From Odyssey to cyberpunk. Literary exploration of space vs. spatial exploration of literature

He settled the black terry sweatband across his forehead, careful not to disturb the flat Sendai dermatrodes... He closed his eyes. 

Found the ridged face of the power stud. 

And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film compiled 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 tricks, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, 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 the Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach.

And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.

The preceding fragment comes from the novel Neuromancer by the American-Canadian author William Gibson, published in 1984 (Gibson 1984, pp. 51-2). It is the first part of a trilogy, that also comprises the novels Count Zero (Gibson 1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (Gibson 1988). unfulfillableGibson is regarded as one of the founders of the movement in science fiction known as cyberpunk (Alpers 1988, p. 45). Cyberpunk novels and movies are generally set in a world not too far in the future that is entirely based on digital electronics. It is a world populated by people with electronic and biological implants, software constructions of the dead and artificial intelligences. A striking feature of cyberpunk novels is the discrepancy that exists between the technological miracles described in them and “their application in a real world still obsessed with power, money and sex” (Rushkoff 1994, p. 225). The future world envisioned by Gibson is controlled and governed by multinational corporations, degenerate family clans and criminal organizations, and the life of its paranoid inhabitants is dominated by hallucinations generated by electronics and drugs. Another characteristic of cyberpunk novels is that they are usually written from the perspective of people who find themselves on the seamy side of this 'brave new world', such as cyberspace cowboys, illegal dealers of drugs, hardware and software, prostitutes and street gangs. The leading role in Gibson's novels, however, is reserved for the matrix, 'the three-dimensional grid' of cyberspace' (Gibson 1986, p. 82), a hallucinatory space with unfolds when the brain is directly linked to the worldwide network of computers. Detached from the body, the cybernauts in Gibson's novels polysensorily traverse the non-space of the mind, the virtual world that is filled with countless clusters of information enveloped in deadly protective shields ― 'black ice'[1].Neuromancer describes the adventures of cyberspace cowboy Case, a hacker, who, commissioned by major criminals, hacks through the 'ice' surrounding the data bases of multinationals and steals vital information and software. At the beginning of the novel we encounter Case, down on his luck, in Night City, a ghetto in Chiba in Japan, inhabited by techno-criminals and drug addicts. Because Case has duped one of his clients by keeping some of the software stolen from the matrix for himself, they have damaged his brain with a subtly-acting wartime gas which makes it impossible for him to plug into cyberspace. The plot takes off when a secret client ― who later turns out to be an artificial intelligence using the talented Case to free him from his chains, monitored by the Turing police ― has Case's brain patched up in one of the illegal neurosurgical clinics in Chiba. The extract quoted at the beginning of this chapter describes Case's euphoria when after a period of nauseating abstinence he is able to plug into cyberspace again for the first time, and it marks the beginning of a series of bizarre adventures.

From science fiction to science faction

I shall not go very deeply here into the complex plot of Neuromancer, but try to explain why, as a philosopher and lover of literature, Gibson's cyberpunk novels fascinate me so much. It is not surprising that in science fiction it is both the science element and the fiction element that appeal to readers. If we take the view that philosophy is not limited to reflection on the real, but is also concerned with the exploration of the possible ― which according to Heidegger stands higher than reality[2] ― then science fiction can be designated the pre-eminent form of philosophical literature (Pecorino 1983). But even those who prefer the reality to the possible must acknowledge that the cyberspace described by Gibson in 1984 is becoming more real by the day, not least because the computer industry has been demonstrably inspired by Gibson's novels[3]. In this respect, cyberpunk could be termed the most realistic genre in current fiction, a form of what we could designated as faction. I would not go so far as ex-hippy Timothy Leary, converted to cyberspace in the 1980s, who ― never shy of hyperbole ― described Gibson as 'the most important philosopher for the future', and as ‘the writer of the underlying myth, the core legend, of the next stage of human evolution' (quoted in: Woolley 1992, pp. 36-7), but nevertheless I am convinced that within current literature cyberpunk forms one of the most fascinating challenges for philosophy. For example, the genre evokes penetrating philosophical-anthropological questions on the dividing line between human beings and machines and invites metaphysical reflection concerning the nature of digital space and time.

