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Ghost Busting The Role of Literary Cyberpunk in the

Development of Fiction at the End of the Twentieth
Century

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Band 37 (2012) Heft 1
Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen

Ghost Busting
The Role of Literary Cyberpunk in the Development of
Fiction at the End of the Twentieth Century

Mojca Krevel

Since the exhaustion of postmodernism in the first half of the 1980s, when its
production could no longer provide an accurate interpretation of its immedi-
ate social reality, a number of literary attempts to deviate from the postmod-
ernist dictum have appeared, claiming to be successors. From the perspective
of the zeitgeist-based typologies, the rightful successor to postmodernism
should already function according to the metaphysical premises of the post-
modern epoch. In view of that, the article examines the phenomenon of liter-
ary cyberpunk, a movement formed in America at the beginning of the 1980s
within the science fiction genre. The investigation of the position of cyber-
punk in its original environment of science fiction, the relation between cy-
berpunk and its mainstream contemporary postmodernism, and the analysis of
the specifics of the cyberpunk subject, literary worlds and style reveal the de-
cisive role of cyberpunk in the development of the foundation upon which the
Avant-Pop movement of the early 1990s successfully anchored literature
within the new epoch.

1. À propos the death of postmodernism

Even though postmodernism has, from the mid-1980s onwards, repeat-
edly been proclaimed dead, it still seems to be the common denominator
of virtually all investigations into the developments in literature over the
last twenty-five years. Considering the speed and the range of transform-
ations in the domains of economy, society and culture in recent decades,
it is extremely odd that the accompanying literary production should still
be discussed in terms of a tradition that peaked roughly thirty-five years
ago and which has been continuously recognized as outdated since less
than a decade later. Does that mean that literature, put quite plainly,
became mired in the never-ending feedback loops of postmodernist auto-
50 Mojca Krevel

referentiality, thereby mise-en-abimeing itself ad nauseam? No doubt

some contemporary literature is solipsistic in its auto-referentiality. How-
ever, the share of literary works produced over the last thirty years pro-
viding fresh, exciting and artistically accomplished comments on con-
temporary reality has been steadily on the rise to produce what is now a
significant majority.
What might be the reason, then? In this respect, it is certainly note-
worthy to mention the confusion in the usage of the terms "postmodern-
ism" and "postmodernity," which especially Anglophone scholars gener-
ally use synonymously, while others separate them as two distinct terms:
the first referring to an artistic period, a late twentieth century phase in
the development of art, and the second to the epoch succeeding the mod-
ern age. The gist of the problem is to a certain extent implicit in the ex-
planation above; however, the most convincing reason for this frequent
conflation of terms is, in my opinion, much more complex and further
reaching. Before undertaking to provide answers to how postmodernism
was dethroned, what happened next, and why its ghost still haunts the
theoretical discourse on contemporary literature - all of which are the
central concerns of this paper - I shall first briefly outline the basis of
what should paint a clearer picture of the development and placement of
often confusing literary phenomena of the last decades.
In the case of postmodernism, it took scholars well over a decade to
detect foundations differentiating it resolutely from those of all the liter-
ary periods preceding it. It is these different foundations that provide
postmodernism with the status of an independent and theoreticallyjusti-
fied literary category. After a number of more or less unsuccessful at-
tempts at text-based and empirical approaches,1 discussion in the early
1980s increasingly focused on the more metaphysical aspects, fore-
grounding the social, economic and cultural changes accompanying the
rise of the postmodernist tradition.2 It seems that the most productive
answer was offered by the approaches close to the controversial Geistes-

1
I am primarily referring to David Lodge's, Douwe W. Fokkema's and Ihab Hassan's
enumerations of formal and thematic characteristics of postmodernist writing,
which, due to the decidedly intertextual nature of postmodernist production, can
also be found in works pertaining to other traditions. Tomo Virk observes a similar
problem with Linda Hutcheon's concept of historiographic metafiction as a quin-
tessentially postmodernist form, which she, Virk claims, justifies with criteria
combining certain formal (metafiction) and thematic (historicity) characteristics
without clarifying the essential difference between postmodernist and previous us-
ages of the form (62-63).
2
E.g. Brian McHale, Janko Kos, Tomo Virk and Douwe W. Fokkema, who, before
concentrating on the empirical analysis of the specifically postmodernist semantic
fields and lexemes, identified postmodernism as the last phase of a historical pro-
cess which started in the Renaissance. A similar approach is also evident in Fredric
Jameson's understanding of postmodernism.
Ghost Busting 51

