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This essay was written for a class I took called “Science Fiction and American Culture.” It was in response to reading several stories in Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling, as well as assigned readings from Storming the Reality Studio, edited by Larry McCaffery.

If you would like to read Mirrorshades, still considered an excellent introduction to the cyberpunk sub-genre, or Storming the Reality Studio, you should be able to find it at your local library. If not, you can purchase both Mirrorshades and Storming the Reality Studio from Amazon.com.

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I drove all over Hollywood
looking at the stars
first I ate my Milky Way
and then I ate my Mars
but sucking on a Galaxy
I noticed something pretty bizarre
there’s not a lot of people there, just an awful lot of cars.

“Pulp Culture,” Thomas Dolby
from the album Aliens Ate My Buick
1988, Lost Toy People, Inc. (ASCAP)

I had no idea what “postmodernism” was when I came to this class — I’m still not sure that I do now. The readings for this week have given me an idea — if postmodernism and cyberpunk are similar.

Before this week, I thought cyberpunk was science fiction dealing with human-computer interface. But it seems to be more than that. It is a dissociation of reality, a shattering of what is often taken for granted and a confusion of boundaries between the self and the other. Reading cyberpunk feels like reading James Joyce on drugs (James Joyce being the one on drugs — not the reader).

The stream of consciousness is warped by an LSD mentality. Seemingly trivial details take on great import, if only for a moment. The vulgar, the horrific, the exotic and the intense are forced at the reader in bits and pieces like ice cream thrown in a blender with the lid open, spattering what was going to be a milkshake all over the ceiling.

I felt lost most of the time while reading the stories assigned from Mirrorshades. Of course, I felt the same way reading James Joyce — I never did finish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There was a difference, though. The referents in cyberpunk are at least remotely familiar — 1950’s futuristic visions (”The Gernsback Continuum”), rock clubs with the drug scene swelling around it (”Freezone”), Mozart and Marie Antoinette (”Mozart in Mirrorshades”).

I guess being a native Californian, I also understood the scattered, eclectic reality that makes up Californian life. Thomas Pynchon describes a “typical” Calfornia city: “Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts — census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.” I grew up in a county that blended Yuppies, country hicks and hippies without blinking. One town is really nothing but a business park, while another is a county tourist stop.

This all leads me to my opening quote from Thomas Dolby. The readings this week kept reminding me of lyrics from the songs on Aliens Ate My Buick. The album is sort of a commentary on L.A. life. One song (”The Key To Her Ferrari”) tells the story of a man who only wants to date a woman so he can drive her car: “I don’t want your love / I don’t want your money/ I just want he key to your Ferrari.” The album is a postmodern — if I’m using the term correctly — mix of music from salsa, techno, new wave and swing.

Another thing I noticed about the cyberpunk we read was the raw language. Even the essays used profanity. The sexuality comes at you hard — “And when I get you alone I’m going to batter you cervix into jelly” (”Freezone”), “and Case’s psychological motives center on his desire to seek revenge against the forces who fucked him over” (”Introduction: The Desert of the Real,” Storming the Reality Studio) and the sadomasochism of Videodrome.^* Such raw language and imagery stop my reading. I’m not expecting it, so when it comes up, my mind jumps the track of my reading.

Cyberpunk seems to take reality and turn it upside-down and inside-out, using hallucination, drugs or direct link up to a computer as the tool to do so. The narrative is internal. The omniscient narrator does not exist in the cyberpunk world. Everything is subjective. Where reality ends and something else begins becomes a fuzzy line, and, in the course of the story, may never become clear.

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* Even Dolby’s song “The Key To Her Ferrari” assaults you with surprise, raw imagery: “And then I saw her … she was a bright red ‘64 GTO with fins and gills like some giant piranha fish, some obscene phallic symbol on wheels … little rivers of anticipation ran down my inseam as I kicked those five hundred Italian horses into life and left reality behind me: fifty, sixty, seventy miles and hour … my hand slipped inside the belt of my trousers as we passed eighty, ninety miles and hour … and as we hit the magic 100 my love exploded all over her bright pink leather interior…. And at that moment, I thought of my mother.” (sic.)

This essay was written for a class I took called “Science Fiction and American Culture.” It was in response to three short stories and one novel:

• “Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon,
• “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert Heinlein,
• “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber, and
• The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.

You should be able to find a copy of The Space Merchants in your local library. Or you can purchase one from Amazon.com.

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In the introductory essay (”The Social Side”) to the short story “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber, James Gunn discusses the four stages of science fiction as mentioned by Isaac Asimov’s 1953 essay “Social Science Fiction.” Asimov said that science fiction written since around 1945 have had a more sociological bent. He defined social science fiction “as stories about ‘the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.” (Gunn, pg.166.) The three short stories and a novel that we read for this week were all published between 1945 and 1955 and had a more sociological, rather than technological, bend to them. This is most strikingly noticeable in the development of the central male figure in the stories.”Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon was published in 1947. The central male figure, Pete Mawser, is still reminiscent of earlier, pre-1945, characters — for example, from Robert Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll.” Mr. Gaines is a cool, collected, man’s man. He doesn’t let his wife get in his way, and he gets his job done without letting emotions curve his path. Mawser, is also something of a man’s man. He is in the military. He gets things done (like when he helps Sonny get rid of the razor blade). However, in him you begin to see the social aspects of science fiction coming into form.”Thunder and Roses” has a social statement to make. It suggests that it is better to let your enemies live, even if they have attacked you first, if the price of retaliation is the obliteration of all life. It also says something about self-sacrifice, that it is sometimes better to be altruistic, in the long run, than selfish. Pete Mawser learns this lesson in the story. Through listening to Star Anthim’s song, and then being with her as she dies, he realizes that the sanctity of life is more important that revenge.

