Here Be Dragons: The Evolution of Cyberspace from William Gibson to Neal Stephenson

IF 0.1 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

American, British and Canadian Studies Pub Date : 2022-06-01 DOI:10.2478/abcsj-2022-0005

Pol Donets, Nataliya Krynytska

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Abstract

Abstract The article focuses on the evolution of cyberspace from a myth-critical perspective: the presence of irrational and fantasy elements in seemingly rational and scientific cyberpunk as a subgenre of hard science fiction. Our research primarily focuses on two significant works: William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy (1984-1988), an icon of early cyberpunk, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), a switch to postcyberpunk. Moreover, we consider the other works of a broad genre of cyberpunk including The Matrix movies and conclude that the cyberpunk of the 1980s and 1990s presented cyberspace as an enchanted Terra incognita and blurred the line between rationality and irrationality, technology and magic. Emerging as a way of escaping the real world, as hope for immortality, transcendence or transgression (Foucault), the cyberpunk ‘matrix’ followed in the footsteps of fantasy, myth, religion, and utopia. In our view, the postcyberpunk ‘Metaverse’ of the 1990s is more ironical and ‘realistic’ as it appears, and the more familiar and routine the cyberspace became to people, the less romantic and mysterious it turned out to be. Nevertheless, the nostalgic attempts to return to the old, fantasy model of cyberspace were made in postcyberpunk almost immediately after its emergence.

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龙在此:从威廉·吉布森到尼尔·斯蒂芬森的网络空间的演变

摘要本文从神话批判的角度探讨了网络空间的演变:作为硬科幻小说的一个分支，赛博朋克似乎理性而科学，但其中却存在着非理性和幻想的元素。我们的研究主要集中在两部重要的作品上:威廉·吉布森的《蔓延三部曲》(1984-1988)，早期赛博朋克的标志，以及尼尔·斯蒂芬森的《雪崩》(1992)，转向后赛博朋克。此外，我们考虑了包括《黑客帝国》电影在内的其他广泛类型的赛博朋克作品，得出结论认为，20世纪80年代和90年代的赛博朋克将网络空间呈现为一个神奇的未知领域，模糊了理性与非理性、技术与魔法之间的界限。作为一种逃离现实世界的方式，作为对不朽、超越或越界的希望(福柯)，赛博朋克“矩阵”追随了幻想、神话、宗教和乌托邦的脚步。在我们看来，20世纪90年代的后赛博朋克“虚拟世界”看起来更具有讽刺意味和“现实主义”，人们对网络空间越熟悉、越常规，就越不那么浪漫和神秘。尽管如此，在赛博朋克出现后，人们几乎立刻就开始怀旧地尝试回归旧的、幻想的网络空间模式。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

American, British and Canadian Studies Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

10 weeks

期刊介绍： Founded in 1999, American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, is currently published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Re-launched in refashioned, biannual format, American, British and Canadian Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, ABC Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.