Andreea Ros, Review of Christopher D. Kilgore’s “Bad Networks: From Virus to Cancer in Post-Cyberpunk Narrative.”

摘要

Critical interest in the uses of contagion as a metaphor and cognitive schema hasexposed the multitude of ways in which contagion permeates modern modes of thinkingand writing. Christopher D. Kilgore makes an interesting intervention in this growingfield of contagion studies through his analysis of depictions of computer viruses ascancerous schemas in post-cyberpunk media, in particular, the Matrix trilogy films(1999, 2003) and Steven Hall’s Raw Shark Texts (2007). Close readings of these texts,coupled with a critical account of the history of the changing meanings of both “virus”and “cancer”, demonstrate how shifting depictions of info-viruses reflect both evolvingcultural understandings of cancer and a difference in the political alignments ofcyberpunk as a genre. By portraying info-viruses as internal threats arising from a desirefor excessive growth in line with the cancer schema, post-cyberpunk texts leave behindboth the xenophobic tropes of the virus schema and the genre’s initial politicalambivalence in favour of a more explicit critique of the excesses of late capitalism.