geschichte,3 which defines literary and historical periods according to the

specific `spirit of the age' by analysing the structures and relations of the
four basic paradigms - i.e. subject, transcendence, truth and reality -
specific to each artistic and historical period. In the case of postmodern-
ism, the examination of the status of the four paradigms reveals that it
represents the final phase of metaphysical nihilism and, with that, the
definite disintegration of the metaphysical frame specific to the modern
age. Its successors should therefore move away from Cartesian meta-
physics entirely and abide by a new, postmodern structuring of the world.
And indeed, they did. The problem was, as we shall see, that it was
hard to notice and evaluate with the traditional and established tools of
literary criticism. Relying, however, on the philosophical, sociological,
economic and anthropological characteristics of the epoch succeeding the
modern age as charted by the leading theoreticians of postmodernity, 4 the
decisive diversions from the existing literary traditions first appear in the
production of the 1990s' Avant-Pop movement. Avant-Pop has not only
successfully introduced literature to the computer era but also offered the
fully-developed apparatus for significant literary interpretations of and
contributions to that era. If postmodernism was essentially destructive,
tearing apart the metaphysical foundations and beliefs of modernity, yet
failing or even refusing to provide constructive alternatives, Avant-Pop
relied upon the metaphysical tenets which were a priori productive. The
interesting question is, of course, what happened between postmodern-
ism, essentially still defined by the paradigms governing the modern age,
and the already fully postmodern Avant-Pop. Literature has indeed
bridged the epochal gap in less than a decade. The answer to this ques-
tion, the justification of which is also the central purpose of this paper, is:
by quietly succumbing to the lure of the frowned-upon outsider science
fiction. In other words, what I intend to show is that in the plethora of
literary attempts to transcend postmodernism in the 1980s, the sci-fi
movement of cyberpunk offered the most productive groundwork for
Avant-Pop to successfully carry literature into the postmodern epoch.

2. Pioneers in the desert of the real

The beginnings of the epoch in question coincide with the formation of
the postindustrial society after the Second World War. The drastic
changes in the fields of trade, economy and finance brought about by the
extremely rapid development of especially three industries - advertising,

3
The controversy surrounding the Geistesgeschichte is a consequence of the racist
appropriation of the approach by Nazism (equating `Geist' with `deutscher Geist'),
and not a matter of its scholarly relevance.
4
E.g. Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Jean-François Lyotard, Marshal McLuhan,
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari.
52 Mojca Krevel

media and information technology - were soon followed by very notice-

able shifts in the domains of society and culture. Theoreticians from vari-
ous fields of humanistic studies responded promptly. Tracing the changes
and establishing their incompatibility with the Cartesian categories, Mar-
shal McLuhan, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson,
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and others have provided a surprisingly
compatible array of disparate observations on the governing mechanisms
of the postmodern epoch. Using the postmodern Geistesgeschichte model,
which will serve as a springboard for the detection of the first major de-
viations from the postmodernist tradition, I will rely on the terminology
developed by Jean Baudrillard, which in my opinion5 most aptly articu-
lates and encapsulates the observations of his colleagues.6
Reality, the postmodern version of which Baudrillard terms "hyper-
reality," is a convenient starting point. Hyperreality refers to the reality
of the third-order simulacra (cf. Baudrillard 1994: 121-127) conditioned
by the shift in production relations which signalled the beginning of the
postindustrial stage of capitalism after the Second World War. This is a
reality created from copies, models without originals, in which con-
sumption is no longer bound to the functional value of the products as
they "assume their meaning in their differential relation to other signs"
(Baudrillard 1981: 66) and ultimately function as signifiers. With that,
the objects of consumption acquire social meaning and function as a basis
of identity creation, which brings us to the category of postmodern sub-
jectivity. The postmodern subject, which Baudrillard refers to as `fractal
subject', is therefore, like hyperreality, a network system of differential
signs that can be arbitrarily manipulated according to one's preferences -
in a mediagenic society these generally correspond to media-transferred
trends. Postmodern subjects are therefore completely fluid, unstable sys-
tems of information, and their existence is guaranteed by the constant
influx of data from the media, which consequently assume the status of
postmodern transcendence. The category of truth, which describes the
relation between the subject and transcendence, in postmodern societies
anticipates perpetual rhizomatous decentralization, which might as well
be metaphorized by "I connect therefore I am."
My selection of the Avant-Pop movement as the most promising can-
didate for the first literary representative of writing governed by the
Geistesgeschichte framework described above was based on what may
seem to be a rather shallow reason: these 1990s authors were the first
generation to have thoroughly internalized the hypertextual medium.

5
For a more detailed discussion see Krevel 2010: 40-47.
6
Baudrillard's notion of hyperreality coincides, for example, with Jameson's concept
of culturalization of all the aspects of social life within the postmodern situation,
Lyotard's model of the self as a node in an information network, Debord's theory of
society of spectacle, Deleuze's and Guattari's concept of rhizome.
Ghost Busting 53

Marshall McLuhan's claim that the nature of media used for communica-
tion shapes societies more than the content of the communication does
(McLuhan 2001: 8) provides my selection with a much more solid base -
the change in medium typically accompanies the changing of epochs. For
example, as Bolter observes in relation to the dawning of modernity,
"[w]hen the printed word supplanted and marginalized the codex, the
writing space took on the qualities of linearity, replicability and fixity"
(Bolter 2001: 22).
These qualities lie at the very core of the modern age's structuring of
the world and they establish the notion of the author of the printed text
as an authority, a god-like creator of finite worlds, and the ultimate
metaphor of the Cartesian subject. Considering the structural logic and
the functioning of hypertext,' we could paraphrase Bolter's statement as
follows: When the hypertext supplanted and marginalized print, the writ-
ing space took on the qualities of "flexibility, instability and interactivity"
(Bolter 2001: xiii). These clearly echo the defining qualities of Baudril-
lard's concept of hyperreality as a network of signs freely manipulated
according to one's desires. As such, the electronic medium carries a dou-
ble function. On the one hand, it embodies the principles of the social,
economic and cultural reality of our everyday existence and provides the
perfect medium for commenting on it. On the other hand, its omnipres-
ence and ubiquitous usage further accelerate the logic of its functioning
into the social sphere, determining our society in the sense of McLuhan's
claim.
I based my research of Avant-Pop production on the supposition that
artistic works produced within the environment of hyperreality and ex-
pressed through the medium of hypertext should correspond to Baudri-
llard's concept of the third order simulacra, models which both anticipate
and accelerate the (hyper)real world of postmodernity. They should func-
tion like media, providing the material - the information - for the struc-
turing of systems of our everyday hyperreality. The analyses of the liter-
ary characters, literary worlds and stylistic features of the most
representative Avant-Pop works8 reveal that the governing principle in-
deed predominantly corresponds to Baudrillard's notion of simulacra of
simulation, forming hyperreal systems foreign to the Cartesian dialectics
and principles of organicity, hierarchization, and linearity (Krevel 2010:
89-13').