Literature conquering space

 The reason why Neuromancer appeals so much to me as a lover of literature is that this book and the cyberpunk tradition from which it flows, has prompted a fundamental discussion on traditional literature and, in particular, the modern novel. Perhaps this is the reason cyberpunk ― and science fiction in general ― is usually treated so negatively by exponents of established, more exalted literature. There are few literary genres that are so often judged solely on their bad examples as science fiction. This is surprising, because modern science fiction, such as that created in the nineteenth century, has its roots in age-old and highly-regarded genres, such as the fantastic travel story that began with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and utopian literature, such as that which has been developed in our culture since Plato's Republic[4]. Cyberpunk is also within this tradition. It is the contemporary expression of man’s  insatiable longing to go beyond the spatial and temporal limits of his world. Nevertheless, even the best cyberpunk novels ― and in my view Neuromancer, with its ingenious content, brilliant staccato rhythm and icy realism, is certainly one of them ― are rarely taken seriously by exponents of established literature. Even Brian Aldiss and David, the authors of Trillion Year Spree. The History of Science Fiction, and, as is evident from their book, true aficionados of the genre, come to the conclusion that Gibson's novels do not meet the highest literary demands. For example, concerning Count Zero, the second book in Gibson's trilogy, they remark that in spite of its superficial brilliance the book lacks real development of the characters (Aldiss and Wingrove 1986, pp. 524).   

As I remarked above, in my view the negative treatment of cyberpunk is linked to the explicit assumption that the genre fundamentally questions the principles of established literature. Let me explain this on the basis of the “Three Worlds” theory defended, among others, by Plessner and Popper[5]. According to these philosophers we live simultaneously in three worlds. World 1 – as Popper summarizes in his Tanner lectures – “consists of physical bodies: of stones and of stars; of plants and of animals; but also of radiation, and of other forms of physical energy” (Popper 1978) World 2 is “the mental or psychological world, the world of our feelings of pain and of pleasure, of our thoughts, of our decisions, of our perceptions and our observations; in other words, the world of mental or psychological states or processes” (ibid). World 3, finally, is “the world of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and sculptures. But also aeroplanes and airports and other feats of engineering” (ibid). Although emanating from the human mind (World 2) these products possess a certain independence and permanence. In this respect they resemble Plato's eternal world of Ideas beyond the transitory material world. We might regard the mathematical construct of cyberspace, disclosed by the worldwide network of computers, as the most recent phase in the development of World 3. The autonomy of this new space appears to be still greater than before. Despite its dependence on a material infrastructure consisting of computers and networks of cables and fibers, cyberspace is largely beyond World 1. It is for this reason that in his book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality Michael Heim calls cyberspace 'Platonism as a working product'’ and he continues: ‘The cybernaut seated before us, strapped into sensory-input devices, appears to be, and is indeed lost to this world. Suspended in computer space, the cybernaut leaves the prison of the body and emerges in a world of digital sensation” (Heim 1993, p. 89)[6] . But when we consider the artificial intelligences that populate cyberspace in Neuromancer and the resulting growing self-awareness of the matrix, then in this novel it appears that there is also a question of the emancipation of cyberspace from World 2, that is to say, from human consciousness.

If we look at the history of the literary conquest of space against this background, we see that, on the basis of the Three Worlds theory of Plessner and Popper, three phases can be distinguished. The theme of the first phase is the fantastic travel story, such as Homer's Odysseus, which deals with the exploration of World 1. In the course of cultural history, with the development of increasingly efficient means of transport, this literary exploration of physical, geographical space has gone hand in hand with the disclosure of the entire world, and in modern times, with the invention of the telescope and microscope, has continued in the exploration of the universe and the world of subatomic particles (Flusser 1992, pp. 31-2). An important part of modern science fiction ― Jules Verne can be considered as a paradigmatic example ― is also in the tradition of the exploration of World 1.

Apart from the progressive disclosure of the physical world, however, modernity has also seen the birth of the exploration of World 2, the inner space of human subjectivity. This is not only expressed in the philosophy of consciousness that has dominated modern philosophy since Descartes, and in the development of human sciences such as psychology, but also ― as Hegel ― in his Aesthetics (Hegel 1998)[7] ― and Kundera ― in his Art of the Novel (Kundera 2000) ― among others, have pointed out ― in the tradition of the modern novel, which has been developed since Cervantes. The great tradition of the novel in past centuries, in other words, is the result of the shift of literature from World 1 to World 2. In modern literature, characterized by the exploration of World 2, it is no longer events in physical space that are central ― which devalues the science fiction in which this is the case ― it is the emphasis placed on the psychological development of the characters and of the discovery of new psychological and existential ‘spaces’: “The sole raison d’etre of the novel is to discover what only the novel can discover. A novel that does not discover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel’s only morality” (Kundera 2000, pp. 5-6)[8] .

