually outsiders and outlaws. This cannot be said to be a particularly common practice for any other sf, but neither is it directly descriptive of cyberpunk. It is interesting to see that although cyberpunk, like all sf, is obviously speculative and fantastic in nature, there seems to be a certain use of realism regarding characters. The characters, while cartoonish and stereotypical, are still quite believable and a great deal of emphasis is put into making them seem realistic, as people who live in this created world. The cyberpunk setting is almost as a rule the future, and there are practically no ‘alternative world’ cyberpunk fictions, the main exception being The Difference Engine by Sterling and Gibson. However, what is distinctive is that cyberpunk is rarely set too far into the future and the reader is often kept uncertain of the exact time. Most sf at least mentions what year the events take place, but this is not common for cyberpunk sf. In Sterling's Schismatrix the year is mentioned, but it is noted as '15 and so on, making it impossible to determine if it is 2015, 2115 or something else. Since cyberpunk is sf, one would also expect that the novum used has a high priority. The most obvious novum is, of course, cyberspace. A paraspace as such is nothing new in sf, nor is an alternate reality. However, the humanly created cyberspace accessible only through computers is something new. Harlan Ellison, for example, has created computer-generated realities before cyberpunk ('I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', from Ellison, 1967/1983), but this cannot be said to be the same, because in Ellison's story it is a computer-created world/reality, since this works more like a simulation of a world. In cyberpunk's cyberspace, the human mind enters a special place or non-place, while the body is left behind. This creates various problematics regarding the body-mind dichotomy which are not explored in previous sf. Here it must be said that while a cyberspace in one form or another is evident in much cyberpunk fiction, it is only in Gibson's texts that it receives intense attention. However, the other novums which occur in cyberpunk are not really new, but merely radicalisations of previous uses. The difference is that the novum is no longer described in grotesque, extreme terms, but rather from the point of view of the world. That goes for the prosthetic limbs, which have been seen before in for example Dick and Le Guin. The same holds true for drugs, where Delany and Dick again are precursors. Now, these characteristics go a long way in order to show what cyberpunk is and how it functions. It also shows, however, how easy it is to imitate cyberpunk. What is forgotten about cyberpunk, is the language and imagery of cyberpunk. 25 A very peculiar thing to cyberpunk is the hyper specificity4 which is used. In the cyberpunk terminology this is called an 'info-dump'. Immense amounts of detail are given about a specific place or thing (Neuromancer, p. 21, for example). This can clearly be seen as a reaction against a typical sf text. As Gibson has said: They [sf writers] know they can get away with having a character arrive on some unimaginably strange and distant planet and say, 'I looked out the window and saw the air plant.' It doesn't seem to matter that the reader has no idea what the plant looks like, or even what it is. (McCaffery, 1991/1994, p. 269) It is simply expected that the reader creates an image of and justification for the air plant. This is one thing cyberpunk authors have reacted against and as such one would expect that the info-dump deals with the novum or the differences between our world and the one used in the text. Interestingly, this is not really so. What is interesting is then not so much that cyberpunk does not describe certain things, but which things it chooses to describe and which it ignores. In Neuromancer, we are never told the exact year, cyberspace is never fully explained and while we know that there has been a war and the USA has changed, we only get a few details in a roundabout way. This may very well seem to be contradictory; that cyberpunk claims to react against the typical sf convention of not needing to explain certain things, while at the same time not itself describing these things. However, I believe that this is because cyberpunk also reacts against another convention in sf, namely that of the 'out-of-world' explanations of how the various technological and sociological changes have come about, which especially hard sf is guilty of. These explanations are what happens when the sf author finds a need to explain something to the reader, and can be done in more or less veiled ways, but it is typical of cyberpunk that it never occurs directly. What is then described in cyberpunk are details which may indirectly tell something about the world. In Neuromancer we have an example of that on p. 154: "'What's that smell?', he asked Molly, wrinkling his nose. 'The grass. Smells that way after they cut it'". This does not directly describe the world, but it implies a lot about the state of nature in the text. Generally, cyberpunk describes world-changes and technological advances from the point of view of the world, not the reader. This means that certain explanations are left out, making the text hard for the reader to follow at times. How does cyberpunk then choose what to describe in the hyper specific details, if not the novums or the technology. It chooses on account of what is important to the characters, I would claim. Cyberpunk does not describe details of the world which the characters logically 4 Hyper specificity, while unique to cyberpunk sf, is nothing new in literature as such, as Gibson himself mentions in the later quote. 26 would know. This is why we are never furnished with the details of cyberspace or the war. The characters know these things and does not talk in detail about these things. The specific details are then provided when the characters notice them, like the quote above with the grass. Case notices it and therefore it is described. It is important to note here that Gibson does not begin to provide the reader with information about why Case has never smelled grass, because it would feel wrong. This is due to what we might call a 'realism contract' which is made for the characters of cyberpunk fictions, that they must never say anything which would not be realistic for them to say. Of course, cyberpunk is concerned with technology, but how then does it deal with it and how does it describe it? Cyberpunk describes technology not in technological terms, but rather in imagery, in metaphor. My claim is that this is one of the reasons why cyberpunk has literary qualities over and above more science oriented sf writers. For example, when Case enters cyberspace for the first time in the novel, we are given a description of what cyberspace looks like to Case. It is described as a 'fluid neon origami trick' (Neuromancer, p. 68). The reader has no idea of how it is to enter cyberspace, but is here presented with a visual representation which presumably gives a better idea of cyberspace than a two-page technical description of cyberspace. The same thing is evident in the notorious opening line of Neuromancer "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel". Although that is not dealing with technology, it retains the same lyrical, visual qualities. It is also important that here we get a description of something natural in terms of technology. This is something I will get back to in the analysis. Now that we have looked at some defining characteristics of cyberpunk, let us look at the name cyberpunk and see what it can get us. 'Punk' is inspired from the punk music of the late 70's, which was a stripping-down of music to its bare bones. The same with cyberpunk, strip the literature down to the basics; ideas (Sterling in McCaffery, 1991/1994, p. 344). This could be one reason why plots in cyberpunk literature often are so simplistic. It is not because cyberpunk authors cannot write elaborate plots, but they simply choose not to do so. Of course, there is more to punk music and punk culture than this. Probably the most important aspect of the punk aesthetic was that it took everything which mainstream culture would dislike, and blew it out of proportion, consciously taking features that would be deemed repulsive and actively seeking rejection (Cavallaro, 2000, p. 20). Punk is interested in an aesthetic of extremity (McCaffery, 1991/1994, p. 290) and one more obvious correlation is 27 that of drugs. Drugs are used with similar nonchalant attitude by both punks and cyberpunk protagonists (Cavallaro, 2000, p. 23). Turning to the other part of the equation, we find that the 'cyber' deals with the human nervous systems and electronic systems to replace them, obvious in the prosthetic limbs. However, by looking at the origin of the word 'cybernetics' which comes from the Greek word kibernetes or kubernetes which actually means 'helmsman', putting an emphasis on the individual, especially if we look at Neuromancer's Case who is in many ways a helmsman or navigator of cyberspace. These two things may not seem particularly compatible, but here one forgets to look at the rock'n'roll aesthetic which it has been agreed that most cyberpunk shares. The connection then comes in the image of being 'wired'. The human body becomes wired as an extension of the symbol of rock'n'roll; the electric guitar. The electric guitar made it possible for an entire generation to rebel, the punks being an extension and a return to this rebellion, and so does the image of the electric human. It is interesting to note how the electric human is viewed with both revulsion and reverence. Ratz's prosthetic arm and teeth are disturbing, but the doubleness of the new human is best seen in the character of Molly. She is reduced to something subhuman in her former occupation as a 'meat puppet', where technology is used to subdue her. At the same time she becomes strong and powerful with her new reflexes and the deadly blades under her burgundy nails. I will end here with some concluding remarks on cyberpunk. There seems to be a kind of Romantic side to cyberpunk, traceable in three places. We have the lone hero, outsider, individualist as the typical cyberpunk protagonist, even at times a criminal such as Case. We often find unhappy love, in Neuromancer we have the ending where Case never sees Molly again. Most importantly, we have a kind of transcendence through technology (McCaffery (ed.), 1991/1996, p. 206) and loss of transcendence when one is denied access to cyberspace. Case's loss of the ability to enter cyberspace is described as the Fall, as if cyberspace was the Garden of Eden (Neuromancer, p. 12). This raises the interesting dichotomy of mind and body, where the mind is superior to the body. Here we perhaps find a twist to what is often described as one of cyberpunk's traits; that of the dystopia. Certainly the cyberpunk worlds are very rarely pleasant places, but feature rampant pollution, animals being extinct and so on. However, an important thing to bear in mind, I feel, and this is often overlooked, is how cyberspace is described. Certainly cyberspace is preferable to reality. If one looks at Case's attitude, he constantly derates the 28 body, referring to it as a 'meat thing' and ‘a prison’ (Neuromancer, p. 12) because of all the weaknesses and limitations it has. Here we suddenly see an alternative to the dystopia, perhaps actually a utopia. Cyberspace is in many ways also a 'non-space'. However, this view is also brought into question, as for example Aerol's reply to Case after having seen cyberspace, calling it Babylon (Neuromancer, p. 131). This is probably an extension of how cyberpunk relates to technology. Unlike other sf, it does not take either a fully positive or negative stand. Rather, it seems to show what type of technology might come about and how society might change. This can again be said to connect with postmodernism, which I have earlier described as not being interested in the 'either/or' division, but rather preferring the 'both/and'. On that note, let us turn to investigate the connections with cyberpunk and postmodernism. Cyberpunk and Postmodernism Having looked at a definition of cyberpunk sf, it becomes relevant to investigate what cyberpunk has to do with postmodernism. According to McHale it is "... a convenient name for the kind of writing that springs up where the converging trajectories of sf poetics and postmodernist poetics finally cross" (McHale, 1992, p. 245). However, what does that mean? It certainly means, according to McHale, that cyberpunk has many influences from postmodernism. He lines up William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon as two particular influences. Interestingly, there are also postmodernist writers who borrow from cyberpunk. Kathy Acker is mentioned as one who has appropriated parts of Neuromancer in her novel Empire of the Senseless. However, this surely cannot be all that is inherent in McHale's quote, since that would not really be useful. McHale says that the similarity is caused when certain narrative structures and poetic strategies of postmodernism occur at the level of content or world. Cyberpunk actualises postmodernism's poetics. Let us look at that in more detail. According to sf critic and theorist Darko Suvin, the best way to analyse sf is to look at the dominating novum. This is clearly cyberspace, so what can cyberspace tell us. Many postmodernist authors use the concept of a zone, constituted in a variety of ways, from the very explicit zone in Burroughs' Interzone, to Pynchon's subtle, elusive zone in Gravity's Rainbow or John Barth's textual funhouse. If we take these three authors to be exemplars of how the postmodernist word zone may be constituted, we find three different uses. Burroughs' zone is created through the use of drugs and the random ordering of his Naked Lunch and the fact that protagonist William Lee often changes nature and identity throughout 29 the book (one example is Burroughs, 1959/1993, p. 177). Also, the use of drugs in the novel creates several surrealist scenes where the reader cannot be sure what is true. In Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, I have previously argued that so many possibilities and counterpossibilities exist that it is impossible that they all could be true. Interestingly, the protagonist Tyrone Slothrop also changes identity in the course of the novel (Pynchon, 1973/1995. pages 283, 366 and 377 for example). Turning to Barth's text Lost in the Funhouse, we find that the zone created here is different in the sense that it is never the setting which is altered, but rather the reader's perception of the text. In the two previous examples, the reader's understanding of the text makes part of the setting impossible. In Lost in the Funhouse, it is the status of the text which is questioned when Ambrose walks through the funhouse. Still, also in Barth we find that the protagonist may alter identity. While walking through the funhouse, one can read Ambrose as representing an author speculating on the ending of his fiction, while later on Ambrose could also be read as representing the reader, who is lost in the funhouse. My point is that there are overlaps and similarities between the cyberpunk cyberspace and postmodernist word zones. Gibson's use of cyberspace allows him, just like Burroughs' Interzone or Barth's funhouse, to create textual experiments. The justification here is technology, just as the justification for experiments for Burroughs is the use of drugs. Cyberspace decentres human identity by removing mind from body. This is what is important. This view of identity is similar to the strategies of other postmodernist authors to question identity and individuality. As further experiments, we find mobile consciousness, but not in the typical point of view changes, but rather a literal mobility in which Case actually enters Molly through simstim (simulated stimulation) and so changes gender (Neuromancer, p. 71) and even observes himself (Neuromancer, p. 301). There are further complications with identities, such as the once human but now construct Dixie Flatline, the AIs (artificial intelligences) and so on. These are technological creations, but are they human? This questions the concept of identity, but the questioning remains on the level of world, through the technological gadget. Another point is that hyper-reality is suddenly very concrete.5 The trees seen on Freeside are clones and so more real than real trees. (Neuromancer p. 154). Metafiction is also evident in Neuromancer When Case is told how to break into Villa Straylight: "Wonderful [...] I never did like to do anything simple when I could do it ass-backwards." (Neuromancer, p. 263). This 5 This is a concept taken from Jean Baudrillard, and I will return to it in the analysis, where I will also give a presentation of hyper-reality and simulacra. 