Trashing the millenium: Subjectivity and technology in cyberpunk science fiction

Abstract

'Cyberpunk’ science fiction is a self-proclaimed movement within the genre which began in the 1980s. As the name suggests, it is an extrapolative form of science fiction which combines an almost obsessional interest in machines (particularly information machines) with an anarchic, amoral, streetwise sensibility This paper sketches the development of the movement and seeks to make qualified claims for the radical. potential of its fiction. Of crucial importance are the ways in which human subjectivity (viewed in psychoanalytic terms) interacts with 'technological subjectivity' in cyberpunk, particularly with regard to implications of these interactions for oedipalization.