During the twentieth century, with the development of modern means of communication, mass media, and computer technology, in the exploration of space the attention has moved yet again, this time to an exploration of the virtual space of World 3. Cyberpunk literature can be regarded as the literary representation of this odyssey through cyberspace. In these novels it is not the exploration of the physical world that is central, nor, any longer, is it the inner psychological or mental world, it is the exploration of the infinitely extending 'non-space' of an increasingly autonomous 'objective mind'. This matrix is the real protagonist of Gibson’s trilogy. For this reason we can call Neuromancer the first Bildungsroman of cyberspace. This explains not only why in Gibson’s novels little attention is paid to the psychological development of the human characters who appear in them, but it also explains the negative rating that this genre receives from the world of established literature, that is closely linked to the exploration of World 2.There is yet another reason, however, why the cyberpunk novel is a bone of contention in established literature. I referred earlier to Heim's argument that the cyberspace described in Neuromancer appears to be a realization of Plato's philosophy. On an essential point, however, the cyberspace described by Gibson is diametrically opposite Plato's world of pure Ideas. As opposed to Plato's Kingdom of Ideas, cyberspace as a whole is not a world detached from the senses, but pre-eminently a sensory ― Gibson even uses the word 'polysensory' ― world. If cyberspace is a victory over Platonism, then at best it is a Pyrrhic victory. In reality the realization of Plato's dream appears rather to be a secret victory of the sensory illusions of the arts that Plato intended to banish from his ideal state (De Mul 1999, pp. 35-73).

Space conquering literature

It is in this polysensory nature of cyberspace that the pain for today's representatives of the written culture lies, no less for poets than for thinkers. The cyberspace odyssey appears to signify the audio-(tele)visual culture's definitive victory over writing, a spectre that culture pessimists have warned against ad nauseum during the last few decades (Postman 1985; Birkerts 1994). And if Gibson is right, then books in the world of the future will only appear as rare relics from a lost world.[9]

This transition from written culture to the audiovisual culture is reminiscent of an earlier transformation which in a certain way marked the transition from our prehistory to our history ― the transition from the oral culture  to the written culture. Authors such as McLuhan, Havelock and Ong have pointed to the enormous influence of this transformation ― the transition from the world of Homer to the world of Plato ― has had on the life and thinking of western man (Havelock 1963; Ong 1982; Havelock 1986; Donald 1991). The transition to written culture ― which, only had its broad impact on society after the invention of the printing press ― not only led to the development of new cognitive skills, such as increasing abstraction (that is to say, the further development of Popper's World 2), but at the same time the uncoupling of the memory from the spoken language was a crucial moment in the development of an independent World 3 (Heim 1987, pp. 46-69). The introduction of writing brought about an externalization of memory and thus a fundamental transformation of the spatial organization of human cognition.

The question is if the transition from the written culture to the hypermedia cyberspace culture ― that, as Ong, among others, argues, synthesizes properties from oral and written traditions ― will bring with it a similar transformation of our cognitive structure. Although I realize that we are only at the threshold of the 'digitalization of culture', I am less pessimistic than Gibson about the future of the book. But we must make a distinction between the book as a material carrier of information and the book as a specific cultural form, characterized by monomediality (it consists only of linguistic elements), linear sequentiality (it has a beginning, a middle, and an end), and closure (the elements form a coherent whole). It is possible ― and in my view even probable ― that the paper book, like the papyrus scroll, will largely disappear from our culture[10], but the book as a cultural genre will survive in an electronic environment, for example, as an electronic book (e-book). In the field of music reproduction this change has almost been completed ― the old gramophone record has almost completely been replaced by the CD and now exists largely as a nostalgic collector's item and as an instrument for scratchers and disc jockeys ― but the music recorded on these new carriers has not essentially changed. Something similar is currently happening in the field of photography. With the emergence of the digital camera and digital image processing, traditional analogue photography appears to have had its day, although this does not necessarily apply to the traditional photographic genres (such as family and holiday snaps, journalistic photography, etc.).