30 could be seen as referring to the plot of Neuromancer, where all the trouble comes to nothing, since things are just things, things are not different. We can also see that cyberpunk has a fascination with brand names and commercial products. We are practically never told of a piece of technology in Neuromancer without learning the manufacturer. This can be said to be similar to postmodernism's interest in surfaces and images, such as Bret Easton Ellis, claiming that there is nothing behind the images of the linguistic level. As argued, what postmodernists are doing is trying to break down the 'either-or' dichotomy. It is then very interesting that the protagonists of cyberpunk novels are so often hackers (Case in Neuromancer). Without getting technical, what hacking is essentially about, is circumventing the 'yes/no' of computer codes. What we get then, is actually the fact that the protagonists of cyberpunk can be seen as metaphors for postmodernist writers since they in essence are trying to do the same, break the boundaries of what is 'legal', in the cyberpunk hacker case, what can be done with computer language, and in the case of postmodernist writers what can be done with language. Concluding Remarks Looking back at what I have said about cyberpunk in the previous chapter, it becomes apparent that cyberpunk is not just one but many things. In one sense, it has created its own identity by using aspects of all previous subgenres of sf and coupling it with the postmodern features. The use of computers in cyberpunk is a vital but also paradoxical point. One could claim that this was an aspect of logical extrapolation which is practically the hallmark of hard sf. This is certainly a viable point, but one forgets that the use of cyberspace is pure fantasy, resembling more the way scientific romances used technology; taking new technology and using it to create metaphors about the present. On the other hand, functioning as a social critique, the cyberpunk sf connects closely to the soft sf, where it deals with developments in the current age and then simply exaggerates them or develops them further. Multi nationalism is one example and also the Japanese influences are important. Then again, as I have shown with regards to the imagery of cyberpunk and the use of postmodernist features, cyberpunk is also closely allied to the new wave, being very experimental and certainly using many literary values in the texts. This leaves us with a cyberpunk which has done nothing which is exactly new, but is still markedly different from previous styles. If we are to locate one area where cyberpunk can be 31 said to diverge from earlier texts, it is in the area of technology. Cyberpunk tends to take a stand where technology is both something positive and something negative. The character of Molly, as mentioned before, is a good example of how technology fills both the role of saviour and pitfall. In my analysis, I will also investigate in great detail how one can see both aspects of utopia and dystopia in the metaphor of cyberspace. Other styles of sf tend to be less ambivalent towards technology, where it is either a positive or negative thing. Also with regards to technology there is one other thing which cyberpunk practices more than any other style of sf. It uses technology in metaphorical terms, describing technology not in technical terms but rather in metaphorical terms. I have shown this in the way that Gibson depicts cyberspace. However, the opposite also holds true, which is just as interesting, namely where the natural is described not in natural terms, but rather in technical terms, thereby creating an almost inverted metaphor. I have previously mentioned that in connection to the opening line of Neuromancer, but it is also evident in Sterling's Schismatrix: She slipped her hands inside his loose kimono. 'Shaper,' she said, 'I want your genetics. All over me.' Her warm hand caressed his groin. He did what she said. (Sterling, 1985/1996, p. 35) Here we see that the sexual act is described quite differently from what we would normally expect, creating a technological metaphor for a natural act. This inversion is quite interesting and will also be analysed further later on. On this note, let us turn to the meat of the paper, which is the analysis of the cyberspace trilogy. 32 Analysis of the Cyberspace Trilogy In this chapter I will present my analysis of the cyberspace trilogy. The analysis will focus on the proposed allegory that the three books' development, on both a textual level and a story level, taken together can be read as parallel to that of postmodernism's development. The first thing to clarify when working with this hypothesis is how one can justify to read the books in such a fashion. First of all, I believe that I can show, through my analysis, that there are clues in the texts themselves that point toward such a reading. Second, if McHale's claim that cyberpunk is "... a convenient name for the kind of writing that springs up where the converging trajectories of sf poetics and postmodernist poetics finally cross" (McHale, 1992, p. 245) holds any truth, then one must expect that cyberpunk literature must relate to the development of postmodernism, if for no other reason than that cyberpunk is part of the postmodern development. The second thing to look at in connection with this analysis is how much Gibson knows about modernism and postmodernism and what motive he could have in creating such an allegory. This is very difficult to comment on without committing the intentional fallacy and in some ways it seems irrelevant what Gibson may have wanted to accomplish with his texts. It is known that he has attended college and literature studies, where he has presumably been exposed to lectures on modernism and perhaps postmodernism. This is pure speculation, of course, and not really relevant. However, as mentioned in the chapter on cyberpunk, the circle of writers who created the cyberpunk genre chose the name of 'the Movement'. This is hardly a coincidence and it shows both an awareness of literary history and a desire to be different from earlier incarnations of sf writings. It seems that the ultimate answer to the question really is that we do not know how much Gibson himself knows of these literary incarnations, but that it is not important. What is important is that he has obviously undergone a development as a writer and that this must follow, to some degree, the development of postmodernist literature, just as it would with any other postmodernist writer. In the following, then, I will examine how the texts work and how they may represent the development of postmodernist literature. If my hypothesis works, then Neuromancer must obviously adhere to the early incarnations of postmodernism. This was, as we saw earlier, a focus on textuality and metaficiton. The following section will therefore focus on the places where one can find either metafictional strategies or perhaps comments on metafiction, sf and postmodernism. 33 Neuromancer There seems to be a never ending number of references to sf in Neuromancer, both references which refer to specific works, but also many comments on earlier modes of sf writing and how sf has, or perhaps should, change. I will examine some of them here, to investigate how they work as comments or references. I find this necessary in order to see how Gibson works with his text and how he positions his own text in relation to both the previous modes of sf, but also in relation to non-sf literature. The greater part of the examples below take root in characterisation, but that is not meant to indicate that the narrative will not receive attention. However, I find it interesting to pursue the literary tradition of tracing the motives presented in texts and how these motives are altered to suit a new literary tradition. For example, in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, one of the characters, Runciter, has a wife who is placed in half-life. When he goes to talk to her, her laugh is described thus: "The laugh, the unique and familiar warmth of it, made his spine tremble;..." (Dick, 1969/1998, p. 18). In Neuromancer, there is also a character who is placed in a state similar to half-life; the Dixie Flatline. His laugh, however, is described in a different way: "The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case's spine." (Neuromancer, 159). The fact that in both cases the sensation affects the spine seems to show that it is an echo of Dick's text and not just a coincidence, as well as the fact that both characters are in a half-life state. In Neuromancer, Dixie Flatline is a friend of Case's, so it is not a negative character but one whom Case should like, as in the case with Ubik. However, again the technology makes the difference, as in Gibson's text the laugh is unpleasant. Another difference is the fact that the half-life in Ubik is not permanent, the people in half-life eventually disappear, which is seen as a sad thing. In Gibson’s case the state is permanent, but Dixie asks in the end to be deleted, as he does not want to live in this state (Neuromancer, p. 130). There are two references which can be seen as puns on 'typical' sf, or perhaps mostly hard sf. The first is when Case stares at a display of shuriken6 and "...it came to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome." (Neuromancer, 20). While of course serving as a metaphor of Case's violent lifestyle, it is also extremely tempting to read it as a comment on how the protagonists of hard sf journeyed under the stars of the sky. This works on two levels, since it can be seen both as 6 Shuriken are small, sharp, metal stars used for throwing. 34 a comment on how different Case is from these protagonists, as his destiny is spelled out in 'cheap chrome', not exactly a flattering destiny. It can also be taken even further, perhaps, to comment on how cyberpunk feels that protagonists should be different from how earlier sf has portrayed their protagonists, many of whom must be said to be heroic. However, it is interesting already here to notice that there is a discrepancy in this, for although Case is a criminal, he is also very similar to the hard sf protagonists who travel boldly into space where no one else has gone. Case's space is simply a different space, namely cyberspace. Here he is as much the white male hero who traverses terrible dangers, the ICE (intrusion countermeasures electronics), in order to reach his destination. Surely, with these things in mind, the comment above becomes far more ironic and complex. I will go further into reading the console cowboys (those who enter cyberspace) in the section on cyberspace. The second reference is slightly two-fold, when Case and Molly travel to the space station Freeside, which is in effect a travel to the moon. This travel is done practically as easily and casually as any other trip in the book, but the full effect of the reference is first realised when seeing the title for the third part of the book: 'Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne' (Neuromancer, 123). Here we can see an ironic statement on the early scientific romance writers such as Jules Verne. However, later on we also get a comment on how sf can seem to the first-time sf reader, when Case and Molly walk down Rue Jules Verne and Molly states: "The perspective's a bitch, if you're not used to it." (Neuromancer, 148). This could be a reference to how the first-time sf reader has problems reading sf, because s/he is not used to it. Part of this may lie in the fact that first-time readers are not used to the metaphors and symbols used by sf writers, called the mega-text by Broderick (Broderick, 1995, p. 38), and because of this they cannot decode the writing properly. These two examples are simply remarks on the general corpus of sf texts, and how one might perceive them. There are also several examples of echoes of specific sf texts, where a reader might notice the reference if s/he knows the earlier text. This may seem trivial, as such echoes are often found in texts and usually carry little real meaning. Here, however, I feel that it is useful to note some of them, for it points to a difference in attitude between the earlier texts and cyberpunk. The two next examples are contained in Molly's character. The first is her eyes, which are implants and often described in Neuromancer. It seems that these eyes echo the eyes of Palmer Eldritch in Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Neuromancer: The silver lenses seemed to grow from pale white skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. (Neuromancer, 37). 35 Three Stigmata: The replacements, fitted into the bone sockets, had no pupils, nor did any ball move by muscular action. (Dick, 1964/1996, p. 145). The difference lies not so much in the description of the eyes, but rather in the character they belong to. In Three Stigmata Palmer Eldritch is a demonic character and this is further enhanced by the fact that he has artificial body parts; an arm, the eyes and his teeth. However, Molly is not a demonic character, she is at least as important as Case and she is never demonised. Her eyes and her blades are unsettling, but seen as necessary for her to perform her job. Here it is difficult to say if it is an explicit reference to the Dick novel, or simply a use of the mega-text, but in any case we can see that the view of this technology is different. The second thing is exactly Molly's blades, which echo Joanna Russ' The Female Man, in which there is a character called Jael, where the fingers and nails are also important. Both Molly and Jael are threatening characters, but generally seen as positive. The major difference is that Jael is extremely feminist in her expression and her statements, while one could easily perceive Molly as being male in many situations. It is interesting that it is always Molly who must protect Case and not vice versa. Case is often left totally defenceless with no one but Molly to protect him. She is also the active character and the one who performs the actionoriented sequences in Neuromancer. This is something I will get back to when discussing the console cowboys. The character of Palmer Eldritch has also left his mark on another character in Neuromancer, and that is Ratz with his prosthetic arm and teeth. This example is quite similar to that of Molly above, where the character is a positive character, a friend of Case's, but the technology is described as unsettling. Here it is difficult to see if it is a reference to Dick’s text or if it is simply a use of the mega-text. In all circumstances, we can see that the relation to technology differs. In these examples I feel that a major difference between most sf and cyberpunk can be discerned. It is typical of most sf to use technology to enhance the story or make the story possible or plausible. In Three Stigmata and Female Man, the technology is used to emphasise the characteristics already possessed by the characters, while in Neuromancer, technology actually opposes the characters' traits. In the case of Ubik vs Neuromancer, there is an inversion of the view of half-life, from positive to negative. Flatline actually asks to be terminated, while Runciter's wife wants to live on in half-life. I feel that these echoes of previous sf texts are used deliberately to show how cyberpunk approaches technology in a different way, for although the above examples are negative, there are also positive sides to technology. Molly has escaped a life as a prostitute through the use 36 of technology, Case gets help from Flatline and overcomes problems he could not have done on his own. Most importantly of all, it is through technology that Case finds what is closest to transcendence, namely through cyberspace. This ambivalent nature of technology is specifically tied to cyberpunk. What I have looked at now is mostly how Neuromancer has used intertextuality to raise certain problems and make specific comments on sf. It is important to note that these examples go beyond the mega-text noted in the cyberpunk chapter, as all these examples show how cyberpunk holds different views of technology than earlier sf. There are examples where the text evokes the sf mega-text, such as the space-station Freeside, where the reader gets no information on how it works, it is simply there. There are also more examples of metafictional strategies in the text, which I will turn to now. The most striking example is the time when Case gets a view of a recording of himself, Molly and Armitage: "The figures were caricatures in light, life-size cartoons: Molly, Armitage and Case." (Neuromancer, 249). As mentioned in the chapter on cyberpunk, characters are often quite stereotypical and here we can see that the text openly flaunts this fact. It is also interesting that Neuromancer is really based on what appears to be a macguffin7; the entire plot revolves around the AI Wintermute wanting to merge with a minor part of it, Neuromancer. At the climax of the novel, it all succeeds and the two AIs merge to form a complete AI and it even becomes the entire matrix (which is the same as cyberspace). The reader then would obviously expect some sort of change or resolution, but in the end: "Things aren't different. Things are things." (Neuromancer, 316). This can be seen as part of metafiction's use of closure, which is actually often a denial of closure. However, it also seems to be a use of deus ex machina, where the plot is suddenly resolved, in a surprising way. This is a feature which runs through all of the novels and I will return to it later. The City in Neurom ancer As mentioned in the chapter on postmodernism, one of the things which was part of the cultural development of America, was the move away from the city, creating a suburban area around the city centre. In Neuromancer, one may trace this in the Sprawl which is part of the 7 A term invented by film director Alfred Hitchcock, signifying a thing which has no meaning in itself, but used to propel the story forward and capture the viewer’s/reader’s attention. 