Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media

Kraus, Elisabeth and Carolin Auer, eds. Simulacrum America: The USA and the Popular Media. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. Reviewed by Matthew Wolf-Meyer, SFRA Review #254-5 (Sept-Dec. 2001): pp. 28-29, our source here.

Selected proceedings of a 1997 international conference in Graz, Austria, with the papers selected not dealing with New Wave but handling cyberpunk.

In the section of this anthology titled “Simulacra in Science Fiction: Cyberspace, Cyborgs, and Cybernetic Discourse," an essay by Louis J. Kerns, “Terminal Notions of What We May Become: Synthflesh, Cyberreality, and the Post-Human Body," Wolf-Meyer asserts, "should be read by all SF scholars, if not all scholars, as he actively explores notions of humanity and identity through a wide variety of popular texts (cinema, comic books, television) and usually updates both Haraway and Baudrillard, interrogating contemporary 'cyborg' identity through the lens of SF simulacra posited by Baudrillard" (p. 29).

(See also Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's "The SF of Theory: Baudrillard and Haraway.")

RDE, finishing, 31Aug19