'
I am using the term "hypertext" for all the instances of electronic writing, as they
all share the paradigms of flexibility, instability and interactivity (cf. Bolter 2001:
xiii, xiv).
8
E.g. Mark America's The Kafka Chronicles, Ron Sukenick's Doggy Bag and Mosaic
Man, Mark Leyner's Et tu, Babe and Tooth Imprints on a Corndog, Kathy Acker's Em-
pire of the Senseless, Douglas Coupland's Generation X, short stories in the Avant
Pop anthology Avant-Pop: Fiction for a Daydream Nation~
54 Mojca Krevel

The Avant-Pop subject is best described as an open, unstable system of

information on the subject, meaning that it is prone to changing com-
pletely with the introduction of new data into the system of subjectivity.
The validity of these data depends on the stability of the potential sys-
tems they might create between themselves and in connection to the sys-
tems already confirmed in hyperreality,9 which present the fluid core of
identity. If the clusters of new data entering the system create a more
stable structure, the core is replaced or updated. The hypertextual logic of
the subject's creation furthermore dissolves - much as is the case on
internet pages - the traditional distinction between the author, the
reader, and the protagonists.1°
The existence of such an identity-in-flux is indelibly and crucially
connected to the constant supply of data from the environment. In Avant-
Pop the environment into which the characters are placed is the defining
factor in identity creation. With the introduction of new information into
the system of `environment' or `story', identities change. Avant-Pop land-
scapes are completely fluid systems within which places or locations are
no longer the sum total of a finite number of characteristics, but estab-
lished only with regard to the placing of these characteristics into the
system of more or less stable environments. The precondition for their
existence is the constant influx of new information, enabling the verifi-
cation and stability of the environments introduced. The device providing
them - in most Avant-Pop works the task is performed by television,
print, radio, internet or their derivatives - thus becomes the guarantee of
each immediate reality, while its logic assumes the status of truth in the
sense of experiencing the world.
The defining feature of Avant-Pop style is the absence of a system of
familiar references. Its abundant neologisms have no symbolic correspon-
dents, and they have yet to be actualized in the manner of the third order
simulacra in the hyperrealities of individual receivers. In that respect,
9
These involve celebrities, trends, movies and TV-series, commercials, trademarks,
etc.
1° For example, the main protagonist of all Mark Leyner's fiction is `Mark Leyner', so
we could assume that the works are autobiographical. The style of narration is ac-
cordingly realistic; events provide an impression of a coherent structuring of the
world. Yet the literary `Mark Leyner' constantly moves within the mediagenic real-
ity, arbitrarily choosing elements from it to build (or add to) his existing system of
identity. Leyner's `autobiographical' identity is thus constructed along the way, the
reader places individual information on `Leyner' within systems of information, the
stability of which depend on their connectivity. Leyner's existence is thus com-
pletely fluid and depends on the reader's capability of connecting information pro-
vided into both the already existing `literary systems' of the story as well as the
systems of reader's actual, experienced reality. A similar structuring of the subject
is also evident in Ronald Sukenick's Doggy Bag and Mosaic Ma., relying primarily
on Jewish mythology and popular cults, in Kathy Acker's novels, exploiting the
systems of popular philosophy and pornography, Eurydice, relying upon feminism
and poststructuralism, etc.
Ghost Busting 55

they decisively define the direction of the possibilities for a story and its
meaning. Avant-Pop metaphors are probably the best example of how a
third order simulacrum attracts and incorporates raw data within its hy-
perreality. Fulfilling the traditional function of describing the unknown
with the familiar, Avant-Pop metaphors rely exclusively upon the arte-
facts of the mediagenic society - those artefacts which have already be-
come part of our everyday hyperreality.11 These function much like hy-
pertext links, since the receiver's familiarity with them conditions the
creation of the story. The governing principle of Avant-Pop's activity and
production, then, corresponds to Baudrillard's notion of simulacra of
simulation, forming hyperreal systems foreign to the Cartesian dialectics
and principles of organicity, hierarchization and linearity.