37 world in which the story takes place. Here the cities have merged all the way from Boston to Atlanta, creating one enormous city space (Neuromancer, p. 57). It is interesting to note, however, that no action in Neuromancer takes place in suburban areas. Most of the city locales seem to fit into an urban centre, whether we are in Chiba, the Sprawl or even Freeside. Of course, there is an entire space which is neither urban or suburban; cyberspace, but I will return to that a little later. However, it is interesting to note the urban landscapes in Neuromancer, for modernism has often been interested in portraying urban life and the city. One might then think that Neuromancer's insistent portrayal of urban landscapes indicates an interest in the modernist thematics. However, there is a long way from the chaotic, unruly cityscapes in Neuromancer to the ordered city of modernism represented best by the Bauhaus-style. This is something which Gibson has dealt with before, in his short story 'The Gernsback Continuum'8, where the protagonist imagines such a future only to dismiss it. In Neuromancer, the comments are not as directly ironic, but an example of the chaotic city is seen in Freeside: Rue Jules Verne was a circumfere ntial avenue, looping the spindle's midpoint, while Desiderata ran its length, terminating at either end in the supports of the Lado-Acheson light pumps. If you turned right, off Desiderata, and followed Jules Verne far enough, you'd find yourself approaching Desiderata from the left. (Neuromancer, p. 180) There are other examples of how the cities in Neuromancer are confusing, such as the description of Night City as "designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button." (Neuromancer, p. 14). The way that the city is portrayed in Neuromancer can be compared to the cities we often encounter in Delany's work, especially Dhalgren with the city Bellona. It is difficult to say if it is a specific reference, as the way they resemble each other is not in the view we get of them, but rather in the way that they both seem to be impossible. It is also evident that there are no positive descriptions of the city in Neuromancer, all cities are seen as confusing and dangerous, even predatory in the case of Night City. How the city is described in the later novels and what parts of the city are described, will be examined later on. Cyberspace in Neurom ancer It is quite interesting to note that although it is of course the same cyberspace which is present in the three novels, it is used for radically different things. Therefore, I will have a 8 This title carries a further pun, because Hugo Gernsback was the editor of the sf magazine Amazing Stories and has also written essays on sf (Parrinder, 1980, p. 2). 38 section under each text which deals with how cyberspace is used in that text. Here in Neuromancer, we find that cyberspace is obviously the most radical novum of the text. It creates an entirely artificial world in which anything can happen. In the following, I will deal with three things which I find important and relevant for the way cyberspace is portrayed in Neuromancer. The first aspect which I find interesting is the notion of paraspace, a concept used by Samuel Delany to deal with sf. The second aspect is a comparison which has been drawn several times, because it is so obvious; the relation between cyberspace, hyper reality and the simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard fame. The last aspect is how cyberspace can be seen as a vehicle creating a radical form of metafictionality in Neuromancer. The two first aspects will require that I present new theories briefly. I have chosen to place them here rather than in a separate chapter, since they only apply to very specific parts of the text. Turning to paraspace, I will investigate how cyberspace works as an "linguistically intensified paraspace" (Bukatman, 1993/1996, p. 157). Delany's claim is that some sf creates a normal or recognisable world and then creates a parallel world, sometimes mental and sometimes material, where language is raised to a higher, more lyrical, level. It is also here that the conflicts of the normal world are always resolved (Bukatman, 1993/1996, p. 157). This is not only true of cyberpunk texts, but of several sf texts. One good example is J.G. Ballard's Crash, where the protagonists are fetishists of car-crashes. The experiences they get from these crashes are usually described in great detail and this certainly constitutes the most interesting passages of the book, and the most lyrical. Bukatman goes on to claim, and I would agree, that all sf can be seen to create a paraspace, sometimes a physical space as outer space often functions, sometimes a mental space as in Crash above, and sometimes as an internal space as in cyberpunk. This expansion makes sense, as all sf texts introduce new elements and often entire zones where the action is resolved. This paraspace/zone is obviously closely connected to the novum, as the novum acts as the focus of this new paraspace/zone. It seems obvious that it is exactly this new element which the sf writer would like to deal specifically with and therefore also the one where there will be the most lyrical passages. Here we can see how the mega-text can free the sf writer from dealing with some aspects and instead focus on other aspects. There are space-ships and space-stations in Neuromancer, but we hear little about them and get little detail about them. This is not necessary, either, for an experienced sf reader who can easily decode such signs. 39 Instead, Gibson can deal with the things which interest him, and this certainly seems to be cyberspace. Above, when I write paraspace/zone it is no coincidence that I choose to invoke the word zone. As already mentioned in the chapter on cyberpunk, there are certain similarities between cyberspace and the postmodernist word zone. It is interesting, then, that sf has its own term for something which is strikingly akin to the word zone. Or perhaps not so surprising, as we are dealing in both cases with an ontological genre or mode of writing. It is easy to see how the action which begins in the normal world is resolved in cyberspace, and I have already dealt with the fact that perhaps it is not even resolved satisfactorily for the reader. However, what is the most interesting thing about cyberspace in Neuromancer is how it works as this lyrical or linguistically intensified space. This can be seen already in the first description we get of cyberspace when Case enters for the first time in the novel: And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film comp iled from random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information. Please, he prayed, now A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky. Now Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray. Expanding And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his dis tanc e less hom e, his cou ntry, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. (Neuromancer, p. 68) As we can see from this extensive quote, the description can be seen as both meaningless and filled with meaning. Some of the sentences make no real sense other than as a visual expression or seen as a metaphor for the perception of data. In many ways, it is more meaningful to view the above quote as a prose poem expressing the experience of entering cyberspace. This is a good example of the linguistically intensified space which Delany is interested in. The above quote is also a good example of what might be considered a 'purple patch' (Abrams, 1993, p. 173), a place where the figurative language is heightened to such an extent that the story stands still, nothing really happens. This is not to disparage the quote as such, since I find it a vital place in the novel, but many readers, especially sf readers, would probably wonder about the presence of this and similar places. Whether this quote shows Gibson rising to the occasion and performing a well-executed piece of writing, or whether he has willed himself to perform a better piece of writing than he is actually capable of, in the sense that it merely becomes pretentious, is difficult to judge. The popularity of Gibson's work and the fact that practically every critic has mentioned the 'fluid neon origami trick' when 40 noting on Gibson and cyberspace, seem to indicate that it is a successful work. It is interesting, however, that it appears in a work of sf, since attention to style is not well-received by many sf readers. However, as I have previously mentioned, cyberpunk is among the subgenres where style is important. Also, in the quote above we find an interesting blurring between cyberspace and the real world in the paragraph 'A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky' and in the latter parts of the quote, which sound very urban in nature. We have seen such blurrings earlier in the text and also find them later. There are also examples of the opposite situation, where the real world is described in terms of the matrix. Get just wasted enough, find yourself in some desperate but strangely arbitrary kind of trouble, and it was possible to see Ninsei as a field of data, the way the matrix had once reminded him of proteins linking to distinguish cell specialties. Then you could throw yourself into a high-speed drift and skid, totally engaged but set apart from it all, and all around you the dance of biz, information interacting, data made flesh in the mazes of the black market... (Neuromancer, p. 26). They are part of what gives the text its tension and also part of what makes the text postmodern. This blurring of the secondary world of cyberspace and the real world is not usual for sf, where the two would normally inform each other and affect each other, but would usually be kept separate. This is the case in the earlier example of Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', where the world is a complete simulation and there is no blurring between any two worlds. We often find Case hallucinating in cyberspace and the hallucinations refer to the real world, often so much that we begin to doubt whether this is actually the real world or just a hallucination. This seems a good entrance point to bring in the theorist Jean Baudrillard who is obsessively concerned with the status of the real world and the simulacra it produces. Here is how Baudrillard views the image: it is the refle ction of a profoun d reality; it ma sks and denatu res a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profo und reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 6) Baudrillard goes on to remark that this is the state of the real, that reality can no longer be perceived and that it is only the artificial/the simulacrum which is real. This is obviously easily applied to cyberspace, where we can interpret cyberspace as being the image of the world which destroys the real. For example, the only real description we get of the Sprawl is presented from the view of cyberspace (Neuromancer, p. 57). This view can also be seen represented in Case's view of the physical world. As a console cowboy, he has little regard for the flesh and perceives cyberspace to be far more real and preferable. When denied access to cyberspace we see that: "For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall." (Neuromancer, p. 12). If we look at what 41 Baudrillard has said about simulacra and sf, an interesting point arises. Baudrillard states that there are three orders of simulacra: simulacra that are natural, naturalist, founded on the image, on imitation and counterfeit, that are harmonious, optimistic, and that aim for the restitution or the ideal institution of nature made in God's image; simulacra that are productive, productivist, founded on energy, force, its materialization by the machine and in the whole system of production - a Promethean aim of a continuous globalization and expansion, of an indefinite liberation of energy (desire belongs to the utopias related to this order of simulacra); simulacra of si mulation , fou nded on inform ation, th e model, t he cybernetic game - tot al operat ionality, hyper reality, aim of total control. (Baudrillard, 1981/1994, p. 121, author's italics.) The claim is that the first order is the imaginary of the utopia, the second of science fiction and that there is no example of the third order yet. At first glance, it seems that cyberspace would fit perfectly as an example of this third order. Baudrillard even concedes that if an example is to be found for the third order, it would be computers. However, I would claim that from Case's point of view, cyberspace belongs to the first order of simulacra. It is most certainly founded on image, we have already seen how visual the description of cyberspace is and the "consensual hallucination that was the matrix" (Neuromancer, p. 12) is a perfect example of the counterfeit. Certainly the matrix is harmonious and optimistic for Case as he longs to return to cyberspace when he is denied access. There are even religious overtones in his relationship to the matrix, as seen in the comment that it was the Fall to be denied access to cyberspace, just like the Garden of Eden. And as for making things in God's image, that is something which we will return to later in the section on Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The use of the hyper real can be seen in Neuromancer, although it is not part of cyberspace when it happens. On Freeside, we find the following: The trees were small, gnarled, impossibly old, the result of genetic engineering and chemical manipulation. Case would have been hard pressed to distinguish a pine from an oak, but a street boy's sense of style told him that these were too cute, too entirely and definitively treelike. (Neuromancer, p. 154) Here it becomes evident that something can be too real. However, in Neuromancer reality truly has disappeared. Many animals are extinct and it seems possible that trees as well could have become extinct when we hear Case's question a little later: "'What's that smell? he asked Molly, wrinkling his nose. 'The grass. Smells that way after they cut it.'" (Neuromancer, p. 154). It does not seem that nature is a part of the everyday life, just as we learn that horses are extinct (Neuromancer, p.113) and that scientists are still trying to re-create them. There is another interpretation which might give evidence of hyper reality, but again this is outside cyberspace. The cybernetic implants which we learn Molly has can be seen as making the human more real than the human, as with the extended life of Julius Deane (Neuromancer, p. 20). Here we have an example where the artificial human far exceeds the 42 original. These are examples of how cyberpunk writers take a piece of postmodern culture and make it concrete in their texts, as part of the world created. However, the above interpretations, although interesting, seem to indicate a fault in Baudrillard's theory. It is very unclear in its expression and there are examples where the definitions seem indistinguishable and fuzzy. This is evident in the three orders of simulacra above, for example, since Baudrillard himself seem uncertain of what the third order might be. This is not to say that his theories are not useful, for as I have also shown they can shed interesting light on certain aspects of texts. This is merely to indicate that the theory also has its limitations. The last aspect of cyberspace I wish to investigate here, is how cyberspace serves as a vehicle for an allegory of reader and text. This part relies heavily on Wolfgang Iser and his concept of the gestalt which forms during the reading of a text. This reliance is two-fold, as this reading is obviously part of my gestalt of the text, but I also believe that it is possible to claim that the text itself makes use of the gestalt. In Neuromancer, two virtual creations exist, the AIs Wintermute and Neuromancer, actually part of the same but not united. The entire plot of the novel is that the two AIs must be united. Why is never clear, except that Wintermute desires to become, as it claims, whole. Throughout the novel, Wintermute manipulates the world around it, the people in the world and everything else except Neuromancer, which it cannot influence directly, only through intermediaries. What I claim is that Wintermute represents the author of any given work of literature and that Neuromancer represents the reader. According to Iser, the full meaning of the text is only fulfilled when the two are united in the gestalt of the text; as he says: "...it [the gestalt] arises from the meeting between the written text and the individual mind of the reader..." (Iser, from Lodge, 1988/1996, p. 219). This reading may show why Wintermute cannot directly affect Neuromancer but only through indirect means. As Iser states, the author can only reach the reader through the use of narrative techniques (Iser, from Lodge, 1988/1996, p. 218). The author, while present, must also be shut out and this is what Iser claims results in: "two levels, the alien 'me' and the virtual 'me' which are never completely cut off from each other" (Iser, from Lodge, 1988/1996, p. 227). This relationship is quite similar to that of Wintermute and Neuromancer in the novel. What this would mean, is that cyberspace, at the end of the novel where Wintermute/Neuromancer merge, actually becomes the gestalt since the two AIs become the 43 entire matrix. This is also in accordance with Iser's thinking, where the text is only complete once the reader has fully created the gestalt of this reading. We can find another piece of evidence in favour of this reading, with regards to the fact that time-sequences are similarly distorted in cyberspace and the forming of the gestalt. Iser states that the process of reading in itself makes the reader realise the time gaps which are present (Iser, from Lodge, 1988/1996, p. 217). This is quite parallel to the experiences Case has in the matrix. There are times when he hallucinates for what appears to be a long time, but when he returns only a short while has passed. This reading seems to be evidence of a strong metafictional nature of Neuromancer. It is typical for metafictional texts to make such remarks on reading and often be explicitly aware of their fictional status. Concluding on Neurom ancer There are many things one can discuss regarding Neuromancer. The above analysis is only what I have chosen for paper, in order to present the views I find most interesting. It is obvious that some things have been included because they become more important as my analysis progresses. Certainly, the analysis of the city will take on more meaning as we get to see how it changes in the later texts, while cyberspace is a vital part of any analysis of these texts. It is fascinating to see how just one aspect of the text can work in very different ways. There are more possible readings of cyberspace than I have investigated here and it shows how such a novum can work within the sf text. It can hold so many different meanings because it has no correlation to the world outside the text and so the author is free to create any meanings desired. This is how the postmodern word zone also works, in that a textual space is created where reality is no longer relevant and only the textual experiments guide the text. It seems evident from the above that cyberspace is by far the most important aspect of Neuromancer; it is where the text takes on its most intense meanings and it is where there are the most textual experiments. We will see how