Although the digitalization of the classic book and the classic photograph do not exclude the survival of these cultural forms in the new material medium, in practice this digitalization often also has an effect on these cultural forms. Here I confine myself to the effects of digitalization on the book on the spational organization of writing and reading. Two types of effect can be distinguished. The first concerns the digitalization of the traditional book as, for example, is taking place in the Gutenberg Project, a collaboration between a large number of volunteers whose aim is make the entire body of world literature available free via the Internet. Complete texts can be downloaded as text files and read on the PC screen, as an e-book or printed out on paper. Apart from the addition of a short explanation of the Gutenberg Project the texts are published in their original linear form. But reading texts on the screen is clearly a different reading experience than reading them on paper. For example, the electronic form makes it possible, with the aid of the search function, to find specific words or passages quickly. At first sight this possibility appears to differ only quantitatively from the classic index at the back of a book ― the advantage appears to lie largely in the fact that the reader is not limited to the words that the author has included in the index, but can look for any random word. As opposed to this there is the possible disadvantage that the reader can no longer use the author’s or editor’s index to make a quick scan of the contents of the book. But after I obtained the Past Master CD-ROM that contains the collected works of a large number of philosophers, I realized that I started reading in a different way. Such a CD-ROM invites the user to study the oeuvre of a thinker via the search function ― what did Nietzsche write about coincidence? ― rather than reading a book from cover to cover in the traditional way. Of course, as an academic 'professional reader' I am not representative of the average  reader, and readers can also 'zap' the classic book in a similar way ― for example, by using the index. Nevertheless I ask myself if the increase in the number of electronic publications will not lead to a gradual replacement of the linear way of reading by the scanning of semantic networks, a 'zapping reading'.

In any event this already seems to be occurring with what are known as 'hypertext' publications of classical literature on CD-ROMs and on the Internet in which the texts are provided with linkages (hyperlinks) that provide access to specialist commentaries, secondary sources, related texts by the same author or other authors, and various image and sound files. Those who read such multimedia hypertexts (also denoted as hypermedia) will notice that they invite the reader to complement traditional 'horizontal' reading with 'vertical' reading movements. These hypermedia disclose the 'third world of culture' by creating specific spatial corridors which allow readers who do not have immediate or only partial access to this world, to enrich their reading[11]. Of course, in written culture we also recognize implicit and explicit forms of 'intertextuality' ― for example, in the form of footnotes or a bibliography. In this respect the hypertext is not so much opposed to written culture, but rather radicalizes certain aspects of it. The temporal and spatial condensation of intertextuality, however, transforms the quantitative distinction into a qualitative difference. When reading a book, the reader does not rush off to the library at every reference, while the (compulsive-neurotic) temptation of the hyperlink is difficult to resist (Harpold 1994).

The ultimate goal of this development had already been envisioned at the beginning of the 1960s by Ted Nelson in his Xanadu-project (Nelson 1993). Xanadu embraces the idea of storing all the texts ever written in a large electronic database and linking them with each other in such a way that it would be possible to use each word to call up all the other texts that in one way or another are related to it. Such a system ― for which Nelson was the first to propose the term 'hypertext'[12] ― allows the reader to criss-cross the entire universe of texts in every conceivable way. Nelson is still working on his Xanadu-project, and although he announces approximately every year that it is almost ready, it still has not been completed. In fact, it has already completely been surpassed by the World Wide Web that perhaps does not have such a refined linkage structure as Nelson envisages but nonetheless at present has more than a billion ‘pages’.

The hyperlink structure not only changes the reading process, but also makes it possible to transform existing cultural forms into new genres and even into whole new forms of art. In recent decades we have seen various new hybrid art genres created by the merging of old and new media. The principle of hypermediality, indeed, cannot only be used to link a traditional text to other texts, images or sounds, but can also be used as a construction principle within the text, composition or image. This occurs, for example, when the author, composer or director, using the opportunities offered by the computer, grafts hyperlinks on to the traditional work of art. This creates new genres such as the 'interactive novel', 'interactive music' and 'interactive film' and different kinds of computer simulations[13].

Whereas the traditional writer, composer or director establishes the entire narrative, hypertext makes it possible for the author to think up several alternatives and allows the recipient to decide which alternative to choose. Johnny Mnemonic by Douglas Gayton, an interactive film based on a short story by William Gibson, is a good example in this context (Gayton 1995). The story is about a human data carrier who has a fatal amount of confidential information locked away in his head and has to deliver it before he dies. Other than in Robert Longo's film of the same name, issued in the same year, the storyline in Gayton's film is not fixed and the 'player', who experiences the filmed story from the perspective of the main character, determines the outcome. This is possible because the film shown on the PC regularly halts and the player then has to make a choice from the (rather limited) repertoire of actions available to the protagonist[14]. Another form of interactive film allows the viewer to live the story alternately through the eyes of the different characters. This technique was used, for example, though still in a pre-interactive way,  in Kurosawa’s movie  Rashomon (1950).

