The Essence of Cyborg Identity In William Gibson’s Novel Neuromancer

Abstract

This work studies a very interesting literary issue that is the essence of cyborg identity in a contemporary American context by taking William Gibson‘s science fiction masterpiece Neuromancer as the first cyberpunk novel of the 1980’s. Gibson’s )1984( novel is used in this study to highlight new science fictional trends and aims at explaining every scientific ambiguity which characterizes the cyberpunk literature. This modest dissertation tackles the essence of cyborg identity as a new and different representation that challenges the classic visions of science fiction writing of the1950’s and 1960’s.Gibson’s attempts to examine the new actualities of digital technology and scientific data that is the physical milieu of Cyberspace. This work is divided into two chapters the first provides a theoretical background of science fiction literature and its characteristics to pave the way for the cybernetic literature to appear; whereas the second chapter analyses the notion of cyborg identity of distinct cyborg characters. Gibson’s title offers a new representation of the heroic figure within a technological context, a new depiction of characters who are a combination of body and machine. Those cyborgs are manipulated by artificial intelligence entities they struggle to quest their lost identities between reality and virtuality. Cyborgs are Post-human figures who still hold humanistic values such as love and romance but in the face of the danger of science and technology on humans future