Re-Creations of the Industrialized Past and Visions of the Virtual Future: The Influence of Steampunk and Cyberpunk - LIR 627

The last two decades of the twentieth century have been marked by unprecedented advances in science, and fiction has been quick to incorporate the findings of what is called the “New Technologies” into its narrative representations of the nature of reality, society, and the individual. Recreated memories of an advanced past and visions of a dystopian future, and imagined virtual worlds challenging our notions of what reality is, have been the centerpiece of the two new genres of steampunk and cyberpunk. The works of Bruce Bethke, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Neal Stephenson, Jeff Noon, Greg Bear, and others are included.