Michael Joyce's Afternoon (1987) and Stuart Moulthrop's Victoria Garden (1991) are two early examples of hypertext novels. They consist of a series of text fragments which are joined by hyperlinks to create a multilinear web. Within certain limits determined by the author the reader can choose the order in which the fragments are read ― and therefore the plot ― by clicking on certain marked words. For example, Afternoon, created with the aid of the hypertext processor Storyspace designed by Joyce and Bolter, consists of 539 narrative elements joined to each other by 950 links. The story, which like Johnny Mnemonic is experienced from the perspective of the main character, is about a man called Peter who driving to work sees another car which has clearly been involved in an accident. Peter thinks he recognizes the bodies of his ex-wife and his son Andrew and, depending on the links the reader follows from the beginning, the story develops in different directions. Some of the possible plots complement each other, others are at odds. When the reader, driven by a desire for closure and wanting to understand the whole, continues clicking and reading, he slowly begins to realize that as he continues to read the number of ambiguities and tensions increases (see Douglas 1994, 2000).

Because of these moments of choice, movies and novels advertised as 'interactive' evanesce the clear distinction which in the traditional book exists between author and reader. This difference is further undermined when the reader is not only able to choose a particular plot from a number of previously given possibilities, but can also add or remove text elements. This is the case with certain hypermedia novels on the Internet. In this respect the hypertext novel reverts back to the oral tradition from which, for example, Greek mythology and Homer's Odyssey stem. In this tradition, too, the storyteller could select from a large number of elements that he could link together in his own way and to which he could add his own contribution.

The hypertext and the 'hyper novel' give new substance to the writer's activity. The writer is no longer first and foremost a maker of stories that take place in time, but rather a creator of a multidimensional narrative space in which readers can create their own linear stories. This development is not primarily technology-driven, but rather is a continuation of ideas developed earlier in written culture itself. In literature novels such as Joyce's Finnigans Wake, that gives the reader the impression of a hypertext of associations, spring to mind. Even more explicit is Cortázar's Rayuela ― a game of hopscotch, in which the readers themselves determine in what order they will read the chapters. At a theoretical level one can consider the reflections on intertextuality by authors such as Kristeva, Derrida and Barthes, which I briefly mentioned above. In the same period that Ted Nelson was dreaming of Xanadu, Barthes wrote his article 'The death of the author', in which he engaged in battle with literary notions in which the author is the final signified. “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (Barthes 1982, p. 147). Referring to Mallarmé, Barthes argues that the language itself should be put in the place of the person who was previously thought to be its possessor. In his article “From work to text”, written during the same period, Barthes remarked that the text “is realized not according to an organic process of maturation or a hermeneutic course of deepening investigation, but, rather, according to a serial movement of disconnections, overlappings, variations” (Barthes 1982, p. 158). With comments such as this, Barthes, probably without realizing it, was heralding the future 'hyper novel' as early as the 1960s.

It might be asked, of course, whether the development described can be acclaimed in all its aspects, as Barthes appears to do in the articles mentioned. Of course, there are particularly significant applications for the interactive media. If we consider the ease of use, the multimedia possibilities, the reference structure and the opportunity to update information quickly and cheaply, then it is not at all surprising that in not much more than a decade the hypermedia encyclopaedia has swept its paper predecessor from the market. Such elimination is actually a well-known phenomena in the history of the media. For example, the development of cinema signalled the end of long, naturalistic descriptions in the novel, and certain forms of realism in the theatre.

Conversely, it may be expected that the new, interactive media will acquire an important place in the arts. To think that everything will become interactive, or that the computer will make everyone creative, is just as foolish as thinking that the typewriter has made the pen obsolete and in principle make everyone a potential winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is both an overestimation of technology and an underestimation of the imagination. Furthermore, it is not unthinkable that the realized world of hypertext will acquire the same labyrinthian character as the library of Babel imagined by Borges, in which ― just as in Xanadu ― not only all actual texts, but also all possible texts are stored. The well-founded fear is that a realized Xanadu will drive even the most fervant Homo Zappens to despair.

Furthermore, human beings not only recognize a need for interactivity, they are also characterized by a fundamental interpassivity. Robert Pfaller has pointed to the remarkable fact that many owners of video recorders often shoot films which are kept, but never watched, and in this they derive a certain pleasure. Not only do they want to be involved in a non-interactive way in the creating of an artwork, they even want to outsource the passive enjoyment to an appliance or another person (Pfaller 2000, p. 2). According to Pfaller and Zizek the example of the video recorder is not unique, but reveals a fundamental characteristic of human subjectivity. Perhaps out of this fundamental interpassivity we will soon desire to return to the age of the book where the total involvement the new interactive media calls for was not yet  demanded. In that light it is a comfort to know that, if we want to reflect on this brave new world, for the time being we can fall back on the – at any rate in this respect – traditional novels of William Gibson.

Notes

    [1] Compare the mathematic visualization of cyberspace in Johnny Mnemonic, Robert Longo's 1995 film version of a story by Gibson of the same name, which also partly takes place in cyberspace.