3. The missing link and its whereabouts

Such major transformations in literature do not and have never happened
overnight. There were numerous attempts throughout the 1980s to move
away from the unproductive and increasingly unattractive postmodernist
modes, returning to the concrete everyday reality and addressing various
contemporary social and economic issues instead.12 Surprisingly enough,
the tendency to focus on the more tangible aspects of (contemporary)
existence again was not restricted to the domain of mainstream fiction
and neither did it originate from that domain. In their attempt to re-
volutionise the obsolete modes of science fiction, the founding members
of the cyberpunk movement - i.e. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy
Rucker, John Shirley and Lewis Shiner - turned away from both the psy-
chologising of the New Wave soft sci-fi as well as from traditional hard
sci-fi's spaceships, Martians and galaxies far far away, to the "overlapping
of worlds that were formerly separate: the realm of high tech, and the
modern pop underground" (Sterling 1985: iv). The latter would also be
quite an accurate description of the 1980s experiential reality in which,
after all, the computer became personal.
In what follows I will explain why I consider cyberpunk to be the most
productive `missing link' between the unstable and unreliable realities of
postmodernism, and the productive hyperrealities of Avant-Pop. I will
11
To illustrate: "He felt intact but worthless, like a chocolate rabbit selling for 75
percent off the month after Easter" (Coupland 2000: 53).
12
I am referring, for example, to the authors associated with neo- or post-realism
(e.g. Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan), reviv-
als of the 1960s newjournalism (e.g. Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, Ted
Conover's Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens,
books by William Finnegan, Leon Dash, Jane Kramer), the production of the so-
called blank generation (e.g. Richard Hell, Kathy Acker, Bruce Benderson, Joel
Rose), `brat-pack' literature (e.g. Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz),
etc.
56 Mojca Krevel

show why literary cyberpunk seems to offer the most accurate rendering
of the 1980s culmination of the postindustrial phase of capitalism, in-
strumental in the formation of a fully functioning postmodern society.
Regardless of whether the idea to connect the nascent computer tech-
nology to the images and the aesthetics of pop culture was a stroke of
luck, bare necessity, or a cunning marketing move, it enabled cyberpunk
to treat contemporary reality with the very instruments governing that
reality — something its mainstream contemporaries, for the most part,
failed to do. The fact that this was done in the domain of science fiction
and its demands considerably speeded up the disentangling of the unpro-
ductive postmodernist loops of autoreferentiality, which explains why
literature was able to accommodate epochal changes in less than a dec-
ade.
The Movement, as it was called until Gardner Dozois offered the
catchier "cyberpunk" in his 1984 article "Sci-Fi in the Eighties" (Krevel
2001: 28), had never questioned its science fiction status. Still, in Bruce
Sterling's cyberpunk manifesto, the aim of which was to establish the
Movement as the next step in the development of science fiction, the
fresh blood that would revitalise the genre, there is a statement which
makes both the placement of cyberpunk within science fiction as well as
the existence of the genre itself highly problematic: "The cyberpunks are
perhaps the first SF generation to grow up not only within the literary
tradition of science fiction but in a truly science-fictional world" (Sterling
1986: ix).
The terminal impact of this statement becomes clear when we observe
the relation between the development of science fiction and mainstream
literary production. After its `declaration of independence' from the main-
stream production in 1926,13 science fiction has rapidly achieved the
status of a self-contained subculture, developing independently from the
mainstream. From the existing theoretizations on the specifics of the
genre in relation to the mainstream14 one can deduce two major reasons
for their separation. As science fiction is primarily about the research of
alternative worlds, the questions it addresses are essentially ontological,
while the mainstream with its observations about the experiential world
is concerned with issues which are essentially epistemological.15 At the
13
In his editorial to the first issue of the Amazing Stories journal, published April 5
1926, Hugo Gernsback defined the new literary genre of `scientification' as fiction
in which scientific facts combine with the foretelling of future in the manner of
Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and E.A. Poe. The definition on the one hand reflects the
lineage with the tradition of fantasy writing, on the other hand, it also implies the
complete incompatibility of such writing with the modernist tendencies governing
the then mainstream fiction.
14
For a more detailed discussion see Krevel 2001: 16-23.
15
I am relying upon the terminology introduced by Brian McHale (1992: 247f.) as it
will, over the following pages, facilitate my explanation of the relation between
cyberpunk and postmodernism.
Ghost Busting 57

same time, owing to its connection to the tradition of fantastic literature,

science fiction relies for its effect on providing the element of the fantast-
ic, which is achieved by forcing the reader to doubt the existing ontologi-
cal order.
Knowing that, it is not hard to see why science fiction as an independ-
ent genre might encounter a serious identity crisis when entering the
social, cultural and economic reality of the 1980s. With postmodernism
as its mainstream contemporary, the most important defining feature of
science fiction - that of addressing ontological issues - was rendered ir-
relevant, as postmodernism was doing exactly the same thing.16 Further-
more, despite the seeming incompatibility, the genre and the mainstream
have kept each other in check since at least the 1960s. At that time, as
Brian McHale shows in Constructing Postmodernism, a feedback loop of
influences was established between the two, with mainstream writers
borrowing themes, motifs and materials from science fiction, while sci-
ence fiction authors drew from mainstream poetics (McHale 1992: 227-
236). What is interesting is that the two initially absorbed the models
with a certain delay, that is, each drew on the previous phase of the
other's development. Throughout the years, however, the delay began to
decrease until, with cyberpunk, it disappeared. McHale describes the
situation as follows: "Cyberpunk SF can thus be seen, in this systemic
perspective, as SF which derives certain of its elements from postmodern-
ist mainstream fiction which itself has, in its turn, already been `science-
fictionized' to some greater or lesser degree" (McHale 1992: 229). With
cyberpunk, in other words, science fiction and mainstream fiction found
themselves within the same aesthetic frame, dealing with similar themes
and motifs and using similar writing strategies. With that, keeping them
separate thereafter seems to be more a matter of cosmetics than an ac-
tual, theoreticallyjustified necessity.
On the other hand, the rise of the information society and culture de-
fined by technology contributed to the waning of the other defining fea-
ture: the element of the fantastic. A techno-culture defined reader can no
longer doubt the unity of the ontological order as that order has been
ruined for quite some time. In a world where the real is constructed ac-
cording to one's preferences and desires (by changing TV channels, using
a walkman, playing video or computer games, not to mention the possi-
bilities offered by the internet), concepts like `impossible', `unreal' or'
`fantastic' lose their traditional meanings - especially when science is

