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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Cyberpunk Novels and Philosophy (help iconoplast finish school)

12:26 / 17.12.02

I'm copping out on a Philosophy class with a professor who knows and likes me and has generously assigned me the following paper:
"Write a book review of a few of these cyberpunk novels you're always talking about, and explain what's so interesting about what they have to say about minds and computers."
I thought of Mona Lisa Overdrive (A.I.s and Voodoo Loa)
...of Snow Crash (A religion is a virus is a drug is a language)

...and then blanked.

Help?

14:21 / 17.12.02

What about the second of Gibson's trilogies? Seems to me this is all about the interaction of humanity with technology. AI's are a particulary weird example of this but if you strech the metaphor they become a refined representation of all technology. And - pretty obviously - he's not talking about the future, he's talking about now. The image of Laney getting sucked into the Panoptican/infosphere seems to me to be a good representation of this weird overpowering tech-heavy world we've bulit for ourselves.

(Laney - uncanny ability to spot patterns in the infosphere. Is he based on grant?

)

14:27 / 17.12.02

- Halo by Tom Maddox, all about machines gaining self-awareness, and the familiar themes of identity in an era of cyborgs etc (full text is available on web at http://www.ecn.org/settorecyb/stories/maddox_halo_1.html). It's, erm, certainly very postmodern, and uses very visceral, lively language- and -ehhh (trying to think of the philosophy essay angle) -it has lots of references to Baudrillard and simulations and things (need to go back and read this one again, now that i think of it).

- Permutation City by Greg Egan, which is quite mind blowing (features humanity as the aliens interfering on a planet, or rather, a completely different reality, with completely new ground rules and basic physics, that has been created by us, in software. It's apparently sentient occupants are utterly alien to us and us to them)

14:29 / 17.12.02

To clarify - Laney (and Bobby Newmark in the first triolgy) seem to be prototypes or imaginings of interacting with all this stuff around us. Plus, you've got the whole Rex/Idoru marriage thing...

Spotted some similar themes in M John Harrison's "Light" which I've just finished - see "Best SF Book" ever thread.

14:49 / 17.12.02

I'll check out Halo and Light. I don't want to use Gibson twice, and I can recite my voodoo is isomorphic to the internet speech while sleeping so it doesn't need much work.

Permutation City sounds cool, too.

I wanted to somehow pick novels that each had a different idea to contribute, but... the idea in all of these, it seems to me now, is what's called Functionalism.

"Functionalism is a theory in the philosophy of mind which, most simply, holds that mental states are functional states. ... The most distinctive feature of functionalism is that it implies that human mental states are not restricted to human biological systems, such as brains. Non-biological systems which exhibit the same functional relationships as humans do, such as systems of computer chips, can be said to have the same mental state. As such, mental states are not based on the intrinsic properties of the mental state in question, such as the stuff it is made of. "

So now I'm wondering if I should slant the paper at "A bunch of fun novels that are all Functionalist in their approach." Or am I ignoring some non-Functionalist novels?

13:13 / 18.12.02

Greg Bear's Blood Music and the breakdown of the individual into the *network*.

Does it count as cyberpunk, though? Dunno.

The cyberpunk section of Dan Simmons' Hyperion gets expanded out in the second "half" of the book, Fall of Hyperion (originally written as one volume, but published as two thick novels, I understand). With a simulation/reincarnation of John Keats as the main character.

01:32 / 19.12.02

Actually, I would say the first half of Permutation City is much more interesting in terms of philosophy of mind - dealing as it does explicitly with what it is to think in a computational manner, how this could be expressed in different ways, and how it relates to consciousness. I found the second half much less engaging. But definitely read it.

For classic cyberpunk, I think Vacuum Flowers (Michael Swanwick) has a lot to say about the nature of personality and mind in relation to technology, as does Software (Rudy Rucker). Vacuum Flower is I think a better book. Just a couple off the top of me head.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

05:41 / 19.12.02

Nanotime by Bart Kosko deals with identity issues. kinda post-punk tho"

Nietzsch E. Coyote

05:43 / 19.12.02

Debut novel from the guru of fuzzy logic (the nonfiction Fuzzy Thinking, 1993). By 2030 the world's oil is running out, leading to conflict in the Middle East. Backed by Israel, John Grant has invented a ``smart'' molecule that splits water into hydrogen fuel and oxygen, and has a pilot plant up and running at Eilat. Then Sufi mystic, genius mathematician, and terrorist Hamid Tabriz destroys Eilat before grabbing Denise Cheng, John's lover and financial backer, in order to replace her brain with a super- microchip controlled by Tabriz. John is forced to kill Denise, though the unnamed US agencies that are keeping tabs on him seem curiously reluctant to get involved in the action. Later, the Israelis implant a chip in John's brain, so now his mind works at nanospeeds, while the Israelis control him via the chip--and use him as bait to tempt Tabriz out of hiding. But John's secret ally, Jism, an artificial intelligence he's created using the template of Victorian genius John Stuart Mill, can help him handle his new superfast intellect, evade the Israeli mindblocks, and zap Tabriz. Meanwhile, the Middle East conflict rapidly accelerates towards WW III. A brash, confused, and, well, fuzzy yarn that, with its relentlessly amoral inhabitants and doings, leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. --

06:42 / 19.12.02

Hey on Snow Crash I would connect the idea of "A religion is a virus is a drug is a language" with the current work being done in Memetics.
Good Luck

pointless and uncalled for

14:54 / 19.12.02

Some Noon would not go to far astray in this project and also I would reccomend Miller's Hardboiled and I think that it well represents the natural graphical extension of the genre.