Science Fiction and American Culture » September 13th: William Gibson, Part II

September 13th: William Gibson, Part II

Plan your reading for Martha Wells’s All Systems Red, due 9/27.

Plan for the Day

  • Anything we didn’t get to on Monday (doubt we wouldn’t have covered everything)
    • Japanification
    • Prefaces
    • Globalization
    • Democracy, Republic, Oligarchy?
  • Gibson’s “New Rose Hotel”
  • Gibson’s “Burning Chrome”
    • Illusion of Love
    • Philosophy of Illusion

I’m positive we will catch up on everything today! Let me tell you a funny story…

“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 video discusses 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, several years 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.
  • 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.}

Plan your reading for Martha Wells’s All Systems Red, due 9/27.

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).

Plan your reading for Martha Wells’s All Systems Red, due 9/27.

William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome” (1982)

Before getting into this pseudo-love story, let’s consider the time period and some of the themes in the text. An anthology with this short story claims, “Gibson’s language conveys a melancholy nostalgia for lost affections at the same moment it expresses awe at technological transformations of the human condition” (Evans et. al., p. 548). As you read, pay attention to what seems to be lost by considering what the characters might lament not having or what they long for. Also, think of the role of technology in their lives. Without cyberspace, they wouldn’t have a means of getting income. How might that be interpreted when considering technological literacy and the Labor Market?

By the way, as I mentioned at the bottom of September 11th’s page regarding how much The Matrix borrows from Gibson’s work, Jack in “Burning Chrome” claims, “The matrix folds itself around me like an origami trick” (p. 200).

Consider the following passages from the text:

  • 1980s early amateur IT separation of Hardware vs. Software people: “Bobby’s software and Jack’s hard; Bobby punches console and Jack runs down all the little things that can give you an edge” (p. 181).
    • Here’s a link to a website that describes the distinction (via The Wayback Machine). Don’t waste time reading the entire page because it’s from 2010 and tries to predict (pretty well actually) the hardware-software markets of the 2010s. The historical point is just the first two paragraphs (and the bullet points in between).
    • Basically, computer geeks reading this short story in the 1980s would have had an opinion on the software vs hardware camps.
  • “[Chrome] was one of the boys…a member in good standing of the local Mob subsidiary” (p. 192).
  • Simstim: “simulated stimuli” (p. 195).
  • Jack tells himself a lie to try to create a reality: “I tried telling myself that it was a good idea to burn the House of Blue Lights because the place was a creep joint, but I just couldn’t buy it” (p. 198).
    • The above quotation relates to what the above anthology editors claim that “Gibson’s influential early cyberpunk style” has characters that “are mildly antiheroic, with technical and street skills to manipulate the corrupt system, but lacking in higher ideals” (Evans et. al., p. 548).
    • Jack doesn’t have any moral or ethical qualms with the cyber-brothel. He seems to just not want Rikki to work there.
  • As for the name “House of Blue Lights,” I can’t give you a definitive answer. Many of you probably know what a Red Light District is, so, in the world of cyberspace, having virtual prostitutes in a blue light area parallels red lights.
    • There is a song “The House of Blue Lights” that was recorded by many artists, and that house is a bar or club, which Gibson’s House of Blue Lights is, too.

By the way, I really wanted this story to be the inspiration for Google Chrome…but it isn’t.

Love Story?

This is a bit more of a “traditional” love story: boy meets girl, boy puts girl on pedestal, boy tries to win her, and boy’s friend tries to win her over, too. Bobby Quine is infatuated with Rikki, but it appears to be a surface infatuation–she’s just the current object of his desire. Jack is much more interested in her and seems to want to protect her. The term paternalism is important here because Jack tries to keep her out of harm’s way, but he does so from a position of benevolent male protector (think knight in shining armor…). Patriarchy and paternalism aren’t synonymous, but they go together: a paternalistic perspective is often from the point of view that an authority has the subordinate’s best interest in mind. Of course, in class on Monday, we talked about how a sub ordinate might be in control…

Consider the instances where Bobby and Jack use the ideal of Rikki to justify their actions:

