“New Rose Hotel”
This hotel in Narita Japan was probably inspired by an actual coffin hotel, but I can’t confirm that. What I can do is link to a video on a traveler’s YouTube channel (she’s British, so she might prefer “traveller”) that records her stay in a capsule hotel in the Narita airport–9h nine hours. No hotel is actually going to call itself a “coffin” hotel…that would scare people away. This other video is a surrealist attempt to capture the look and feel of Gibson’s description: “The New Rose hotel is a coffin rack…” (p. 110).
WARNING: If you’re claustrophobic, the first video is a bit tough to watch. Take deep breaths…in through your nose and out your mouth…namaste.
In some ways, I consider this short story and “Burning Chrome” love stories. There’s definitely a longing for a past love that the narrator has. Even after Sandii double crosses him and Fox, he still wants her back. Sandii represents both a past love and an exotic figure. She represents a bridge from Europe to Asia, and the narrator fetishizes her; notice the description of her while he watches her sleep (p. 117).
Here are some key points concerning the narrator’s longing:
- pp. 111-112: The narrator’s longing for Sandii…sounds like “Sandy”* from Grease (1978)…By the way, a few summers ago, CPCC’s theater put on Grease. The above link has their current plays.
- Sandii, you left me here.
You left me all your things.
This gun. Your makeup….Your Cray microcomputer.
- Sandii, you left me here.
- p. 115: If we believe the narrator, “the original version” of Sandii’s childhood is she had a Japanese father and Dutch mother, which literally makes her an in between, a bridge from Europe to Asia. {This is an interpretation. There’s plenty of opportunity to claim this is an alias, a disguise for corporate espionage, but Sandii probably is of mixed European-Asian descent.}
- p. 117: While in bed with Sandii, “you rolled against me, waking, on your breath all the electric night of a new Asia, the future rising in you like a bright fluid.”
- p. 113: The narrator makes a few references to her cheekbones, specifically “[her] high Mongol cheekbones.”
- p. 123: After being double crossed, the narrator claims, “It’s alright, baby. Only please come here. Hold my hand.” {Sorry, I can’t resist linking to Player’s “Baby Come Back” (1977)…this and Grease fit the time period.}
Globalization
As with many cyberpunk science fiction stories (especially in the novels Neuromancer and Snow Crash), the governing bodies of the world appear to be corporations. This is a comment on the global reach of multinational corporations that might have a “home base” in a particular country, but they do business outside that host country. Globalization has been in the news for quite a while, but it has become a hot-button topic with the rise of nationalism. Free Trade agreements, such as NAFTA, are common targets of those who feel they have been hurt by opening markets to foreign competition. As a brief summary, opening borders to free trade means companies can make products cheaper elsewhere and ship them to the United States, where the products are sold at a discount. Many manufacturing jobs were “lost” over the past 50 years in the United States, and many nationalist/populist proponents blame free trade.
However, much like all issues, the story is more complicated. Free trade agreements bring in cheaper goods, which saves Americans money, which gets spent on more goods, which drives our consumer economy. Also, and no surprise to this class, automation—technological advancement—reduces a factory’s need for as many workers previously employed, so that reduces jobs. Of course, there’s speculation that it isn’t as bad as some make it out to be.
There is no getting rid of globalization. There might be tweaks here and there with policies, but, unless there’s some major catastrophe, we will be directly and indirectly affected by foreign markets and US policies on trade.
Here are some multinational corporation references:
- p. 109: “zaibatsus, the multinational corporations that control entire economies.”
- p. 113: The narrator references the places where they did “business” and how this new business is not the same: “The old Ritz, warm in our room, dark, with all the soft weight of Europe pulled over us like a quilt.”
- The European setting was familiar and comfortable. Their dealings with the East aren’t so familiar…not so comforting.
- p. 114: “The blood of a zaibatsu is information, not people. The structure is independent of the individual lives that comprise it. Corporation as life form.” {see the discussion below on Citizen’s United v. FEC.}
- p. 120: Countries are willing to let the multinationals do business–“with the knowledge and cooperation of the Moroccan government.”
- Diet is a national assembly; think congress.
- p. 121: “I understood for the first time the real extent of Hosaka’s reach….People we’d done business with for two years saw us coming, and I’d see steel shutters slam behind their eyes.”
Another relevant contemporary (last decade) Supreme Court decision related to the power of Corporations is Citizens United v. FEC. This decision effectively makes one person, one vote moot. Instead, corporations–with their large extent of resources and access to communication–are seen as citizens and can contribute to political campaigns. This is fundamentally anti-Democratic, but, before we get too far down that road, the United States isn’t a Democracy. The US is a Republic or Representative Democracy.
Finally, let’s try to link the two themes–longing for a lost love and capitalism–together. Near the end of the story, the narrator wonders whether or not Sandii is real, and recalls “Fox once said you were ectoplasm, a ghost called up by the extremes of economics” (p. 122). I don’t think the narrator is actually wondering if she’s alive or ever was; instead, I think he’s unsure about the idea of her. Think of it as putting her on a pedestal. He’s not in love with her, Sandii, but he’s in love with the idealized version of her he’s created. Relate this idea of love with tomorrow’s “Burning Chrome” where Bobby fetishizes Rikki, his muse (of a sort).
Future Stuff
Keep on reading! Tomorrow I have us scheduled for “Burning Chrome,” the eponymous title of the collection.
*In Grease, Sandy leaves Danny in the car because he tries to go further than she wants. The song is actually pretty reprehensible because it makes viewers feel sorry for him. In the 1970s, Danny’s behavior was called “being fresh,” but we know it as sexual assault today.