Scott Bukatman's whirlwind study investigates an Information Age that's all too willing to play tiddlywinks with personal identities as they drift in and out of digital realities.
Taking his cue from Ballard's dictum that "Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies," Bukatman contends that we have all become (or are on the verge of becoming) virtual subjects who are losing power over the form of our bodies and that, as a consequence, we are losing sight of the moral certainties that once guided us.
The book ends with a reflection on a world comprised of "genetically engineered wetware wonders, electrically addicted buttonheads, fragmented posthuman enclaves and terminal cyborgs."
Termination, anyone? - Mark Amerika
Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject In Postmodern Science Fiction, by Scott Bukatman, US$18.95, Duke University Press: +1 (919) 687 3600.
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