16
According to Brian McHale, modernism and preceding literary traditions rely upon
the epistemological dominant and address epistemological issues, while the domi-
nant of postmodernism is ontological (McHale 1999: 6-11). Similarly, Janko Kos
and Tomo Virk define postmodernism as the concluding stage in the development
of modern age literature, as postmodernism disqualifies the last remaining tenet of
modernity - the concept of a reliable single reality, guaranteeing the subject's exis-
tence (Kos 1995: 47-54).
58 Mojca Krevel

involved. For a contemporary individual, that which is grounded in sci-

ence and probability can in principle no longer be fantastic.
From the perspective of science fiction, cyberpunk therefore merges
the genre with the mainstream by bringing technology to the core of lit-
erary creation. However, to fully understand its role in the development
of literature after postmodernism, we must also clarify the relation be-
tween cyberpunk and its mainstream contemporary. Let us ground this
clarification in the most obvious difference between the two: cyberpunk
novels read, on the whole, like detective fiction, while postmodernist
novels are as a rule rather difficult to read in terms of traditional, linear
narrative. As simplistic as this observation may be, it is operative in ex-
plaining the relation between the two.
The environment that produced the literature of postmodernism pre-
dicted the postmodern situation on a theoretical and philosophical level.
It is therefore understandable that in postmodernist works the problems
of the indefinability of a subject, reality, or a higher, transcendental truth
are reflected merely on the level of form, showing through metafictional
practices, mixing of genres, quotations, and so on. In cyberpunk, how-
ever, these elements move into the story, or in the words of Brian McHa-
le, cyberpunk "translates or transcodes postmodernist motifs from the
level of form (the verbal continuum, narrative strategies) to the level of
content" (McHale 1992: 246). As I will show in the following section,
cyberpunk heroes have no individual identity since the traditional con-
cept of `identity' is crucially linked to selecting among traditional binary
oppositions of the type I/Other, natural/artificial, spirit/body,
alive/dead, man/machine, male/female, and so on. In the age defined by
technology such binaries disappear and identification in the traditional
sense is rendered impossible. Literary personae in cyberpunk novels re-
main on the level of types, which is the closest they can get to the idea of
subjectivity. As such they are a reflection of individuals in the inform-
ation age.
Furthermore, in postmodernist literature the formation of multiple re-
alities was achieved through the juxtaposing of different literary dis-
courses and thus remained implicit. In cyberpunk, the existence of multi-
ple realities is no longer a subject of speculation but a proven fact and it
can therefore enter the story. Individuals conditioned by the information
society and techno-culture no longer ask themselves questions of an epis-
temological nature but rather ontological ones: Which of the worlds am I
in? How do I differentiate between different worlds? In which of the
worlds is my decision correct? These are the questions cyberpunk heroes
ask themselves as they travel through the virtual landscapes of the Net, as
they are wired on a `simstim' unit, as they move through the islands of
wealth, poverty, and war.
What, then, is the relation between cyberpunk literature and main-
stream postmodernist fiction? Taking into account what has been said,
Ghost Busting 59

we can agree with Brian McHale's theory that cyberpunk materializes

postmodernist stylistic practices. Since the latter quintessentially define
postmodernism, the claim that cyberpunk literature enhances and up-
grades postmodernism in the sense that it fully realizes its possibilities
seems the most convincing. But does it, unlike postmodernism, offer any
productive alternatives?

4. Cyberpunk @ postmoderníty
Cyberpunk writing was, of course, not yet affected by the actual hyper-
text medium, as most of the texts - even in William Gibson's exemplary
Neuromancer - were written on a typewriter at the time when the internet
was still a more or less clandestine national security project. The cate-
gories of author, reader, and literary reality are therefore still completely
traditional. However, its main thematic concern was a technology the
functioning of which corresponded to the modus operandi of the society in
which the movement emerged. As such, cyberpunk offered an accurate
reflection of the zeitgeist, which was closer to the modes traditional
mainstream fiction had been employing in the rendering of reality than to
the specifics of traditional science fiction. Also, in a society governed by
hyperreality, the Movement's popularity and thematic `coolness' provided
it with the reality-forming potential of other, already postmodernized,
media.
The usage of traditional science fiction techniques, especially extra-
polation and speculation, on the materials crucially connected to the
principles governing the 1980s society contributed to the formation of
the foundation which served as a springboard for the emergence of the
fully postmodern literary phenomena in the following decade. In order to
illustrate this, I will analyze three areas of cyberpunk, areas which in my
opinion also represent crucial points in the epochal changes - the struc-
tures of the subject, literary worlds, and style. These will be examined in
the light of their correspondence to the concept of Baudrillard's third
order simulacra as the organizing principle of postmodern reality creation
and, if possible, compared to their Avant-Pop counterparts.