cyberspace changes in the later texts and try to answer why these changes occur. If we try to use McHale's view of the dominant as the guiding feature of the text, we can see that while ontology is the overarching guiding feature, it is possible to narrow down this dominant feature to say that metafictional aspects take up a large portion of the novel. This 44 seems to indicate that we can say that Neuromancer does represent, at least to some degree, the metafictional period of postmodernism, but this is something I will get back to later. Count Zero I argued that the dominating aspect of Neuromancer was metafictional, and so I will keep the same use of the dominant in mind throughout this part of the analysis. Let it first be said that there are aspects of Count Zero which are metafictional, but they are overshadowed by other concerns. But let us investigate a few of the places where the text may be considered metafictional. We get a reference to the events in Neuromancer (Count Zero, p. 223), where a short summary is created as well as a conclusion to what actually happened at the end of Neuromancer. Interestingly, this conclusion is not that nothing has changed, quite the contrary, here it is noted that the matrix did change, it became self-aware. Here we encounter yet another aspect where the reader of Neuromancer will have to change his view of that text, since the reader is told there that nothing has changed at the end of Neuromancer. There are also some places in the text where characters refer to events in Neuromancer. Being part of a trilogy, this is not surprising, but the way that the references come are slightly different from what could be expected. First off, the main protagonists of Neuromancer are not present in Count Zero, they are only referred to by some of the minor characters which are part of both texts. This is interesting, as it creates a different view and description of the characters which readers of Neuromancer would note. This is obviously part of what Iser calls a gap which is filled by reading and forces the reader to re-evaluate what he has read before. Of course, the reference is short (Count Zero, p. 176-177), but the reader would still change his views of the events in Neuromancer to some degree. The reference that the Wig is more sane than the Special Forces character in Neuromancer (Armitage), only makes sense for the reader of Neuromancer. These uses of intertextuality are wholly dependent on the fact that the reader has read Neuromancer. Of course, since it is the first part of the trilogy that is not too surprising, but on the other hand, there are no paratextual indications that the three books form a trilogy. The name cyberspace trilogy is created by readers and academics, not enforced by Gibson as the author. Of course, when reading the texts it becomes obvious that they are part of a whole, but this is only apparent if one has the knowledge of all three books. Otherwise, no indications 45 point to this status. This is why it is interesting to look at these intertextual references, since they become so only by virtue of reader knowledge. It is vital to stress here that I do not believe that intertextuality and metafictionality are the same thing. The point I am trying to make is that these intertextual and intratextual references take on new meaning because of two things. As argued above, the status of the three books as a trilogy is not something directly enforced by the author. Rather, it is a view which grows from reading the texts and discovering these references and characters. The fact that these references actively change the reader's perception of the book seems to indicate a different status of these references rather than merely making aware of the fact that this is a trilogy. It would seem to indicate, I believe, an awareness that the first text, Neuromancer, is not the whole story and that it may be false. It is this realisation which causes the text to become metafictional, I would argue, since it raises the issue of the fictionality of both the earlier text, but also the one being read. However, there is certainly one place where the metafictional strategies are not dependent on having read Neuromancer. When Marly has been to the Louvre after her meeting with Alain, she feels not only observed, but also as if she is controlled by some large machinery which she cannot see herself. She has two comments which certainly bring her own free will into question: I'm a tool, Paco. [...] While I walked here, I imagined a structure, a machine so large that I am incapable of seeing it. A machine that surrounds me, anticipating my every move. (Count Zero, p. 109) Here we find one of the typical elements of metafictional texts, the character who begins to doubt his or her own status as a free-willed being. However, this doubt soon spreads out into different areas and ends in a more general speculation on how reality is constructed. This is an issue I feel is investigated closely in Count Zero, and I will return to it shortly. First, there is one very obvious way in which Count Zero differs from Neuromancer and that is in the area of how the story is structured as a story and how it is told. When we look at Neuromancer, we see that the story is centred on Case and practically everything is told from his point of view. More importantly, every chapter has Case in it. This is not unusual in itself, of course, but when comparing with Count Zero, we see that the chapters alternate between the three main protagonists. In the beginning of the novel, this is evenly divided into a sequence which follows the pattern: Turner - Marly - Bobby. This continues for the first nine chapters, after which this structure becomes irregular. 46 This may seem inconsequential but it does show a different approach to how one should structure and tell a story. Interestingly, only two of the main protagonists ever meet, Bobby and Turner (Count Zero, p. 294), and through most of the novel it actually seems that the three protagonists follow three different, unrelated plots. It is only at the end of the novel that the reader can find direct connections between the three plots. Here we can see that the book takes on a fragmented nature, since there seems to be no guiding feature in the text. I feel that this is actually a vital point, that the texts differ so much in structure, because in Neuromancer we have a central character and a central plot. While the plot may seem diffuse and is probably not resolved properly in the text, there is a very specific focus on one plot. Also, we only get a point of view from one character, really, and that is Case. Not so in Count Zero, where we actually have the same plot seen from three different points of view; Turner, Bobby and Marly. This is reflected in the structure of the novel and it is reflected in the locations the text takes place in, but more on that in the section on the city. However, I believe that this structure of the text and the fact that we get three points of view instead of one is similar to the decentring we find in later in postmodernism. This follows in the fact that practically all the characters in Count Zero are paranoid to some degree. They always feel that they are being manipulated and hunted by a variety of nefarious groups. As the text concludes, we learn that they are mostly right, but often their paranoia seems exaggerated. This is reminiscent, to a certain degree, of what we find in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, as I have mentioned earlier, where the paranoia was an ironic comment on the paranoid readings where everything is important. At first glance this may seem quite different from Count Zero, where the paranoia is often quite justified and people are plotting against the protagonists. However, when the plot is resolved in the novel, there is little possibility that the protagonists could ever have suspected what was really going on. And regarding the actual observation of the protagonists, this is never really kept a secret. We hear the following comment from one of Virek's servants: "Certainly you are observed. We watch, and it is well that we do" (Count Zero, p. 109). With this kind of open observation, so to speak, the paranoia of the protagonists does seem excessive. There is also a point in the fact that the end of the novel is totally unpredictable for both the protagonists and the reader. In this sense, the end does seem a bit like deus ex machina, where a god-like character intervenes to set things in order. This has two interesting complications, since the character which intervenes and sets things to right at the end of the 47 novel, is Virek. This is interesting because it is said that he needs to evolve in order to survive. The way he evolves and so survives is by being transferred to the matrix. We here find that the matrix is suddenly the vehicle for godlike attributes, which is something we will see more of when I investigate how cyberspace functions in Count Zero. Presentation of Art in Count Zero Having investigated how the structure of Count Zero works differently from the structure of Neuromancer, I will look at how Count Zero deals with the concept of art, the artist and the status and creation of art, much in the same way that Neuromancer dealt with issues of sf. This issue seems to be brought up quite early in the novel, in the fact that much of the plot is taken up with the investigation of the creator of boxes of trash. The very fact that the search for an artist is so vital to the plot, seems to indicate that art does have a special status and hence focus in the novel. The obvious place to start, then, would seem to be with the very objects which are the focus of the plot. The description we first get is: But Marly was lost in the box, in its evocation of impossible distances, of loss and yearning. It was sombre, gentle, and somehow childlike. It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A finger-length segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, greyish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing's face was seared and blackened. The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience. (Count Zero, pp. 27-28) There are several interesting observations to make about this description. The first is the remark it seems to make about the nature of art. The objects in themselves seem to be of little interest, but the way that they are placed in relation to each other generate a deeper meaning. An indication, perhaps, that art is created through the position of objects and how these objects interact with each other. Obviously, we must take this to be a general statement, so that objects need not be physical as such, but could be words and sentences, in the case of literature, frames and sound in the case of film and so on. As such, this observation seems banal and simple, but when we turn to the objects individually, we find that the objects surely are not artistic in themselves, they are quite evidently found objects Secondly, it questions the status and originality of the artist, since the work of art is created with something which is not originally created by the artist. That is not to say that the artist is not devoid of originality or that the artist is not the true creator of the work of art, but rather it problematises what it is to be an artist. One could say that the originality of the work of art is rather evident in the use of these found objects, rather than the creation of the objects. 48 As such, the artist is still the artist and remains original, simply using objects previously created. Thirdly, what this observation seems to raise is the status of the work of art. Can one consider such a creation to be a work of art, when it has been created by found objects and is such a work of art unique? The text seems to answer this question itself by the very fact that Marly is touched by the box. This seems to indicate that this is truly a work of art and as such must be original. Fourthly, when we look at the objects in the description they do not only seem to be found objects of little interest, they actually seem to be pieces of trash stuck together in a collage, intended to create some form of meaning or impression. The question this seems to raise must be whether this means that art is trash or that trash can be art. The answer again seems to be the latter, since Marly is touched by the object and everybody in the novel considers it to be a work of art. This is interesting because it problematises the elitist status of art as something special and almost sacred. The position taken here, is that art can be anything you want it to be, even when it seems to be worthless. All this is not to say that this is the only view one can have of art and that any other view is wrong, nor to indicate that this is the view held by the author of the work. It is simply a view which seems to be presented as possible. The interesting thing is then that the position taken above in many ways can be considered to be what a postmodernist author would say. The first statement above is not directly postmodernist in nature, but rather an observation of how art functions and how it is created. It is far more meaningful to look at the fact that the claim actually seems to be that art is created through found objects and that this means that the artist/author's status is different. It is vital to remember that the originality of the author is not removed, it is simply located at another level of the creation process. This does say something radically different about the type of originality necessary, but it does not remove it. The third statement corresponds to the attitude claimed by many Pop Artists, where Andy Warhol was the premier example. The claim was that a can of soup might not be a work of art in itself, but if you create an image of one and place it in a museum, it becomes art. Of course, this constructivist stance problematises art and questions what one can consider art, but it does not deny art, even if it does ironise over the existence of art and its special status. This also connects to the oft-quoted element of postmodern thought, the denial of the distinction of low art and high art. This flows naturally into the fourth statement above, where 49 the status of what is art and what is not art seems to be the natural conclusion of the problem raised here. This is probably the most intense interrogation of art in the novel, but it is certainly not the only one. A little later in the novel, we find that Marly considers the status of the work of art, raising some of the questions above (Count Zero, p. 45), but there is no real conclusion to this question, only a statement of the fact that it can be done. We find a remark in the novel which seems to indicate that what artists are trying to do, is to restructure reality. "They were artists in their own right, Andrea said, intent on restructuring reality..." (Count Zero, p. 90). At first, this seems to be quite a claim and it seems logical to presume that one should not take this literally. Instead, it seems more likely that the reference is aimed at the way artists like to turn things upside down in the works of art, in order to make the spectator view things from another perspective. There is a point in the novel where Marly is considering the boxes and tries to discover the secrets of how these found objects can be so interesting and can move her so much (Count Zero, pp. 146-147). She considers the actions taken by Virek, which consist of trying to decode the individual pieces of the work, such as identifying which bird the piece of bone comes from. It is interesting that Marly avoids these identifications, believing instead that: It was sometimes best, when you came to the mystery that was art, to come as a child. The child saw things that were too evident, too obvious for the trained eye." (Count Zero, p. 147). This statement seems to devaluate the very practice of trying to interpret literature and art through the use of specific theories. It does not deny the act of interpretation in itself, but does question how this is done best. It some ways this seems reminiscent of the reader-response theories such as Wolfgang Iser's, whom I have already mentioned. These issues are some that I will return to later, in the section on Mona Lisa Overdrive. While the reading presented above may seem farfetched, I believe that I have shown that it is viable and there are also places in the novel where a concern is shown with the doubleness of language and how metaphors are constructed. Lucas is explaining Bobby about the way Beauvoir and himself speak: 'Bobby, do you know what a metaphor is?' [...] ... you should pretend that we are speaking two languages at once (Count Zero, pp. 162-162) This certainly does seem to show an interest in how language can be used to say different things and that one should pay attention to what might be said other than the obvious. Interestingly, this may seem the opposite view of what Marly seems to indicate. 50 The obvious thing to do here, is also to try to compare the view of art presented in Count Zero, to what Gibson seems to be doing himself. When looking at Neuromancer, we can easily see how Gibson works with the found objects of previous sf literature. I have already examined how that novel makes use of earlier motives in sf, but turns them around to create something new. