Motifs of religious experience in William Gibson’s cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy

Abstract

The science fiction genre is one of the most popular and most diverse genres in literature. Even though it is a literary genre praising the expression of human ingenuity in science and technology and its consequences, the roots of the genre were born long before the formation of modern society. Towards the second half of the 20th century, the genre has produced an offshoot in the form of cyberpunk, or in other words, high-tech low life subtype of science fiction.Despite the fact that both the main genre and its subgenre are underlaid by the immense influence of modern technology and science, it it might be argued, as the present paper sets out to do, that one of the most iconic literary production of the genre, the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson, consisting of Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive , contain a richness of references from far outside of the traditional scope of sources usually tapped into by writers of that particular current. The thesis examines the religious topics and tropes present in the trilogy of books by William Gibson called Sprawl . I touch on topics such as sacred space vs. profane space, gnosticism, shamanism, voodoo, and set out to show how they are intertwined with strictly cyberpunk concepts such as cyberspace, Artificial Intelligence, computer networks, hackers. My analyses are inspired and supported by the general thesis of the book by Eric Davis titled Techgnosis . I also make references throughout the paper to some of the seminal works by Romanian philosopher and historian of religion Mircea Eliade.