4.1 Cyberpunk subject

Cyberpunk emerged at the time of the disintegration of the modern sub-
ject and his or her identity, mirrored in an over-all crisis of represent-
ation, which is in the centre of both the works of postmodernist authors
as well as theoreticians of postmodernity. Joseph Tabbi remarks that the
two-dimensionality of literary personae in postmodernist works and cy-
berpunk is not so much a consequence of cultural narcissism but rather
the only possible reaction to the crisis of representation:
60 Mojca Krevel

The prospect that identity might become wholly informational enables

Gibson, like Mailer, Pynchon, and their theorist contemporaries Fredric
Jameson and Donna Harraway, to de-realize any notion of an individual
and separate subject and thus to make identity itself an abstract represent-
ation of the vast and impersonal corporate networks that constitute so
much of the contemporary life-world. (Tabbi 1995: 213)
The main problem of postmodernist creation of character and identity lies
precisely in the paradigmatic postmodernist equality of discourses, which
can never conform to a meaningful hierarchic system. In the works of
postmodernist writers, the incompatibility of discourses is reflected in the
usage of pastiches, simulacra, intertextuality, and in other metafictional
maneuvers. In cyberpunk, however, postmodernist techniques materialize
on the level of the story; they are no longer a metaphor for the con-
temporary world. Quite the opposite, the world becomes a metaphor of
the technique, a copy of the simulacrum. Tabbi makes a similar obser-
vation:
Indeed, it often seems as if cyberpunk's characters cannot help but repre-
sent to themselves the surrounding structure of mediations, simulacra,
and machinic repetitions that have produced, for example, Baudrillard's
simulation culture, Lyotard's postmodern sublime, or the dream space of
Jameson's political unconscious. (Tabbi 1995: 215)
Cyberpunk characters are therefore representations, and as such best de-
scribed by the traditional concept of a type. However, cyberpunk `types' —
e.g. the console cowboy, the assassin, the merchant, artificial intelligence
— are not the classical cross-section of features typical of a certain group
of people, they are no longer metaphors but material for metaphoriz-
ation, just like MTV, Vogue, movies or TV series.17 As such, they corre-
spond to Baudrillard's third order simulacra: they are artificial constructs
of various segments of reality that have yet to find their place in hyper-
reality. And they found it indeed in the form of a late 1980s and early
1990s cyberpunk subculture, the image, credo, and activities of which
were based upon those of the heroes in cyberpunk novels.
Such a concept of character creation corresponds to the logic of char-
acter creation in Avant-Pop. There is, however, an important difference
between the two. In cyberpunk, the author does not enter the simulacric
process but remains outside the literary reality throughout the meaning-
providing entity. The reason for this is simple: cyberpunk authors were
still essentially a product of traditional approaches to and understandings
of literature, which was, after all, reflected in their stubborn insistence on
being considered exclusively in terms of science fiction. Their characters
were therefore still created as traditional science fiction second order
simulacra, as extrapolated versions of existing people and technologies.

17
For a more detailed explanation see Krevel 2001: 86-104.
Ghost Busting 61

However, the technology they based their extrapolating upon functioned

according to the principles which not only translated extrapolation into
the generation of information but also contributed to its immediate reali-
zation. What is more, the same principles also governed the functioning
of the environment within which the reception took place, viz. the reality
of third order simulacra. Such `double' existence reveals in practice the
borderline status of cyberpunk.

4.2 Cyberpunk literary worlds

If we follow McHale's suggestion that traditional science fiction explores
primarily ontology in fiction while postmodernism is largely concerned
with the ontology of fiction (McHale 1992: 247), postmodernist science
fiction, that is, cyberpunk, should use space for both the exploration of
ontology in fiction and at the same time of the ontology of fiction,
worlds-as-they-could-be in a world-as-it-could-be. In practice that would
mean that space in cyberpunk should be a means for the creation of a
multiplicity of worlds which are no longer fictional but complementary to
our(s).
In the formation of its worlds, cyberpunk relies upon traditional sci-fi
locations (e.g. space colonies, space stations in the orbit, megalopoli),
however, with an explicit tendency to provide `worldness' to the alter-
native worlds. Although millions of miles away, these worlds are like our
world, except for some minor technical details. The cyberpunk versions
of, for example, space colonies are almost parodic in comparison with
their established counterparts, as they are mostly derelict slums, ghettos,
or luxury resorts for the rich.18 Similarly, Gibson's Sprawl, a massive ur-
ban area covering the entire East Coast from Boston to Atlanta, may not
(as yet) be our immediate environment; however, as it is constructed
from the elements of the existing reality, it functions in the same way as
our media-generated notions of existing places we may never have actu-
ally visited (those that are frequently featured in the media, for example
Beverly Hills, Miami, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc). Sprawl is therefore not per-
ceived as a sci-fi extrapolation of the existing reality but as a simultaneity
that is typical of the functioning of hyperreality.
If physical spaces can to some extent still be related to those in classic-
al science fiction and even postmodernist production, the introduction of
the concept of cyberspace separates cyberpunk from both the canon of
traditional science fiction as well as from postmodernist metanarrative
experiments. Cyberspace is the ultimate example of `reality before real-