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, we will see how trash and found objects take on a new meaning. The City and World in Count Zero It is interesting that the city space we encounter in Count Zero is very different from those which we saw in Neuromancer. This is not to say that we do not enter the Sprawl, but it does happen very late in the novel when compared to Neuromancer (p. 249 in Count Zero). In Neuromancer, as noted, characters are practically always present in a city of one sort or another. While we are in several cities in Count Zero as well, they are quite different. Barrytown is more like a suburb or on the outskirts of the city rather than the city core. The descriptions of the cityscapes also vary and we are even told that there are trees present, something which we never encounter in Neuromancer, except that they are described as eerie and artificial. There are even events taking place in nature and we encounter squirrels and other animals (Count Zero, p. 178). This may seem as something simple and banal, but in Neuromancer we often get the feeling that there is little else to the world than cities and space stations. The world of Count Zero, while the same as in Neuromancer, seems much larger and a lot more varied. Again, this might not seem important but it is interesting to see that in some ways it seems to create an alternative to the facts of Neuromancer, much in the same way that the structure of Count Zero offers an alternative to the structure of Neuromancer. When one compares these findings with what was stated in the chapter on postmodernism, it is interesting to see that suburbs began to slowly grow forth and that this is reflected in the change between Neuromancer and Count Zero. This is not a direct relationship as such, but I do feel that it runs parallel to the decentring which we also saw earlier developing in postmodernism. In the novels, this development is shown through a variety of factors, one of which I believe to be the view of cityscapes, where a wider view is presented of how cities can be in this world. This is also evident in the characters which are part of Count Zero, and not only the protagonists. If we begin with the protagonists, however, we do see that they are quite 51 different from Case and Molly. While both Turner and Marly are professionals to some degree, of the two it is only Turner who is a criminal as such. What Marly does is never illegal. Bobby, although a criminal, is not a professional and is continually referred to as a 'wilson', one who does not understand what is going on. Turning to the other characters, we find a wider variety of types here as well, such as Lucas and Beauvoir, who are different because they are black, Turner's brother Rudy who is different because he has chosen to live away from the city, and Bobby's mother who is a normal person. This is actually quite unusual, as we never encounter one normal person in Neuromancer. Again, we can see that the world of Count Zero is actually much larger and varied than the one we were presented with in Neuromancer. Cyberspace in Count Zero In Neuromancer, we saw how important cyberspace was for the entire novel. Cyberspace is still vital to Count Zero, but it is so in a different manner and cyberspace works quite differently. While the action and plot does revolve a lot on events which take place in cyberspace, it is very little time which is actually spent in cyberspace. Except for a very short period at the start of the novel (pp. 31-33), we have to wait to page 230 before anyone enters cyberspace. The first time we experience cyberspace, on pages 31-33, we hardly get any description of what cyberspace looks like, only what Bobby is thinking and what happens. Of course, as this is a sequel one would expect that certain things were taken for granted, and that no description of cyberspace is really necessary. While this may be so, we still have very little time spent in the matrix although people continually speak about it. My main point is that cyberspace serves a different purpose in Count Zero than it did in Neuromancer. We find two major differences in the use of cyberspace and the first is the fact that in opposition to Neuromancer, the white male is no longer in control of cyberspace. Case was able to do what he wanted in cyberspace, but Bobby is far from able to do what Case was able to. Instead, we see that vodou9 loa (or gods) and priests control much of what is going on in cyberspace, as well as understand it a whole lot better than Bobby. The best console cowboy we encounter in Count Zero is Jaylene Slide, a woman. And at the end of the novel, we learn that the one who saved Bobby at the start of the novel, is actually Angie Mitchell, another woman. 9 While usually spelled 'voodoo', I keep the novel's way of spelling the word. 52 Also at the end of the novel, we encounter what seems to be Wintermute from Neuromancer, but here things have changed as well. I came to be, here. Once I was not. Once, for a brilliant time, time without duration, I was everywhere as well ... But the bright time broke. The mirror was flawed. Now I am only one ... But I have my song, and you have heard it. I sing with these things that float around me, fragments of the family that founded my birth. There are others, but they will not speak to me. Vain, the scattered fragments of myself, like children. (Count Zero, p.311) Here we can see that what seemed to be perfect at the end of Neuromancer, has now changed into something different, actually into many different things. The unity that was Wintermute/Neuromancer is broken and so it seems to be the case with cyberspace. There are several references to the fact that things have changed and now people do not know what is going on, even those who used to know. I find it interesting that most of the things that seem to be different from what things used to be, are actually inexplicable phenomena, not just in the sense that the people are unsure of what is going on, but also in the sense that the things are inexplicable by science. There are apparently vodou loa and even angels (Count Zero, p. 78) in cyberspace now, matters of faith instead of science. This is interesting because we are dealing with sf here and one would expect that the text dealt with how science can explain things and how science works. Instead, we are dealing with aspects which science would deny. This is interesting because it is a denial of what one might call the grand narratives. Certainly, the way vodou is presented in the text, it is not a new grand narrative as Christianity would normally be considered, because it is fragmented in itself in not having a united God, but also because it is concerned with getting things done, and is always referred to as a structure to use, not as providing an answer (Count Zero, p.111). The obvious connotation that I am seeing here is the continual stressing that things have most definitely changed and that there is no one central way of doing things. This can be seen as parallel to the decentring which began to develop in postmodernism, where a multitude of different voices began to take form, in form of other ethnicities, gay and lesbians and so on. These voices are present in Count Zero in the different characters, such as Lucas and Jaylene and this is also why I find it important that the white male is no longer in control of cyberspace, in the same way that he was in Neuromancer. For example, the best console cowboy is no longer a male but now a woman, destabilising the very name of the cowboys. Here, then, I see cyberspace as representing literature and the development it took when authors who were not white males began to be heard, such as for example Toni Morrison. In this way, cyberspace does not serve the same function as it did in Neuromancer, here it works 53 more to enforce a form of a decentring, serving in fact as the main feature of decentring. This is why, I believe, there is not an answer at the end of Count Zero, resolving what the matrix is and what it has become. That is also why we see that Wintermute has fragmented into smaller pieces, because just as there is no unified postmodernist literature, there can be no unified cyberspace. There is another view of how cyberspace in Count Zero parallels the development of postmodern culture, for as we have seen earlier, television began to gain increasing importance in American culture. While we never really heard about television in Neuromancer, we find in Count Zero that Bobby's mother is hooked on tv soaps, something which she gets through cyberspace (Count Zero, p. 54). This is obviously an ironic comment on the growing importance of tv in postmodern American culture. In conclusion of how cyberspace functions in Count Zero, we can say that it works by constructing an element of uncertainty and destabilisation. In many ways, the reader is less sure of what cyberspace is after having read Count Zero, than after having read Neuromancer. This is unusual, since the novum was created in Neuromancer and one would expect that in the later novels, the reader would be more comfortable with the concept. Concluding on Count Zero To conclude on Count Zero, it seems best to start with what the text does not do. It does not do what one would expect part two of a trilogy to do. It does not continue with the same protagonists from the earlier text, rather it completely ignores them except for a few references. The text does not investigate the events of the previous work to answer some questions left unanswered, instead it confuses what the reader had come to expect and raises many new questions. And finally, it does not use the same structure or even the same way of telling the story. Instead, it denies everything that the earlier text has done and investigates different ways of doing many of the same things. It tells a relatively simple plot, but refuses to tell it, preferring simply to create several different viewpoints. It uses the same abrupt ending, reminiscent most of all of a deus ex machina, but denies a real answer to what appears to be a solved problem, again the opposite of Neuromancer. The text deals with the same issues, the relation between cyberspace and the world, but disagrees with how cyberspace should be viewed if one knows the previous text. The use of cyberspace as a paraspace is mostly ignored 54 in the sense that it is not the same paraspace the text deals with, although it is still cyberspace which creates it. All in all, we must say that Count Zero is looking for alternative solutions to what Neuromancer did, preferring to cast into doubt much of what the reader took for granted from Neuromancer. This certainly seems to be quite parallel to what postmodernist literature does, where we find that new voices emerge, denying the special status of the white male author. Mona Lisa O verdrive When concluding on Count Zero, I argued that it functioned with the decentring as its main focus, or rather, its dominant. Again in Mona Lisa Overdrive, we find that there is the same attention to variety, and we have many different types of characters and different settings. Mona Lisa Overdrive is more easily identifiable as part of a trilogy, since we meet some of the same main protagonists early in the novel, such as Angie Mitchell on page 24. What is more interesting, is that we encounter a character called Sally Shears which bears a strong resemblance to Molly from Neuromancer: "Her eyes concealed by silver glasses that reflected the room and its occupants." (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 40). It is of course the eyes which makes the reader wonder whether this is really Molly. Not until page 172 are we reassured that this is truly Molly, when we meet another character from both Neuromancer and Count Zero, the Finn. I believe that the fact that the reader is kept unsure of Sally's true identity is similar to the fact that the production of real ity is quite special in Mona Lisa Overdrive and a lot more uncertain and potentially false. The first, quite subtle, clue is when Kumiko approaches Swain's Notting Hill residence, three old Victorian houses which have been interconnected. Here we learn that only one of the three doors actually work and that the other two are false, nothing behind them except concrete (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 13). While this is a very weak clue, it does seem to indicate that appearances can be deceiving. If we then investigate the rest of the novel with this approach in mind, we find quite a few interesting places in Mona Lisa Overdrive. It is clear that one of the main interests of the novel seems to be the production of reality, for Angie Mitchell, one of the protagonists, is actually a simstar. While we get no real description of what simstim is in Mona Lisa Overdrive, we know from the earlier books that simstim is short for 'simulated stimulation' and that it creates an illusory world which seems indistinguishable from the real world. This is not the same as cyberspace, since cyberspace is clearly not the real world from a visual 55 point of view. As I noted in the section on Neuromancer, the real world is at times described in terms of cyberspace and vice versa, but there is a difference, since cyberspace is always clearly a different world. However, as I will get into later, this is also different in Mona Lisa Overdrive. First of all, let me note that this uncertainty about the production of reality is nothing new as such to the trilogy. There are a few examples of it in the earlier works, though nothing of the same focus is present. In Count Zero, for example, we find the following example: The sinister thing about a simstim construct, really, was that it carried the suggestion that any environment might be unreal, that the windows of the shopfront she passed now with Andrea might be figments. Mirrors, someone had once said, were in some way essentially unwholesome; constructs were more so, she decided. (Count Zero, p. 197, author’s italics). This example shows that the problematic is nothing new as such, but it is first in Mona Lisa Overdrive, that we find a direct focus on the production of reality. As noted, the fact that Angie Mitchell is a simstar raises the question of the real and the fake and how a story is told and in what way this connects to reality. At one point, we see a broadcast with Angie Mitchell, but is told that this is not her, it is a 'talking head', a construct generated to simulate her (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 126). Here we see how the reality of this broadcast is made uncertain. We believe it to be true but realise that it is not, and still it is real for it did happen. We know from earlier in the text that Angie was addicted to drugs and underwent rehabilitation. It seems that what the broadcast really is, is a fiction of how the events occurred. This distortion or fictionalisation of history is something we find many times in the novel. We learn that Mona tells Eddy, her pimp, fictions of how her day with her tricks (customers) has gone. The stories she tells are semi-true, since she places real details in them, but other things are made up to please Eddy and some details seem to be impossible, which, however, is not important to Eddy (Mona Lisa Overdrive, pp. 36-37). After the story, we find that Mona is wondering about how Eddy perceives the story: She figured he must be seeing it in his head, like a cartoon, what she was telling him, and at the same time he got to be that faceless pumping big guy. (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 37) This seems to be a reflection of how a reader decodes a text, by both imagining the events and identifying with the protagonist. This perception of the reader is something I will return to in the next chapter, but here the importance lies in the way that reality and fiction are blending to create the stories that Mona tells. We continually find places in the text where the world around the characters are described as being unreal or fake. At one point, when Mona comes to the Sprawl, we get the following description: The Sprawl looked like it did in stims; the window was like a hologram postcard, famous buildings she didn't know the names of but she knew that they were famous. (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 94) 56 The important thing to note here is that the Sprawl seems to be real because it resembles its fiction. It becomes obvious that the things I used to describe cyberspace with in Neuromancer, the points of simulacra and simulation emerge here in Mona Lisa Overdrive but not as part of cyberspace, but rather the real world. The real world becomes real only because it resembles the fiction that described it. This is a sure case of hyper reality, and it becomes even more interesting when we find that the same ting happens with cyberspace as well, but I will return to that in the section on cyberspace. Here I will show more examples of how the events and locations in Mona Lisa Overdrive are described as unreal, as when Kumiko and Sally come to the Sprawl: Someone took her bag. Reached down and took it from her with an ease, a confidence, that suggested he were meant to take it, that he was a functionary performing an accustomed task, like the young women bowing welcome at the doors of Tokyo department stores. And Sally kicked him. Kicked him in the back of the knee, pivoting smoothly, like the Thai boxing-girls in Swain's billiard room, snatching the bag before the back of h is skull and t he stained concrete met with an audible cra ck. Then Sally was pulling her, the crowd had closed over the prone figure, and the sudden, casual violence might have been a dream, except that Sally was smiling for the first time since they'd left London. (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 143) This example shows how the events just described are still seen as potentially unreal. Taken individually, these examples only give a small indication of how the reality of Mona Lisa Overdrive is structured and created, but seen together it begins to form a focus for the text, and we can see that the question of how a story is told and how the world is created becomes the dominant for the novel. The fictionality of things is found many places, such as where we hear that the Battle of Britain has been re-created from old war films and allows the viewer to see from the position of a pilot (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 118). Later, we hear of the: '[...]plane tree thought to have been the one in which Wordsworth's thrush sang loud...' He spun suddenly to face her. 