Gender, Technology, and Cyborgs

By Megan Hasenwinkel

Bibliography

Born in Flames. Icarius Video. 1983.
After a socialist governmental revolution in the United States, the Women's Army fights for equality against the violence that attempts to keep them silent.

Butler, Octavia, E. Dawn. New York: Warner Books. 1987.
Dawn tells the story of Lilith, a black woman who has been saved from post-apocalyptic earth by an alien race called the Oankali. She is chosen as a leader of the first group of humans to repopulate the earth.

Delany, Samuel, R. "Some Real Mothers. . .: The SF Eye Interview." In Silent Interviews. Hanover: Weslyan University Press, 1994 p.164-185.
In this interview, Samuel R. Delany expounds on cyberpunk and his relation to the genre. He emphasizes the important of feminist science fiction as an often ignored mother of cyberpunk.

Foster, Thomas. "'Trapped by the Body'? Telepresence Technologies and Trangsgendered Performance in Feminist and Lesbian Rewritings of Cyberpunk Fiction." Modern Fiction Studies 43 (1997): 708-742

Gibson, William. "Johnny Mnemonic." In Burning Chrome. Arbor House Publishing Company, 1986.
Johnny Mnemonic gets in trouble with the Japanese mafia when he tries to access information that is stored in neural implants in his head. He is helped by Molly, a female cyborg with mirrorshade implants over her eyes and razor blades under her fingernails.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. 1984.
Neuromancer features the same Molly character from "Johnny Mnemonic." This time is is helping Case, a cyberspace cowboy as they attempt to free an artificial intelligence known as Wintermute.

Griffith, Nicola. Ammonite. New York: Ballantine Books. 1992.

Griffith, Nicola. Slow River. New York: Ballantine Books. 1995.
This novel follows the character of Lore as she works her way through a history of sexual abuse by her family and partners and a debilitating kidnapping.

Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminist in the 1980s" In Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics. ed. Elizabeth Weed New York: Routledge, 1989. 173-204.
In this essay, Haraway examines the effect of the cyborg in today's culture, and especially its influence and interaction with women. She touches briefly on feminist science fiction writers, including LeGuin and Butler.

Hicks, Heather, J. "Whatever it is That She's Since Become: Writing Bodies of Text and Bodies of Women in James Tiptree, Jr.'s 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In' and William Gibson's 'The Winter Market.' " Contemporary Literature 37 (1996): 62-94.

Hollinger, Veronica. "(Re)reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender." Science Fiction Studies 26 (1999): 23-40.

Huyssen, Andreas. "The Vamp and the Machine: Fritz Lang's Metropolis." In After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. p 65-81.
In this article, Huyssen reinterprets Metropolis as more than a comment on class struggle. She advances the hypothesis that the robot Maria portrays an attempt of men to control both women and technology, two forces they do not understand and hence, fear.

Leblanc, Lauraine. "Razor Girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction." Women and Language 20 (1997): 71-77.

LeGuin, Ursula K. The Lathe of Heaven. New York: Avon Books. 1971.
In this novel, George Orr changes the world through his "effective dreams." With these dreams he changes reality, and is forced into doing this by his psychotherapist, who is guided by a strange sense of moral necessity.

Liquid Sky. Z Films, Inc. 1982.
Margaret is a New Wave model who is surrounded by abusive people. She finds she can kill people by having sex with them, and gets her revenge. She does not know that the people are actually getting killed by aliens living on her roof that live off the herion-like substance produced during orgasm.

The Matrix. Warner Bros. 1999.
This movie shows a future where computers have taken over, and most humans live virtual-reality lives without even knowing it. A few, however, have escaped the matrix and fight the machines from "the real world."

McCaffrey, Anne and Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann. Powers That Be. New York: Ballantine Books. 1993.

Metropolis. Universum Film A.G (UFA). 1927
Cited as the first science fiction movie ever, this silent black and white film shows a society where the high-class thinkers are supported by the working class, who operate the fantastic machinery that creates the thinker's homes. Action happens when the son of one of the thinkers falls in love with a female leader of a worker's resistance.

Moore, C. L. "No Woman Born." In Women of Wonder: The Classic Years. ed. Pamela Sargent. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995. 21-64
This short story is about Diedre, a famous actress whose body is destroyed in a fire. Her brain is saved, however, and is put in a robotic body. Questions remain as to her femininity and humanity.

Star Trek: First Contact. Paramount Pictures. 1996.
A cybernetic race known as the Borg travel back in time and take over the earth. The crew of the Enterprise must travel back as well and save humanity from technology.

Tiptree, James Jr. "The Girl Who Was Plugged In." In Warm Worlds and Otherwise. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975. p 79-121.
This short story is an early example of feminist cyberpunk. An ugly woman named P. Burke is given the chance to live her dreams and be the brain in the body of a beautiful woman. This plan backfires when the man who falls in love with her beauty kills P. Burke, who he thinks is controlling his beloved.

Willis, Connie. Remake. New York: Bantam Books. 1995