The Death of the Human and the Birth of Post-Human Subjects in Philip K. Dick’s Possible Worlds and in William Gibson’s Cyberspace
Giuliano Bettanin · 2010
Philip K. Dick’s development of the theme of possible worlds and his investigation of related epistemological questions are very close in meaning to the ideas of cyberspace and virtual reality. William Gibson’s cyberspace, with its connections to computer science, is largely focused on the same epistemological and ontological questions Dick faced head on in his oeuvre. After discussing possible worlds theory in its own right, this paper proceeds to trace the connecting line between the after-death and post-human worlds of Dick’s novels Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and the cyberspace of Gibson’s sprawl trilogy, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Dick’s two novels present so-called fake realities indistinguishable from the real world and ruled by altered former humans. Gibson’s cyberspace is peopled by disembodied human beings, post-human personality constructs and artificial intelligences. The works of both authors present scripts for contemporary post-modern, post-industrial, biotechnologically engineered reality and radically reconceptualise the age-old themes of death and life. The concepts of the death of human and the birth of post-human subjects play a major proleptic role in both these authors’ fictional elaboration of possible world theory and other epistemological and ontological speculations. The work of Philip K. Dick is commonly acknowledged to be one of the major sources of inspiration for cyberpunk, and for its seminal authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Dick did not deal with many of the typical themes of cyberpunk and cyberculture, which was just beginning when Dick died in 1982. Yet, Dick’s development of the structuring theme of possible worlds is certainly homological to the idea of cyberspace and virtual reality. Gibson’s cyberspace, with its connections to computer science and communication theory, represents a reprising of possible worlds in science fiction.