18
Freeside, where the residence of the Tessier-Ashpool clan in Gibson's Neuromoncer
is located, is a luxury Vegas-like resort for the wealthy, while Rucker's habitat on
the Moon in Wetwore is based on ghettos like Harlem and the slum areas surround-
ing Asian megalopoli.
62 Mojca Krevel

ity'. Like Sprawl, it is a product of Gibson's imagination, an integration of

existing entities of reality (video games) into a concept which did not yet
exist per se. It was not until a decade later that the internet, functioning
very similarly to Gibson's cyberspace, became a household utility. The
world of cyberpunk is therefore no longer a postmodernist simulation of
the one we live in; quite the opposite, the world we live in is a simulation
of the cyberpunk world.
The structure of cyberpunk spaces, especially the notion of cyber-
space, is therefore very similar to the concept of creation of Avant-Pop
media landscapes from our media conditioned ideas of places. The main
difference between the two is the already discussed double status of cy-
berpunk. Its places start functioning as third order simulacra within the
social and economic reality of their reception, while in Avant-Pop, the
mediageniety is the defining factor from the get-go.

4.3 Cyberpunk style

The most important cyberpunk innovations in comparison to preceding
and parallel literary (genre and mainstream) production are to be found
in its characteristic style. Cyberpunk literature comes closest to the aes-
thetics of contemporary media: reading a cyberpunk novel could be com-
pared to the MTV bombardment with images, while the rhythm of narra-
tion is so fast that it is often rather difficult to follow the story.
Revolutionary as such `MTV-style' narration may seem, its function is
predominantly cosmetic. The most radical innovations are, in fact, to be
found in the formation of neologisms and metaphors.
Gibson's technological neologisms, for example, seem strangely famil-
iar at first: we understand individual parts, but not their combinations.
Their matter-of-fact usage in the text echoes the way in which techno-
logical innovations and concepts enter our everyday reality. Con-
sequently, when we come across a cyberpunk technology-based neo-
logism, we do what we usually do with new technological words - we
ascribe an image to it which we form according to our existing know-
ledge and experience. With that, we typically accelerate our everyday
models, and the simulacric wheel comes full circle: we do exactly what
Gibson was doing, borrowing the components for his neologisms from
computer handbooks. Thus, the main characteristic of words that provide
cyberpunk style with its specifics is that they do not have symbolic coun-
terparts. But unlike the poststructuralist never-ending chains of signifiers,
pointing to the instability of reality created through words, cyberpunk
neologisms function as third order simulacra, they create their hyperreal
`signifieds' such as `cyberspace', for example.
To understand the specifics of cyberpunk metaphorics, we must first
clarify the difference between a literary and a scientific metaphor. Ac-
cording to Ruth Curl, the main difference between them is that in litera-
Ghost Busting 63

ture, a metaphor triggers an explosion of meanings which we can never

fully comprehend in their entirety. Science, on the other hand, selects the
right meaning from a finite group of meanings ascribable to a certain
word, thus undermining the full semantic potential of the metaphor. The
literary metaphor is therefore a means for the exploration of ontology,
while the main aim19 of using metaphor is predominantly epistemo-
logical, viz. to clarify (unfamiliar) technological and scientific facts by
means of (familiar) natural processes (Curl 1992: 233).
What happens, when science and technology are more familiar to us
than nature and when they define and support our existence in and com-
prehension of the world more than nature? The natural is described by
the technological, of course. And this is precisely the case with cyberpunk
metaphors, and perhaps the most important novelty that the movement
contributed to the late twentieth century development of literature. From
a plethora of metaphors which contribute to the specifics of the cyber-
punk style, the most effective are those which describe unfamiliar natural
phenomena with more familiar technological concepts. In Neuromancer,
the colour of the sky is described as that of a "television, tuned to a blank
channel" (Gibson 1995: 9), while Molly explains her aggression by being
"wired" (Gibson 1995: 37) that way.
In cyberpunk, the characteristics of literary and scientific metaphors
merge, which is best illustrated by the central cyberpunk metaphor: the
computer. This often-used sci-fi motif thus appears in a double function
in cyberpunk. On the one hand, it retains the characteristics of the tradi-
tional sci-fi Frankenstein's monster metaphor, which is essentially scien-
tific; on the other hand, it also becomes a metaphor for the creator of
Frankenstein's monster. Consequently, the computer becomes a genuinely
ontological metaphor, a generator of an infinite number of meanings,
ranging from connotations referring to transcendence and mythologies
(as is the case especially in the Neuromancer sequel Count Zero) to allu-
sions to motherhood and creation in general.
Cyberpunk neologisms and metaphors seem to be elements which al-
ready fully agree with the modus operandi of postmodernity both in the
manner of their conception as well as their reception. Their structuring
and functioning are generally comparable to those of Avant-Pop. How-
ever, the main difference between the cyberpunk technological neo-