'It isn't, though, because the current tree was cloned from the original in 1998' (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 204, author's italics). This does seem to be an ironic statement on the status of both the romantic poets, but also on the interest people have in the artefacts of popular cultural icons. It might also hold some other intention, though, which relates to romanticism in another way. While I am not trying to claim that cyberpunk is a clone of romanticism, there does seem to be several aspects of the trilogy which point toward an orientation towards the romantic sensibility. This is something I will return to in the concluding remarks, however. At times it seems tempting to claim that this focus on the production of reality constitutes a paraspace for the novel, but when we look closer, we find that this is not really so. The plot is not resolved in this reality-production nor does it function as a linguistically intensified space. It does create certain images, such as the image of the window like a hologram card, above, but this is not a constant use. 57 In Mona Lisa Overdrive, we rarely spend any time in the matrix, a fact which I will get into later, but first I will point out something interesting about the cyberdecks (computers) which enable the console cowboys to enter cyberspace. In Neuromancer, we hear that Case's deck is an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace (Neuromancer, p. 61) and here it is described as one of the best decks. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, however, we hear that the Ono-Sendai is seen as a toy, not something a cowboy would use (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 55). Other decks are now seen as far better. This may not be surprising, considering how fast computers evolve, but it could also be seen as a critique of the sensibility put forth in Neuromancer, or possibly a longing for a return. This may be a form of nostalgia for the older days when everything was simpler, but I will return to this later. We do seem to find a quite large discrepancy between the two sensibilities put forth in Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive. In Neuromancer, we saw that the bodiless exultation was practically seen as a form of transcendence for Case, who had little regard for the physical body. However, in Mona Lisa Overdrive, the physical body takes a central place in the story, namely the transformation of Mona Lisa into Angie Mitchell. However, the question arises about how real this body actually is, since half the time when the body is mediated, it turns out that it was never really Angie but a representation of her. With regards to the name of one of the protagonists, it does seem to carry some special meaning. Mona Lisa is a name bound to seem peculiar to most readers and create certain connotations. One obvious interpretation of the name seems to be that the appearance of Mona Lisa, especially her face, plays an important role in the novel, which is probably a direct reference to Da Vinci's painting and the model. There may be other ways of interpreting the connections, such as the fact that the character Mona Lisa is probably the direct opposite of what one would connect to the painting. The character Mona Lisa is poor and living in the slum. There is no high culture icon about the character Mona Lisa, as opposed to the model Mona Lisa. The most interesting connection one could make, is the interest in fame and the person who is famous. Da Vinci's painting is one of the most famous paintings in the world, yet no one knows who the model is. While the painting's fame is connected to the artist as much as the model, when we compare this with the fact that Mona Lisa is said to resemble Angie Mitchell and then taken in connection with what we have seen about the fact that while Angie is worldfamous, it is not always she who is seen. One could even say that one never sees the real Angie through the media. This raises questions about the difference between the icon which 58 is famous and the real person behind the icon. In many ways, this is similar to the other problems of representation and reality we find throughout the novel. The City, Gomi and Reality in Mona Lisa O verdrive Looking at the city in Mona Lisa Overdrive, we find many of the same elements as we did in Count Zero; decentring and fragmentation being the nature of these cities and the locales we encounter. However, the focus is not so much on the fragmented nature of these cities, but we do get several descriptions of their reality and the status of their trash, or gomi as it is called in the novel, the Japanese word for trash. The two actually seem connected in some ways. In a long section on the gomi, we find that three cities mentioned; Tokyo, London and the Sprawl are all made different partly due to the way they consider gomi. Although we spend no time in Tokyo, it is used for comparison, since Kumiko used to live here. In Tokyo, gomi is nothing special, apparently, only used for landfill to build more city on (Mona Lisa Overdrive, pp. 168-169). Here gomi is viewed neither positively or negatively, it is simply seen as a necessary resource. The greatest difference lies in London, where gomi is special, it is valued because it gives a sense of history to the place. Obviously, this would mean that Londoners would not consider it gomi, since the connotations of trash are negative and they view this sense of history as something positive (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 169). In the case of the Sprawl, the gomi is truly trash, it is not used nor is it in any way positive. Still, the Sprawl seems to consist mainly of gomi, which obviously casts a negative light on the Sprawl (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 169). This is interesting, because in the two previous novels, the Sprawl is seen as something positive. With regards to Case, the Sprawl is home and for Bobby Newmark it is a place away from Barrytown, which is also something positive. However, we also find that there are characters in Mona Lisa Overdrive who regard trash as something positive. This is best seen in the character of Slick who builds robots out of trash and for him they are extremely important. They are even called art by Kid Afrika (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 19). This obviously echoes the belief stated in Count Zero, that found objects and trash can be considered art if used properly. This is one thing which is problematised further when Kumiko is out shopping and buys a vase in an antique shop. The shop assistant describes it as exquisite, while Colin describes it as hideous, because it is an imitation (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 221). This raises the 59 interesting fact that trash only seems to be of value if it is original trash. Of course, a rare vase is not trash but the point is that in London, what is valued is an item's history and past, and if an item is an imitation, it is not good. This runs counter to the belief stated in the bar in the Sprawl, where it does not matter that the image seen of Angie is just a construct (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 126), because that is to be expected. The point here is not to try and say something about the differences in American versus British culture, except for any clichés which might be expected. Instead, the point is that the status of the past and the reality this creates is questioned and investigated. This focus also runs through all parts of the cityscapes in the novel. Cyberspace in Mona Lisa O verdrive Like in Count Zero, we spend very little time in the matrix, but unlike Count Zero, the plot of the novel revolves around events in the matrix and the main thrust of the novel also lies on the matrix. Or rather, as one has come to expect from this novel, an illusion of the matrix, a simulacrum of the matrix. First, however, let us look at the character Gentry who holds an interesting theory, namely that cyberspace has a distinctive shape and that this shape is totally important (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 83). This becomes interesting in two ways, the first being that Slick finds the notion strange, because if cyberspace has a shape, there must be something for cyberspace to have a shape in (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 84). This becomes interesting since it begins to create the notion of a world within a world. Obviously, we have previously seen that cyberspace acts as a separate world within the trilogy's world but it has always been cut off, exactly a separate world because there are no direct connections. Of course, in Neuromancer, we find that the status of which world is the secondary is sometimes cast into doubt, but the two worlds are never really connected. With Gentry's beliefs, we find that if cyberspace has a world outside it, then what is that world and what about the world presented in the trilogy, is there a world outside that world. This is one of the Chinese boxes which McHale describes and this is something which is driven even closer to home with the character of Count Zero, who exists primarily within a strange machine called an aleph, also referred to as a soulcatcher (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 257). 60 What we learn about the aleph is that : 'it's not simstim. It's completely interactive. And it's a matter of scale. If this is aleph-class biosoft, he literally could have anything at all in there. In a sense, he could have an approximation of everything...' (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 163, author's italics). And as we find later on, what is actually inside the aleph, is a total and complete world. The first description we get of what is inside the aleph is exactly like the real world (Mona Lisa Overdrive, pp. 187-191). The most interesting fact about this is that the aleph is like the real world and not like cyberspace. Connected to what we have earlier heard Gentry say, this is quite interesting. Gentry said that: 'There are world within worlds,' he said. 'Macrocosm, microcosm. We carried an entire universe across a bridge tonight, and that which is above is like that below...' (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 117). This is not the first time we have heard that something like cyberspace is the world, we encountered that in Count Zero, where Lucas drew a comparison between cyberspace and the world (Count Zero, p. 163). However, Lucas was deliberately speaking in metaphor, while what Gentry is speaking of is meant literally. There is a valuable point about the fact that the aleph carries a completely real world inside it, because we come to expect that the aleph should be a copy of cyberspace. However, we also encounter the aleph inside cyberspace, where it is still said to contain a world, and when Kumiko enters (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 272), we do find a complete simulation of the real world. We seem to have encountered similar things in Neuromancer, but here the sights were always disregarded as hallucinations on Case's part. This was also the explanation the reader was left with, but in Mona Lisa Overdrive, this is not the case. We are expected to accept that multiple worlds exist, almost as a matter of fact. They may be simulations but they are just as real as the 'real world'. Obviously, while this expectation might be so on the level of the world, that is not to say that this multiple worlds concept does not carry a symbolic meaning on the level of the reader. I would say that the intention of creating these multiple worlds in cyberspace, run parallel to the fact that representation in Mona Lisa Overdrive is also continually put into doubt. The comment Gentry made above with ‘as above, so below’, makes the claim that if there are multiple worlds in cyberspace and in the novel, perhaps exist multiple worlds exist on the level of the reader. Again, this is not to be taken literally, but rather seen as a way of questioning the representation of reality and the production of reality. Here it is also interesting to look at the name of the aleph itself. This name is interesting because it works in itself like that which it describes. Aleph is the Greek word for the letter ‘a’, which begins the alphabet. In this sense, the ‘a’ is both the beginning of the alphabet, but 61 it can also be said to contain all the rest of the alphabet. This is the exact same problematic as the Chinese boxes present, one world being the beginning but also part of a whole. Concluding on Mona Lisa O verdrive Having looked at the last novel in the trilogy, it seems obvious to first look at how it fits into the trilogy as a whole. First of all, it seems much more a part of a trilogy than Count Zero did in relation to Neuromancer. We have some of the same main protagonists coming back, such as Angie Mitchell and Bobby Newmark. There does seem to be something wrong with the characters, however, in certain ways. Bobby Newmark, a 'wilson' in Count Zero, is suddenly an expert on cyberspace and Angie Mitchell is no longer a scared child but a famous simstar. Of course, we learn that this is again seven years after the last novel and some changes seem necessary. It is interesting, however, that we encounter Sally Shears, who is part of Neuromancer and has changed in the same way. While she is still a street samurai, she seems more professional and more violent in Mona Lisa Overdrive, as well as having changed her name. Also, while there are elements of Count Zero that are continued in Mona Lisa Overdrive, there are just as many aspects which refer back to Neuromancer. However, in either case, the reader will find this novel to be part of a trilogy in more clearer ways than Count Zero was. It is interesting, then, that history and the past plays a relatively prominent role in Mona Lisa Overdrive, since London is seen as more 'original' than the other cities we encounter. It is also interesting, that a lot of the action takes place in London and that romantic poet William Wordsworth is invoked. When we compare this with the fact that cyberspace seems to have been simpler in the old days (ie. in Neuromancer) and the fact that reality is continually cast into doubt, perhaps we can detect some form of nostalgia or yearning on the part of the book, to simpler days, or perhaps better days. When comparing the novel to the two others, we find certain differences. The first is the concept of reality, which seems to be the main focus of this novel, in essence its dominant. It takes things and ideas which were present in the two previous novels and builds a story around it, only to continually cast reality into doubt. This results in a slight doubt on the part of the reader, as to how much of the previous books were 'real'. This seems to create a paradox of sorts where, on the one hand, the past is the original, that which creates the present, but at the same time, the past is cast into doubt, much in the same 62 way as the present. Perhaps, however, it is exactly this unstable reality which creates a yearning for the times when reality was never in doubt. Concluding Remarks Now that we have looked at the three novels individually, with little more than a few direct comparisons, let us try to compare the novels against each other to see what that can bring us, and to see if we can trace a change or development in them. This will be done in two ways, firstly by examining closely certain aspects of the texts and holding them up against each other, and secondly I will also look at what type of story is told when we see the trilogy as one long story. Since the opening line of Neuromancer has become famous, this seems a good place to start. By investigating the opening lines of the three novels, I will see if a change or development is evident. The first line of Neuromancer is: The sky above the port was the color [sic] of television, tuned to a dead channel. (Neuromancer, p. 9) The first thing the reader will notice about this sentence, is the image it creates. This is clearly an alien landscape, something one would expect to encounter in a sf novel. When looking closer, however, we see that the image created is really an impossible image. How can a sky look like television, what does a dead channel look like? The important thing to note here is that the words are not 'difficult', in the sense that none of the words are created to fit a novum of any kind. Instead, it is the juxtaposition of the words which makes this image unsettling. If one tries to interpret the sentence, we encounter several options but no real answers. Since the colour is like a televison tuned to a dead channel, the reader has to fill the gap of what a dead channel is. It could be the black-and-white flickering of a tv, dead in the sense that it transmits nothing but static. It could also be a dead channel in the sense that there is nothing of interest on the channel, merely transmitting indifferent programmes. Anyhow, the way the viewer imagines the colour, it ends up as a remark on the state of the medium of tv. Regarding the word 'port', this also presents a challenge of sorts to the reader. It is not made immediately clear, not in the sentence nor in the following lines, whether this is a normal port or perhaps a starport, as we do find ourselves in a sf novel. The presumption would probably be that it is a starport, but this is not really clarified until sometime later, when we realise that it is actually a seaport, surprisingly earth-bound for a sf novel. They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour [sic] of his hair. (Count Zero, p. 9) 63 Here, in Count Zero, we find something which looks a lot more like sf. We immediately have a novum, the 'slamhound' and the action is already running. The sentence makes a lot more sense, the only real challenge being to decipher the 'slamhound'. This is nothing exceptional and any sf reader would expect the use of such words. As noted, we are also immediately put into the story, in media res, we have a hero and opponents and we have an action. The reader would expect to learn what happens with Turner and why they put a 'slamhound' on him, perhaps even a bit about what a slamhound is. However, these things do not occur. While it might be easy to decipher what a slamhound is, it is never directly stated and we never hear about them again. This could be expected, just as we would expect to hear more about who 'they' are, but we do not. In that sense, the sentence only works to grab the reader and make sure that s/he reads on. Of course, Turner is a protagonist in the novel, but the rest of the information is not pursued in the novel. In this sense, the ‘slamhound’ works like a macguffin, since it propels the reader into the action, but we see that any expectations of getting to know more about the events are not fulfilled, since the story goes off in a different direction. The ghost was her father's parti ng gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita. (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 7) This opening line is even more straight-forward, as there are no real novum in the sentence, only 'ghost' might be slightly problematic, as it evokes images of horror and gothic tales more than it does sf. However, we soon learn what this ghost is and who the character is. Here the presentation is easy, we encounter a character who is important, we have a novum which is explained immediately and the story is moving without skipping any elements that the reader would see as important. This shows how different the three novels really are, for even though we are only talking about the opening line of each novels, there are certain things we can say about how they compare to each other. In Neuromancer, we begin with an image, a picture of an impossible setting but nothing which immediately flags that this is a sf novel. There are no characters, no plot, no story. This is a timeless image more like a poem than anything else. In that sense, it is also the most difficult opening. The second novel immediately flags its status as sf novel and has a character, a story and a plot. However, this expectation is immediately destroyed, as is the first thing which marks the text as sf. While the opening line seems easy to understand, the reader might be confused when things turn out to be different from what s/he initially expected. 