AI and Cyberpunk Networks

AI Narratives ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 284-308
Author(s):  
Anna McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
William Gibson

Cyberpunk science fiction broke new ground in terms of AI representation; William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), the ur-text of cyberpunk, introduced the term ‘cyberspace’, and this spatialized metaphor for data creates an environment that can be inhabited by AIs, rather than an idea of the AI being located in one ‘body’, or in one static place. This chapter explores the possibilities opened by this innovation and by cyberpunk’s continued interrogation of AI as a phenomenon that is dispersed throughout networks, particularly focusing on William Gibson, in the Afrofuturist movement through a reading of Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984), and on the work of writers who have been characterized as ‘post-cyberpunk’, such as Cory Doctorow, who shows how algorithms and artificial intelligences can have unexpected, international, and economic consequences.

scholarly journals Towards a Poetics of Strangeness: Experiments in Classifying Language of Technological Novelty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Simeone ◽  
Advaith Gundavajhala Venkata Koundinya ◽  
Anandh Ravi Kumar ◽  
Ed Finn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
Bruce Sterling

The trajectory of science fiction since World War II has been defined by its relationship with technoscientific imaginaries. In the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein dreamed of the robots and rocket ships that would preoccupy thousands of engineers a few decades later. In 1980s cyberpunk, Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling imagined virtual worlds that informed generations of technology entrepreneurs. When Margaret Atwood was asked what draws her to dystopian visions of the future, she responded, "I read the newspaper." This is not just a reiteration of the truism that science fiction is always about the present as well as the future. In fact, we will argue, science fiction is a genre defined by its special relationship with what we might term "scientific reality," or the set of paradigms, aspirations, and discourses associated with technoscientific research.

William Gibson

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Early Years ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Mona Lisa ◽  
Near Future ◽  
First Time ◽  
Lasting Influence

The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. This book draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, the book describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as the book provides extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.

The Origins of Cyberspace

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-31
Author(s):  
David J. Pym
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Interaction Space ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Real Science ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
The Way

‘Cyberspace’ is a romantic term, introduced in the elegant science-fiction writing of William Gibson, but the concepts that make up the environment called ‘cyberspace’ are the stuff of real science, with origins that can be traced to ancient Greece. Much has been written about the origins of cyberspace, including a comprehensive sourcebook by Hook and Norman. This chapter tries to take a rather conceptual view of what constitutes cyberspace, tracing the origins of the ideas from fourth-century BCE Greece to the modern Internet-supported interaction space—throughout the discussion, the chapter will seek to elucidate the concept of ‘space’ and how it helps us to think about the cyber-world. On the way, the chapter considers the literary origin of the word, and the mathematical and logical theory that is required to build models of cyberspace.

The First Revolution: Cyberpunk Days

2016 ◽  
pp. 18-91
Author(s):  
Mike Ashley
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
High Tech ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Bruce Sterling ◽  
Technological Singularity

Charts the emergence of cyberpunk, especially through the pages of OMNI, and considers its leading authors, including William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling and John Shirley. It also considers the growth of ASIMOV’S SF MAGAZINE under the editorship of Shawna McCarthy who strove to publish more challenging and daring stories. Between these two magazines science fiction began to undergo a new revolution. Even ANALOG, the most conventional of the sf magazines, saw changes introducing more challenging high-tech stories exploring nanotechnology and the technological singularity.

All Today’s Parties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Westfahl
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter examines three William Gibson novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Gibson had planned Pattern Recognition for a long time: in 1986, he declared that he would “eventually try something else,” and “in twenty years” he would probably be “writing about human relationships.” By shifting from the future to the present, Gibson clearly felt that he was relaunching his career, and hence he logically reverted to the pattern of his first novel. Known as a science fiction writer for decades, Gibson felt an obvious need to justify Pattern Recognition's present-day setting. This chapter considers a number of ways to argue that Pattern Recognition should be classified as science fiction. Spook Country asserts that we live today in a world filled with science-fictional events, but we are unable or unwilling to properly observe them. Zero History suggests that Gibson has entirely distanced himself from the world of computers, the focus of the cyberpunk literature he was once said to represent.

Fools: The Neuroscience of Cyberspace

1998 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Gwyneth Jones
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
William Gibson ◽  
Evolution Of Science ◽  
The University

This essay is the first in the book’s Science, Fiction and Reality section. It was originally a paper read at a conference held at the University of Teesside in April 1995 and was later published in The Governance of Cyberspace. The essay talks about the evolution of science fiction and how it’s easy to spot when it has been overtaken by the development of technology; specifically in computers, artificial intelligence, robotics, and cybernetics. In her discussion of technology and cyberspace, Jones alludes to the possibility of consciousness, self-awareness and freedom of information, and makes reference to the science fiction novels of William Gibson and Pat Cadigan.

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