Rage against the machine: Cyberspace narratives in Rushdie’s Fury

Abstract

This article examines the science-fictional aspects of Rushdie’s 2002 novel Fury, focusing on the cyberspace narrative at its centre. I suggest that Rushdie engages with the enabling potential of cyberspace, only to finally reject it in favour of a return to the “real”. Fury questions the science-fictional or cyberspace option as a vehicle for previously unimagined artistic freedom. The protagonist, Malik Solanka, finds he cannot overcome personal and collective “fury” by “living in the electricity”. The science-fictional cyber narrative he creates collapses into the “real”, leaving Solanka disillusioned by his dream of artistic freedom and total control. Rushdie presents the allure of cyberspace narrativity as a seductive but dangerous means of artistic escape, and questions cyberspace’s offer of total artistic freedom. Solanka’s disillusionment thus mirrors Rushdie’s sceptical stance towards cyberspace and its possibly redemptive potential. The novel’s ending signifies a qualified return to the “real” and a rejection of the dream of an ultimate “elsewhere” in cyberspace. Solanka’s return home to London and to his son, Asmaan (sky), envisions a different form of futurity, to be found in the next generation. This promise for a possibly better future is represented by Solanka’s estranged son, whom he longs to reencounter in person, rather than in the disembodied technological realm of cyberspace.