64 Mona Lisa Overdrive begins perfectly for a sf novel: the protagonist is introduced, we find a novum which is important to the story, and we are presented with the beginnings of a plot which turns out to run through the novel. Here we can easily see how the novels become easier and easier to read, and this is not just with regards to the opening line. In Neuromancer, there are no explanations for the reader regarding any novum, all that is described is that which the characters get to know. In Count Zero, we have Bobby who does not know what is happening and does not understand half of the things which occur. Therefore, the reader gets many explanations of what is going on when Bobby gets the explanations. The same holds true for Mona Lisa Overdrive, with the added emphasis that most characters do not know what is going on and every time something happens, there is a character who does not know about it and gets an explanation. This means that the reader has very few problems understanding what is going on in Mona Lisa Overdrive, while Neuromancer is a very difficult text to read. When we look at the titles of the novels, there are a few interesting things to note. First of all, every title is based on a character's name in the novel. This is less true for Neuromancer, where Neuromancer is rarely encountered, but in the two next novels the titles indicate names of protagonists. Still, every title is obscure in some sense. Neuromancer is explained within the text, as noted in the section on Neuromancer, but there might be more to it. One could break the word up into 'neu' and 'romancer', in which case it would read 'new romancer'. This is difficult to say if it has any real meaning, but there are aspects of romanticism in the trilogy. As we have seen, there is the fact that cyberspace can be seen as a form of transcendence, where the console cowboy is in many ways the artist which can connect to this other, perhaps even better place. We also see how the view of art is presented, that one must come to works of art as a child. Another way of reading the title is, of course, ‘neuro-mancer’, which is also done on the text itself (Neuromancer, p. 289). Here we find that we enter into the realm of the gothic and the fantastic again, rather than the hard technological facts. Regarding Count Zero, one is not really sure how to read the title. It might be count zero, but how does one count zero (0), since zero is not there. The 'Count Zero Interrupt' note just before chapter one is no more helpful, since it seems to have nothing to do with the novel as such, other than it being a reference to old programmer speak. The most viable view of the title, seems to be to use it as Bobby's name, in two ways. First as the one he calls himself, but 65 secondly as the very true fact that Bobby is the Count of Zero, nothing. He is continually making mistakes throughout the text. I have already noted on how the name Mona Lisa might function in the text, but in the title it again seems merely obscure, for although few people would have a problem decoding the 'Mona Lisa', it is an odd name for a sf novel, and the added 'overdrive' is also confusing. Again, in the novel there is no explanation of the overdrive and the reader is left to figure it out. It may refer to the events which Mona Lisa takes part in, but we do not know. Another thing to note about the titles of the novels, is the fact that they sound very little like titles of typical sf novels. Few would presume that these novels are sf novels if simply looking at the titles. It is clear that the titles sound strange and in this sense causes a form of cognitive estrangement, but not in a form typical of sf. Rather, the titles sound almost selfdeconstructive and paradoxical, making them perhaps more in the vein of postmodernist literature. In the end, little seems to be gained from the titles, which seem to have been kept deliberately unclear. It seems that the only safe thing to say about them is that they carry their trilogy-number in their titles, in the sense that book one has a title of one word, book two a title of two words and book three a title of three words. This cannot be said to have any kind of deeper meaning, but it is quite amusing. One thing which all the novels share, is the way they end so abruptly. They each tend to wind themselves up into this extremely complex web of events which seems totally unsolvable and then they suddenly end, wrapping everything up in a few pages. The reader is always left unsure of what actually happened and is never really sure if all the problems are resolved. The most extreme example of this is in Mona Lisa Overdrive, where there is a constant reference to a rapture which is coming, but when the novel is over the reader is not really sure if this rapture has taken place or what it might be. Obviously, the strange construct which suddenly appears in cyberspace had something to do with it, but nothing more is ever really known. Here we see again how the use of deus ex machina is employed throughout the trilogy. Closure does seem to be a problem in all three novels, even when you look at all three as one story. At the end of Mona Lisa Overdrive, we are told that cyberspace became self-aware at some point and that this resulted in a fragmentation. It also resulted in contact with another cyberspace, from [Alpha] Centauri (another galaxy). This seems to be the very reason why cyberspace fragmented and the rapture mentioned in Mona Lisa Overdrive, might be Bobby's 66 and Angie's 'rebirth' into the matrix. One can never be sure, however, and as the Finn says "Ain't a why" (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 315), which shows that perhaps there is no explanation, again refusing a proper sense of closure for the reader. We can also see how there are quite a few romantic notions which run through the entire trilogy. I have already mentioned how cyberspace works as a symbol of transcendence and as a favouring of mind over body, but there are more examples. For instance, we can see that cyberspace also holds the same kind of maddening visions which romantic poets often experienced when overcome with inspiration. In cyberspace, this is symbolised through the hallucinations which both Case and later on Bobby experience. It is quite revealing that whenever they have hallucinations, the scenes are filled with angels, demons, ghosts and Christian imagery. We see this in Neuromancer, when Case is speaking with the AI Wintermute: "You want I should come to you in the matrix like a burning bush?" (Neuromancer, p. 202), and we see it when there are angels talking about Bobby (Count Zero, p. 78). In the end, there is one thing which is very fascinating about the use of cyberspace. We have already seen that in Neuromancer cyberspace and the relation between cyberspace and reality was the main focus. A lot of time was spent in cyberspace, the textual experiments were mostly found here and so on. Then, when we turn to the two other novels, I have argued that cyberspace works very differently and that cyberspace is used very little and constantly change status. This can be seen as a form of palinode, as we saw in the chapter on postmodernism. In postmodernism, I argued, palinode was a way of suspending the notion of modernity, but here in the trilogy, it is perhaps a way of suspending cyberspace and the total control it had over Neuromancer. We see how the console cowboys are suddenly replaced by women, by black religion and in the end, we see how cyberspace status or reality is questioned, with regards to the aleph. To sum up, can Gibson's cyberspace trilogy be seen as an allegory of how postmodernism has developed? In the previous three sections where I analysed the three books of the trilogy, I also tried to give examples of how this could be seen as part of postmodernist strategies and how a variety of different dominants gave each book its particular expression, even if they constitute a greater whole when together. When we take these examples and compare them to the development of postmodernist literature which I presented earlier on, we find a striking similarity. 67 Just as postmodernist textual strategies went from a metafictional practice, to an interest in alternatives, decentring and fragmentation and so far resulting in the problem of reality and concerns with real and illusion and simulation, we have seen that the trilogy does exactly the same with regards to the dominant of each novel. We found that Neuromancer gave great attention to the metafictive practice, something which was continued in Count Zero, but here the focus changed to an interest in fragmentation and decentring. Finally, we saw that Mona Lisa Overdrive problematised the production and representation of reality. It seems that the cyberspace trilogy does contain an allegory of how literary postmodernism has evolved. The next thing to look at, is then if a model reader is produced through this allegory. 68 The Model Reader of Postmodernism In the chapter on postmodernism, I stated that the place where modernism and postmodernism differ the most is in the view of the reader. I argued that modernism viewed the model reader as one who would be able decode all the fragments, self-consciousness and further literary devices and understand the text as a unity. The postmodernist view was instead that no unity could be created, nor should it be seen as desirable. The reader is left to decide which interpretation is valid, if any. Does this mean that there is no model reader for postmodernism? This is what I intend to discuss in this final chapter. Obviously, the answer seems to be given already by the very fact that I have a chapter named 'The Model Reader of Postmodernism', but I will investigate the matters in the following. The Model Reader and SF First, let us look at the theory which Eco presents, as well as how it might relate to sf. The concept is clear enough, based on the fact that texts are communicative and that the various codes an author uses are understandable by the reader: The author has thus to foresee a model of the possible reader (hereafter Model Reader) supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same way as the author deals generatively with them. (Eco, 1979/1984, p. 7) This is as such nothing exceptional, since one must expect the author to desire to have as many people read and understand his or her works. This is done by making a variety of choices which Eco present as: (i) a specific linguistic code, (ii) a certain literary style and (iii) specific specialisation-indices. Furthermore, there are other features, such as addressee and typographical signals (Eco, 1979/1984, p. 7). These examples above can be seen to work in a variety of different ways with regards to sf. The first and most obvious one is the typographical one, where the publisher has, in the paratext, given a description of the novel as being sf, just as a bookstore keeps separate shelves for sf novels. In this way, the reader will know that the book s/he is going to read is sf and that this requires certain things. However, not all sf novels are clearly labelled as such. In my editions of the cyberspace trilogy, for example, there are no paratextual features which indicate that the novels are sf. Even the covers give away no clues as they do not present the typical sf covers of spaceships, aliens and so on. 69 How would a reader then recognise the text as being part of sf? It is interesting to note that while the easiest way to recognise a sf text is through the use of its icons or novums (spaceship, raygun, etc.), it is not clear if this should belong to the first or third category. Through the examples which Eco provides, he would probably say that the sf icons belong to the category of specialisation-indices, since these signs are only decodable by a specialised reader. Delany, on the other hand, as we saw in his use of paraspace, would probably prefer to call this a linguistic code. We can also see that at first the category of literary style might seem like the obvious choice, but in fact it would work better to separate the different subgenres from each other, as we have seen that attention to literary style is more prominent in some subgenres than in others. However, it is also important that the text itself is said to build up reader competence, as the text asks the Model Reader to assume that the facts given are true (Eco, 1979/1984, p. 7). This is important for all texts, of course, but with regards to sf one could presume that special attention was given to this competence building, since elements are introduced which will be difficult to understand by design of the text. We can see that often sf texts give direct explanations of these novums, which is a very direct way of making sure that the reader has the necessary competence. However, as I have previously argued, cyberpunk is one example of sf which deliberately does not do so. Here the competence must be built indirectly. Another important aspect of Eco's theory of the Model Reader, is that of the open and closed text. Here Eco is talking about possible interpretations of the work. He defines a closed text as: Those texts that obsessively aim at arousing a precise response on the part of more or less precise empirical readers [...] are in fact open to any possible 'aberrant' decoding. A text so immoderately 'open' to every possible interpretation will be called a closed one. (Eco, 1979(1884, p. 8, author's italics). The opposite seems to be the case with the open text, but this is not entirely the case. Eco states: An author can foresee an 'ideal reader affected by an ideal insomnia' (as happens with Finnegans Wake), able to master different codes and eager to deal with the text as with a maze of many issues. But in the last analysis what matters is not the various issues in themselv es but the m azelike structure of the text. You cannot use the text as you want, but only as the text wants you to use it. An open text, however 'open' it be, cannot afford whatever interpretation. (Eco, 1979/1984, p. 9) As we can see, even if a closed text can have only one 'true' interpretation, that is not to say that an open text can have an unlimited numbers of interpretations. The interesting thing to note here is how this works with sf texts. One would presume that most sf texts are closed texts, especially given the examples Eco works with, such as Ian Fleming and Superman. These are action-adventure stories and many sf texts are just that. However, that is not to say that all sf texts are closed texts. It is important to note that Eco does not deny that an open text 70 can be read as if it were a closed text. He simply says that such as text: "...has been burned out, just as a 'joint' is burned out to produce a private euphoric state." (Eco, 1979/1984, p. 10). This means that some sf texts could be open texts where some readers simply failed to detect the other possible interpretations of the text. Let us look at what would be a Model Reader for the cyberspace trilogy. Model Readers for the Cyberspace Trilogy The best example where one could expect that typical sf readers would miss certain aspects of the trilogy, is in the first book, Neuromancer. As I have discussed earlier, we have several cases of 'purple patches' in Neuromancer, where the plot stands still and we are given what is essentially a prose poem. This strategy is not typical for sf fiction, and therefore few sf readers could be expected to recognise these places and decode them for what they are. Neither does the text give any direct competence regarding these places, especially because they work in two ways. They work first of all to create a paraspace, typical to the sf genre and therefore instantly recognisable by sf readers, but they also create a deeper, more lyrical sensation. This is only something readers of more experimental nature would note. It is interesting to note that as Eco says, closed texts might be interpreted in unforeseeable ways, because in many ways that was what happened to Neuromancer when it was first released. People wanted to create the cyberspace described in the novel, although that had never been Gibson's intention. Of course, I do not see any of the novels to be closed texts, but that does not mean that they appear open to all readers. In Count Zero, as I have discussed, there are several references to art and the creation of art. Again, these are not typical elements of sf and again we find little evidence that any competence is relayed to the reader. Also, it is important to note that it is not impossible for a text to be read as both open and closed. In this way, the trilogy could work as both a sf trilogy with action-adventure stories on the one hand, and on the other, there are several things which leap to the eye of a reader more used to experimental literature. As I have previously argued, most cyberpunk does in fact carry deliberately simple stories formed around the action-adventure narratives so typical for sf. Simultaneously, Gibson's cyberspace trilogy can be said to carry an allegory of how postmodernist literature has developed. It is due to this doubleness that I feel that certain characters in the trilogy can be said to symbolise Model Readers of postmodernism. 