At the beginning of the story, Mawser is full of hate. The reader gets the impression that he’d retaliate if he had the means. “Hate was first. Hate was ubiquitous….” But, at the end of the story, he destroys the means of retaliation so that no one can retaliate.

“Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber was published in 1950. The central male figure, Wystern Turner, furthers this trend towards the socializing and warming of male characters. Turner, although a proper — and stereotypical — Englishman, has feelings. You can also say that he wears them on his shirtsleeve, for he cares about Theda before he knows anything about her. He’s willing to help her escape to England even before he knows her name. Turner is like a chimera. He is emotional and caring while being cool and aloof. It depends on his situation.

The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, was first published in 1952. Mitchell Courtenay, the central male figure of this tale, goes through an evolution of character while still remaining the same. He starts out as a firm believer of marketing. He changes through various life-threatening, as well as world-view threatening, situations into a person who may not always bow down to “the god of Sales,” but who will use marketing to further the aims of the “Consies” (the Conservationists) if they, in turn, further his own personal aims.

“The First Canticle” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. was first published in 1955. Brother Francis Gerard of Utah, the main character of this story, is the ultimate “human” man. He is humble, modest and honest. He is a “simpleton” who is a devout follower of his (soon-to-be) Saint Leibowitz. His dreams are simple, as well as his life. It is very hard to find the “man’s man” in Brother Francis.

The story is also the most sociological of the three short stories. The culture in which Brother Francis lives is richly described and alluded to. What probably makes this world so vivid is its familiarity. It is history repeating itself in a slightly different form. The Space Merchants also develops a complex social structure. But, because of its complexity and unfamiliarity, it takes longer to build.

The stories we read for this week exemplify the trend Asimov wrote about. They illustrate how characters, and the society they live in became more important than the society they live in, became more important that technological gadgets in science fiction stories after 1945.

The following essay was a paper I wrote for a class I took called “Science Fiction and American Culture.” It compares Philip K. Dick’s novel Blader Runner, originally titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to the movie based on it, Blade Runner.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was first published in 1968. You should be able to find a copy of it at your local library, or you can purchase one from Amazon.com.

Blade Runner was directed by Ridley Scott and released in 1982, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer and Sean Young. You can find more information at IMDB. If you would like to purchase a copy of this movie on DVD, click here to go to Amazon.com.

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Blade Runner, the book, and Blade Runner, the movie seemed like alternate realities of the same story. They were completely different except where they overlapped.

Some of the names were the same (Deckard, Pris, Roy and Rachel) and some of the ideas were similar (in book John Isadore is a chickenhead who helps Pris, in the movie J. F. Sebastian is a rapidly aging person who helps Pris). But, although the names were the same, sometimes the personalities weren’t. Rachel in the movie was very different from Rachel in the book.

Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies. I like the macabre feel of its mise-en-scene. I like the 1930’s-1940’s detective flick feel. Everything about the film adds to the dream-like surreal mood — the lighting, the camera angles, the music, even the voice over.

The book doesn’t have quite the same feel. The mood is less macabre and more apathetic. Iran, Deckard’s wife, programs their Penfield mood organ to give her a feeling of despair twice a month. People “plug in” to empathy boxes to “become one” with Wilbur Mercer who walks up a hill as unseen tormentors hurl rocks at him. At the end of the book Deckard attempts suicide.

Life in the book’s world is pathetic and depressing. Life in the movie’s world is cluttered, dark and moody.

The movie is more straightforward than the book. The movie follows a relatively linear story where things seem to be, at least mostly, what they appear to be. Almost halfway through the book, however, Blade Runner enters the twilight zone — and stays there for a long time before the reader realizes what is really going on. The whole sequence at the replicated police station run by replicants threw me for a loop. It was very disorienting.

The endings are quite different in mood, as well. The book ends with a hopeless sense of things-are-as-they-are-and-there-is-no-way-to-change-them. The movie ends with a sense that although things are as they are, you can always make the best of what you’ve got and enjoy it while it lasts.

Both the book and the movie approach replicants in a similar manner as well — a way that is different from most imaginings of androids. Replicants are made of flesh — in the book you have to do a special bone marrow assay to tell the difference between real people and replicants. This gives new meaning to the phrase “artificial life.” They are artificial and they are made of the stuff of life — unlike the typical robot, which is made of metal and plastic.

This raises the questions, ìDo we have the right to call replicants less than human? Do we have the right to “retire” them? It almost seems like God destroying its own creation. If something that we create can live a life of its own, do we have the right to take away that life? Instinctively, I’d say no. But that probably stems from my basic reverence for life in general. I don’t condone unnecessary vivisection either.

The book, in a way, looks at these questions. Deckard decides that he can’t retire replicants anymore. He empathizes with them now. The Deckard from the movie ends up falling in love and running away with a replicant. He, too, decides that he can no longer kill replicants.

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