19
The usage of metaphors in science is purely functional: a hypothetical metaphori-
cal connection is established between the concept that is the subject of scientific
research and a familiar natural or social concept. The connection is than tested and
analysed against data and either the 'correct' meaning is selected, or, if the 'cor-
rect' meaning cannot be found, the metaphor is discarded (the kinetic theory of
gases was, for example, established upon the comparison of gases to large swarms
of infinitely small particles). A scientific metaphor is therefore primarily "a tool for
expanding the boundaries of the quantitative" (Curl 1992: 233), and not a means
to explore the qualitative like its literary counterpart.
64 Mojca Krevel

logisms without symbolic correspondents, which provides their simulacric

status, and the style in Avant-Pop works is that in cyberpunk all systems
eventually conform to a single, closed system of a linear story with a
distinct beginning and end. The absence of such a system of `familiar
references', enabling the unknown to lean upon the familiar and thus
contributing to the creation of a clear, linear story is what seems to be
the defining feature of Avant-Pop style. If cyberpunk neologisms pre-
dominantly serve as stylistic devices spicing up the manifestation of an
undisputed cover story, Avant-Pop neologisms define the direction of the
possibilities for a story and its meaning.20
Similarly, Avant-Pop develops the potential of cyberpunk techno-
logical metaphors, in which notions from the fields of information and
general technology are used to describe natural phenomena. Their simu-
lacric status is provided by the fact that technological concepts in them-
selves function as copies without the original and that their meaning is
generally ascribed to them through verification in reality. In the media-
governed society that fully came into effect with the spread of the inter-
net to the social reality of individuals at the end of the 1980s, each event,
or for that matter each individual, is essentially technological, that is,
enabled by technology. The borderline between nature and technology is
not just blurred; only technology in fact guarantees nature's existence as
our conceptions of nature and of the natural, like everything else, are
media-generated. And only within such completely technologized, media-
genic reality, could Avant-Pop practice broaden cyberpunk's strictly tech-
nological metaphors across the entire spectrum of media phenomena,
forming the basis for the creation and understanding of the more complex
segments of everyday hyperreality.

5. In conclusion
It would be inaccurate to claim that cyberpunk was the only factor in
Avant-Pop's successful breakthrough to the terrain of postmodernity.21
The Avant-Pop manifesto, after all, offers a comprehensive range of liter-
ary influences, dating back to the historical avant-garde movements and
even to symbolism. The common denominator of the very diverse array
of sources upon which Avant-Pop founded its production and philosophy
20
The functioning of Avant-Pop neologisms is best illustrated and even thematized
by Coupland's system of footnotes in Generation X, which provide more or less ran-
dom explanations of trendy terms and neologisms (Krevel 2010: 127-128).
21
At this point I would like to emphasise that the Avant-Pop movement existed and
has remained at the very margin of contemporary American literary production. A
major breakthrough to the mainstream scene would, after all, disqualify their fun-
damental avant-garde stance. Nevertheless, from the perspective of literary history
the production of its authors seems to be the first to thoroughly reflect the post-
modern condition in (and of) literature.
Ghost Busting 65

is their tendency to offer productive alternatives to literary traditions

after they had lost their ability to adequately reflect the social and cul-
tural concerns of their time. Cyberpunk, however, was the last in line,
and the attempts of its authors to revolutionize science fiction by aban-
doning the obsolete modes it had rested upon coincided with the increas-
ing inability of the mainstream postmodernist production to offer rele-
vant comments on the developing information and media society.
Postmodernist disqualification of reality as a source of certainty for
the subject's existence in the Cartesian world reflected the actual dis-
appearance of the metaphysical bases upon which modern age societies
functioned. The world was moving into a new epoch and postmodernists,
with their obsolete literary tools of the Great Tradition, could do little but
endlessly reflect upon how they can reflect no more. Cyberpunk, on the
other hand, had the advantage of its genre origins not to care particularly
about its metaphysical grounding. Its sole intention was to make science
fiction exciting, cool and attractive to pop-cultural audiences. By linking
their production to a (then) still largely primitive computer technology
and the possibilities it implied, they managed, on the one hand, to em-
body, on the level of the story, what was only implicit in postmodernist
decisively formal attempts to render the disappearance of the Cartesian
notion of reality. On the other hand, by submitting their narrative to the
central theme of technology, the functioning of which metaphorizes the
functioning of the new world order, cyberpunk authors offered literary
interpretations of experiences to which readers of the 1980s could relate.
The analyses of the structures of cyberpunk protagonists and literary
worlds showed that they correspond to the structuring of Baudrillard's
postmodern subjects and hyperreality. Even though conceived as second
order simulacra, with the author clearly separated from the literary real-
ity, they were received in society as third order simulacra and they fur-
ther functioned as such, accelerating into the fully postmodernized sub-
jects and landscapes of Avant-Pop. The examination of cyberpunk
technology-based neologisms and metaphors, which are the trademarks
of its style, determined their full status of third order simulacra both on
the levels of production and reception.
Cyberpunk may therefore be considered the ultimate realization of the
possibilities offered by postmodernism, and at the same time also the
movement which brought literature into the immediate vicinity of its
postmodern incarnations. Furthermore, the innovations it introduces al-
ready signal what became painfully obvious with the rise of Avant-Pop:
the inability of the established apparatus of literary criticism to provide
an accurate theoretical response to contemporary literary phenomena.
And until the theory finds its own approximation of cyberpunk to take it
into the new epoch, the ghost of postmodernism will haunt its discourse,
forcing it to theorise itself rather than its subject, as it has done for at
least the last twenty-five years.
66 Mojca Krevel

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Mojca Krevel
Faculty of Arts
Ljubljana, Slovenia

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