71 Characters in the Trilogy as Model Readers for Postmodernism Looking at the characters in the trilogy, it seems that it is the characters who are most intimately connected to cyberspace who seem to carry the greatest symbolic meaning. Gentry is the character in Mona Lisa Overdrive, who believes that cyberspace has a Shape. I believe that one could see this as a metaphor for the type of reader who believes that every text has a final interpretation and every mystery a solution. As I have argued earlier, the entire trilogy leaves plenty of questions unsolved and we even learn that cyberspace has fragmented: "In the wake of that knowing, the center failed" (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 264). In this way, we see that Gentry's quest has failed and is ultimately useless. This seems to be a refusal of the belief that a text has only one final meaning. Another character which spends most of his time in the matrix is Case. He is described as the best console cowboy there is, but he is also described as an ‘artiste’ (Neuromancer, p. 9). This is an interesting fact, for one would expect that such a person was more of a scientist, at least when comparing to the old heroes of sf. When relating this to what we have seen about postmodernism and cyberpunk, it seems that Case could represent the postmodernist shift of turning to aesthetics as a way of discovering alternatives to reason. This is something we can see in the meaning of ‘cyber’, discussed in the chapter on cyberpunk, as originally meaning helmsman. By carrying this metaphor further, we can see that Case is the one who takes control of cyberspace, much in the same way the old heroes of sf took control of outer space through logic and reason. The fact that Case is referred to as an ‘artiste’, seems to showcase how the aesthetics are now in control. Bobby is the second character who spends a lot of time in cyberspace, but he is quite different from Case. In Count Zero, he is continually referred to as a 'wilson', one who does not understand what is going on. In Mona Lisa Overdrive, however, he is suddenly a lot more experienced and able to investigate the status of cyberspace. Unlike Gentry, he is not so much interested in learning something finite about cyberspace, but is more interested in how it works as an alternative to the real world and how one exists within it. The one who seems to gain the most insight, however, is Angie when she at the end of Mona Lisa Overdrive suddenly perceives the world around her in shifting, different data planes. I find this quite interesting, as it seems to parallel the Model Reader of the open text discussed above. However, I believe that there is an essential difference in the way that Angie perceives these data planes and how the open text is to be viewed according to Eco. While Angie can see all these data planes, which would be comparable to the multiple interpretations 72 of an open text, she does not choose one of them, nor does she perceive these data planes as a unity in itself. Angela Mitchell comprehends this room and its inhabitants through shifting data-planes that represent viewpoints, though of whom or what, she is in most cases in doubt. There is a considerable degree of overlap, of contradiction. (Mona Lisa Overdrive, p. 292) Here we see that Angie has the ability to see everything and be able to connect everything, but is also aware of the potential dangers which lie in doing so, due to the contradictions which come from such actions. This is quite similar to the fact that postmodernism often uses paradoxes as a literary device, emphasising impossibilities. Concluding Remarks Now we can examine what the Model Reader of postmodernism might look like. It is one who realises that there is no final meaning to a text and that an aesthetic product is more ‘pure’ in its expression because it does not make the presumption to tell the final truth, but is more interested in creating alternatives and variations. Most importantly, we can see that it is exactly this process of choosing which the Model Reader would be suspicious of, since this could be seen as a denial of all the other options, which would presume that a truth exists and is necessary. The Model Reader would deny this need for truth or truth-effects. Not in the extreme sense that no truth exists in the world, but rather in the sense that texts and other works of art work best when left open. This can be connected to the notion of the paradox, something which is also important in the postmodernist literature. By realising that a paradox exists, one must also realise that one cannot safely choose, since such a choice would be arbitrary and still ‘wrong’, in the case of a paradox. Perhaps this is the reason why fragmentation has become so important in postmodernist literature, since fragments are inherently paradoxical, being unfinished but still presented as a finished product. 73 Conclusion Here at the close of the paper, let us look back at what we have seen so far. We began with an examination of how postmodernism has developed, with a focus on the literary devices and textual strategies. We saw how a development was definitely traceable, as one would expect. We also saw how postmodernism was interested in making a break with modernity and reason, seeking instead to find alternatives, especially within the aesthetic dimension. The next thing we looked at was sf and cyberpunk, where we saw how cyberpunk was both a continuation of sf as a whole, but at the same time also made certain breaks from the tradition of sf literature. This break consists not so much of creating new, original things but rather making new use of old styles. There is one thing which remains certain and that is how cyberpunk strives to be artistic and stylish in the use of their imagery. Especially with regards to technology we have seen that this is used to create new aesthetic expressions. Here, perhaps we can here find one of the main similarities between postmodernism and cyberpunk. Both are very preoccupied with the aesthetic dimension as an alternative to reason. In postmodernism's case, the reason which is rebelled against is modernity's view of reason as something totalising and ultimate. In cyberpunk's case, there is a reaction against the use of technology in sf as necessarily logical and extrapolative. Rather, cyberpunk uses technology to create imagery and metaphors not available to earlier subgenres of sf. Then we entered the meat of the paper, where we began to analyse the cyberspace trilogy itself. Here we saw how the trilogy made use of both explicit sf tropes and metaphors, but also how these metaphors opened for a wider interpretation, seeing the tri logy as investigating literary postmodernism, portraying how the development had been by emulating it. We found, at the same time, an extremely romantic side to the trilogy, something which can be claimed runs through both postmodernism and cyberpunk. Especially cyberspace carries the greatest intensity of romantic vision, working on many levels but always as the unifier of the artistic vision. We saw this in Case, who found cyberspace to be not only the closest thing to Heaven, but also the very medium in which he works. Here, perhaps, we can find some way of defining cyberpunk, by calling cyberpunk fiction a form of postmodernist scientific romances. We could see how cyberspace also creates the maddening visions which so many romantic poets felt when they were inspired. We find them in the hallucinations experienced by the console cowboys. In cyberspace, these visions tend to come when the console cowboy is on 74 the brink of death, but possibly a death which is a release, not something to be feared. At the end of the trilogy, Bobby and Angie are living in what is close to paradise. We see how the console cowboys are both metaphors for control, as the white male riding on his cyberdeck into a fluid neon origami trick. We also see how this metaphor is destroyed wilfully and replaced by what appears to be supernatural entities, again technology described in fantastic terms which deny reason. This we can connect to the palinodic trend which we found in postmodernism. The trilogy first builds a powerful symbol which is slowly retracted, suspended and altered in the two following novels. This again follows the postmodernist development of refusing final solutions and simple closure, allowing for greater reader interaction. We find the image of the city moving from a united, if confusing and impossible creation, to a fluid image with no centre and seemingly only real due to the trash which holds it together, a reality based on a past created from found objects converted into something new and therefore original. We can observe how reality is only a representation and therefore something to be questioned. At the same time, reality is confused and confusing, paranoia seemingly the only way to give structure to what is perceived. However, we, as reader, end up realising that perhaps this is not so, that it is merely because we are unable to see how things are connected and not connected. When Angie perceives the world as shifting data planes, she is not only transcending into cyberspace's paradise, she is also seeing the world as it really is. In many ways it is an open text where everything is based on being able to see the many multiple interpretations, but at the same time knowing that choosing one path eliminates the others. This is how the Model Reader of postmodernism works, essentially, through the realisation that texts work because of multiple interpretations and that although the gestalt is created through these interpretations, it is essential to keep all options open. By choosing a final interpretation, even one based on all the possible interpretations for the text, one is subject to committing the fault of believing that there is a final truth or answer, that reason can provide a united whole. In the end, a fragmented aesthetic is all we can trust, since it allows for a wide range of alternatives. This is not to say that postmodernism is an impotent aesthetic, only willing to raise questions and not answer them. Rather, this indeterminacy should be seen as a form of answer in itself, as a view that a work of art must serve as a problematisation of an issue, instead of a simple solution. - Aalborg, 2000 75 Bibliography Gibson editions: Gibso n, Willi am. Neuromancer, Voyager: London, 1984/1995. Gibso n, Willi am. Count Zero , Voyager: London, 1986/1995. Gibso n, Willi am. Burning Chrome, Voyager: London, 1986/1995. Gibso n, Willi am. Mona Lisa Overdrive, Voyager: London, 1988/1995. Secondary sources: Abrams, M .H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, Harcourt Brace College Publishers: Fort Worth, 1993) Baud rillard, Jean . Simulacra and Simulation, The University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1981/1994. Ballard, J.G . Crash , The Noonday Press: New York, 1973/1997. Broderick, Damien. Reading b y Starlight: Postmod ern Science Fiction, Routledge: New York and London, 1995. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Sub ject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1993/1996. Burro ughs, W illiam. Naked Lunch, Flamingo: London, 1959/1993. Calinescu, Matei an d Dou we Fok kema (ed .). Exploring Postmodernism , John Ben jami ns Pu blis hin g Co mpa ny: Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1987/1990. Caline scu, M atei. Five Faces of Mod ernity, Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1987/1996. Cavallaro , Dani. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Works of William Gibson, The Athlone Press: London & New Brunswick, 2000. Delany, Sam uel R. Dhalgren, Wesleyan University Press: Hanover and London, 1974/1996. Delany, Sam uel R. Trouble on Triton, Wesleyan University Press: Hanover and London, 1976/1996. Dick, Ph illip K. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Voyager: London, 1964/1996. Eco, Umbe rto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of the Text, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1979/1984. Eco, U mberto . The Limits of Interpretation, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1990/1994. Ellison , Harlan. I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, Ace Books: New York, 1967/1983. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1987/1997. Geyh, Paula, Fred Leebr on, And rew Lev y. Postmodern America n Fiction: A Northon Anthology, W.W. Norton & Company: New York and London, 1998. Hassan, Ihab. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, 2nd edition, The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1982. 76 Hutcheon, Lind a. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge: Lond on and New Y ork, 1988/1996. Iser, Wolfgang. 'The Reading Proc ess: A Phenomenolo gical Approach', 1972, taken from David Lodg e, Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, Longman: London and New York, 1988/1996. McC affery, Larry. Storming the R eality Studio , Duke University Press: Durham & London, 1991/1994. McGuirk, Carol. 'The "New" Rom ancers: Science Fiction Inno vators from Gernsback to Gibson', 1992, pp. 109129, in Geo rge Sluss er and T om Sh ippey. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, University of Georgia Press: Athens and London, 1992/1996. McH ale, Brian . Pöstmödernist Fictiön, Routledge: London and New York, 1987/1996. McH ale, Brian . Constructing Postmodernism , Routledge: London and New York, 1992. Parrinde r, Patrick. Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Methuen: London and New York, 1980. Pyncho n, Th omas. Gravity's Rainbow, Vintage: London, 1973/1995. Russ, Jo anna. The Female Man, The Women's Press: London, 1975/1994. Shiner, Lewis. 'Inside the Movement: Past, Present, and Future', 1992, pp. 17-25, in George Slusser and Tom Shipp ey. Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, University of Georgia Press: Athens and London, 1992/1996. Sterling , Bruce . Schismatrix , 1985, re-printed in Schismatrix Plus, Ace Books: New York, 1996. Sterling, Bruce. Preface from Mirrorshades, 1986, pp. 343 -348, in Larry McCaffery (ed.), Storming the R eality Studio , Duke University Press: Durham & London, 1991/1994. Suvin, Darko 'SF and the Novum', 1977, pp. 141-158, in Teresa De Lauretis et.al (ed.). The Technological Imagination, The University of Wisconsin: Wisconsin, 1980. Vonn egut, Ku rt. Slaughterhouse Five, Dell Publishing: New York, 1966/1991. Waugh , Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, Routledge: Suffolk, 1990. Waugh , Patricia. Postmodernism: A Reader, Edward Arnold: London, 1992. 77 Resumé på Dansk Dette speciale omhandler William Gibsons cyberspace trilogi, bestående af Neuromancer, Count Zero og Mona Lisa Overdrive. Hovedformålet er at læse denne trilogi som en allegori over den litterære postmodernismes udvikling. Dette vil gøres gennem en præsentation af postmodernismen og cyberpunk som science fiction litteratur. Derefter kommer en analyse af de tre romaner, hvor jeg følger, hvordan deres udvikling kan ligestilles med denne udvikling i den litterære postmodernisme. En udsædvanlig ting ved dette speciale er, at der dernæst kommer en yderligere del, som omhandler begrebet ‘the Model Reader’ som Umberto Eco præsenterer det. Denne yderligere teori bruges med det formål for øje at vise, hvordan en mulig ‘Model Reader’ for postmodernismen muligvis kunne se ud ifølge trilogien. Denne Model Reader vil blive vist gennem de forskellige karakterer, som er i trilogien. Ydermere skal det nævnes, at min overordnende metode gennem dette speciale er en reader-response teori, især med udgangspunkt i Wolfgang Isers gestalt teori. I kapitlet om postmodernisme giver jeg en gennemgang af moderniteten, for derefter at se på den historiske udvikling af selve postmodernismen som kultur og filosofisk fænomen. Kapitlet slutter med en gennemgang af den litterære postmodernismes udvikling. Det næste kapitel omhandler cyberpunk og science fiction. Der gives først et kort overblik over science fiction genren, hvorefter jeg kigger på selve cyberpunk litteraturen og hvordan den kan beskrives. Her bliver jeg nødt til at dykke ned i enkelte værker for at lave lidt analyse. Kapitlet slutter med en sammenligning af cyberpunk og postmodernismen, for at undersøge deres indbyrdes ligheder. Efter dette kommer vi frem til den egentlige analyse, hvor jeg kigger på de tre bøger i kronologisk rækkefølge. Der er analyser af karakterer og metafiktive elementer i Neuromancer, kunstanskuelse i Count Zero og virkelighedskonstruktion i Mona Lisa Overdrive. Alle tre afsnit om bøgerne indeholder et syn på hvordan byen og cyberspace konstrueres i den individuelle roman. Herefter kommer vi til endnu en teoridel, nemlig om ‘the Model Reader’, hvor jeg kigger på hvordan Eco præsenterer den og hvordan den kan bruges i forhold til science fiction generelt. Derefter kigger jeg på hvordan en Model Reader ville se ud for cyberspace trilogien 78 og endelig kigger jeg på om man kan læse nogle af karaktererne som symbol for en ‘Model Reader’ for postmodernismen, og hvordan en sådan ‘Model Reader’ vil se ud. Dette gøres naturligvis med hele det begrebsapparat, som er blevet opbygget gennem specialet. Det hele afsluttes af en konklusion, hvor jeg kommenterer på de forskellige ting jeg har fundet gennem specialet og ser på, hvad det siger om cyberspace trilogien og postmodernismen. 79