Virtual Geographies

Heuser, Sabine. Virtual Geographies: Cyberpunk at the Intesection of the Postmodern and Science Fiction. Postmodern Studies 34. Amsterdom: Rodopi, 2003.

Reviewed twice in Extrapolation 45.2 (Summer 2004): 209-14. In his Extrapolation review, Brent Stypczynski comments positively on the second half of book, "in which Heuser applies her theoretical standpoint to William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, and Neal Stephenson's work," including Gibson's Neuromancer and Stephenson's Snow Crash (under Fiction, C1 for Neuromancer, C2 for Snow Crash). Stypczynski suggests HS's setting up a continuum between Gibson's cyberspace and the mindscape in Cadigan, "with Stephenson's Metaverse […] a sort of middle ground between cyberspace and the mindscape" (209). Stypczynski finds Geographies "an interesting and approachable in-depth look at the role of the setting and postmodernism in the cyberpunk genre rather [than] focusing on the often-flat characters" of cp works (210). Graham J. Murphy recommends HS's discussion of pomo and architecture (Extrap 211, 214), but finds numerous editing problems in the discussion of the fiction. (RDE, 01/11/06)