Here Be Dragons: The Evolution of Cyberspace from William Gibson to Neal Stephenson

Abstract

Abstract The article focuses on the evolution of cyberspace from a myth-critical perspective: the presence of irrational and fantasy elements in seemingly rational and scientific cyberpunk as a subgenre of hard science fiction. Our research primarily focuses on two significant works: William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy (1984-1988), an icon of early cyberpunk, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), a switch to postcyberpunk. Moreover, we consider the other works of a broad genre of cyberpunk including The Matrix movies and conclude that the cyberpunk of the 1980s and 1990s presented cyberspace as an enchanted Terra incognita and blurred the line between rationality and irrationality, technology and magic. Emerging as a way of escaping the real world, as hope for immortality, transcendence or transgression (Foucault), the cyberpunk ‘matrix’ followed in the footsteps of fantasy, myth, religion, and utopia. In our view, the postcyberpunk ‘Metaverse’ of the 1990s is more ironical and ‘realistic’ as it appears, and the more familiar and routine the cyberspace became to people, the less romantic and mysterious it turned out to be. Nevertheless, the nostalgic attempts to return to the old, fantasy model of cyberspace were made in postcyberpunk almost immediately after its emergence.