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With the ever-increasing importance of computers and biotechnology in our lives, the line between the human and the machine has become increasingly blurred.
In William Gibson's cyberpunk works, characters maneuver their way through "cyberspace", visual and sensory representations of the programmes and memories of computers. Cyberspace becomes a metaphor for human memory and an illustration of the degree to which technology has become a part of our selves.
Robert Charles Wilson's Memory Wire is about an "angel"--a human camcorder with a recording wire implanted in his skull.
Neuromancer
Gibson, William
New York: Ace Science Fiction Books, 1984.
Set against an electronic landscape inspired by Silicon Valley, this thriller-cum-romance gone awry tells of a computer cowboy whose sophisticated hacker talents are sought to steal computer data and breach the defences of artificial intelligence.
Distant Signals and Other Stories
Weiner, Andrew
Victoria, B.C.: Porcepic Books, 1989.
The news from D Street is bad. This is a place where people are deleted at the touch of a button, where a bus ("the exit mechanism") changes the social mix and where people are quickly forgotten. This chilling story of the possible dehumanizing effects of technology is the first in a varied collection focusing on an omnipresent technological world.
Used by permission of Beach Holme Publishers, Victoria, B.C.
Memory Wire
Wilson, Robert Charles
New York: Bantam Books, 1987.
As an all-seeing eye, this human video recorder is an angel who is both more than human and less, because he is simply a mirror of the moment with no past and no future.
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Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1995-06-17)