  • “Bobby read his future in women; his girls were omens, changes in the weather, and he’d sit all night in the Gentleman Loser, waiting for the season to lay a new face down in front of him like a card” (p. 185).
  • “Rikki…something to aim for….a symbol for everything [Bobby] wanted and couldn’t have, everything he’d had and couldn’t keep” (p. 187).
  • Jack was annoyed at hearing Bobby go on about Rikki and that he actually believed that he was in love with her (p. 187).
    • “[Bobby] just kept telling me he loved her, where they were going to go together, how they’d spend the money” (p. 198).
  • Jack sees something in the distance: “I see her far out on the edge of all this sprawl of night and cities, and then she waves good-bye” (p. 204–last line).
    • Compare the above to his earlier image of Rikki: “I see her sometimes when I’m trying to sleep, I see her somewhere out on the edge of all this sprawl of cities and smoke, and it’s like she’s a hologram stuck behind my eyes….and I see her wave good-bye” (pp. 185-186).
    • Perhaps Rikki is an ideal or illusion that both Jack and Bobby have created or exaggerated.

Why did Gibson make Chrome a woman hooked up with the Mob? Consider these book covers:

If you’re intrigued by these short stories, I (of course) encourage you to read Gibson’s novel Neuromancer. The main character, Case, sees the image of Neuromancer, Linda, and himself. What interpretation can we make about what we project into the world (our realities)?

Illusion of Love

Think about all those love songs and romantic comedies out there. It’s easy to sing about “love” for 3-4 minutes or watch a grotesque love story for 90-120 minutes. Songs, films, TV shows, etc. are just short pieces of relationships that can easily show love exists. However, they usually don’t get into the difficult parts or contradictory issues of love. In fact, love stories are often used as a psychological release and indulgence into a fantasy of a construct–both social and self–that readers or viewers enjoy. If the reader/viewer can’t have ideal love, they can, at least, have the fantasy to get them through.

Philosophy of Illusion

Two things make it difficult to accept (or, at least, consider) the argument I’m making about stories and myths: 1) we don’t want to think we’re being bamboozled, and 2) we don’t often scrutinize our core assumptions–they’re just givens.

The great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted that people live under a “tissue of lies.” Members of a culture have to “buy into” the stories and myths circulating in society just like they buy into the value of currency, which is a representation of value. The texts we’re reading relate to this theme because they have characters entering alternate realities and questioning what’s real and what’s not. Cyberspace isn’t just a technology that acts as a setting for a text; it’s also a metaphor for our being immersed in Information Technologies we use everyday. Do those tools shape our realities?

To continue on the theme of love, what are the “tissues of lies” surrounding Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” (1980)? One stanza is particularly important:

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true /
Or is it something worse

Whoa! Let’s listen to the song and try to understand it’s meaning and how it can complicate ideal(ized) illusions of love–especially young love. If it’s not a lie…what is it? Consider whether it’s a self-deception or broader deception, a myth believed by a culture?

Finally, in the words of Axl Rose (Guns and Roses “Locomotive”):

You can use your illusion /
Let it take you where it may.

That lyric means create your reality (your personal illusion of it) and go with it. After all, that’s what we do anyway.

Further Fun

Below are links to some interesting texts about 1980s-like virtual worlds.

Future Stuff

Remember, we aren’t meeting as a class for the next three class days (9/18, 9/20, and 9/25). Keep up with the syllabus and watch the films and TV shows I’ve assigned: The Matrix (1999), Hackers (1995), Black Mirror‘s “Fifteen Million Merits” (2011) and The Twilight Zone‘s “Eye of the Beholder” (1960). Enjoy! I’ll have notes up for each day, so review them.

You will have your Weekly Discussion Post #4, so make sure you get on Canvas. Also, your Essay #1–American Culture is due next week, 9/20.

Plan your reading for Martha Wells’s All Systems Red, due 9/27.

Works Cited

Evans, Arthur, et. al. The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction. Wesleyan UP, 2010.

*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. His name being “Danny” is just a coincidence…