Snow Crash: Action Thriller/Social Commentary

Snow Crash depicts a society in which the government no longer plays an active role in the provision of public services such as highway maintenance and law enforcement, those roles having been taken over by corporations such as Fairlane, Inc, WorldBeat Security and MetaCops Unlimited. While traditional economic theory suggests that government intervention is necessary to ensure sufficient provision of these public goods, as private producers would not find it profitable to supply such services, corporations are shown to have successfully taken over production of these services in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and no decrease in standards of living which might be caused by private underproduction is apparent. Stephenson’s depiction of this entirely laissez-faire economy thus appears to be denouncing the need for government intervention in markets, which we might have expected given how counter-culture themes are often present in works of cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk, as the case may be).

Of course, this abolishment of “big government” does not come without its costs, for the corporatization of America’s public space has caused both social and cultural fragmentation. Los Angeles has been divided into residential districts affiliated with different “franchise nations”, each with their own culture: the “technomedia priesthood” that is Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong is always welcoming to immigrants, while America’s middle class has retreated to “identical, computer-designed” Burbclaves, which only serve as a “culture medium for a medium culture”. This fragmentation is also present on the Raft, where people of different ethnicities occupy different ships, but whereas the franchise nations exist in an uneasy peace at worst, resorting only to stickers, guard robots and law enforcement officers to keep non-residents out, neighborhoods on the Raft are openly afraid that neighboring ships will “gang up on them and cut them loose”, showing how social tensions might arise from fragmented cultures being in close proximity with one another. Snow Crash thus suggests that while doing away with government intervention may be beneficial (or at least not detrimental) on the economic front, the resulting cultural fragmentation and loss of centralized law enforcement can cause social problems in their own way.

Another interesting point to consider is how Snow Crash and Neuromancer imagine cyberspace differently. In Neuromancer, only corporations and “console cowboys” can maintain presences in and manipulate cyberspace, implying that cyberspace belongs only to the economic and intellectual elite. While this same problem is also present to some extent in Snow Crash’s Metaverse, as only around 1% of the planet’s population has access to it, it is also much more inclusive than Neuromancer’s cyberspace, as untrained programmers such as businessmen, ordinary citizens and Kouriers can access the Metaverse just as easily as hackers can. Thus where Neuromancer imagines a future in which unrestrained capitalism and the rise of global megacorporations can exacerbate existing social inequalities by creating technological ones alongside them, Snow Crash suggests how free markets and technology can do the opposite, and insofar as the accessibility of our own Internet appears to more closely resemble Snow Crash’s Metaverse than Neuromancer’s cyberspace, I’d like to think that technological advancements can indeed be a force for social equality.

Self, gender, and society: LeGuin through the lens of cultural psychology

Though I very much respect and admire Ursula LeGuin's discussions of gender and the other in The Left Hand of Darkness, I couldn't help but view her notions of interdependency on a cultural spectrum. In fact, my thesis research is heavily rooted in the psychological theory that two major pathways of cultural development exist: individualism and collectivism. The former is exemplified by independence and the assertion of self, while the latter emphasizes interdependence and connectivity. This is reflected by LeGuin's comparison of society on Winter with society in China, as it is generally accepted that Oriental cultures tend to exhibit a preference for collectivism.

Our understanding of a work of human intellect (e.g. literature) is integrally tied to our understanding of the human psyche. Sigmund Freud opened up many discussions of the subconscious, driving the appearance of the id/ego/superego terminology in literary critique. Already in this course, we've experienced two works (written about 70 years apart) that explicitly mention psychologists: Well's Time Machine and LhoD (a psychologist is present during the storytelling in the former, while Genly mentions how mindspeak has refined psychology as a practice in the latter). This emphasizes the importance of the discipline to the genre of science fiction, which cannot be understated; as LeGuin might put it, the goal of such “thought-experiments” is more “descriptive” of the current human condition than “predictive” of how it will be in the future. How, then, can we understand LeGuin's notions of gender and society in light of recent developments in cultural psychology?

LeGuin draws some clear divisions in LhoD, a necessity in any discussion of dualism. The line between male and female is explicitly acted out and also explicitly mused upon. The human narrators in the story are quite preoccupied with characterizing a particular Gethenian's action by gender; one moment Estraven displays masculine resolve, while the next, his mannerisms appear motherly. In addition, certain qualities are associated with traditional notions of gender. Marcellino invokes Russ' idea that the countries in LhoD represent gendered forms of government: Karhide as the communal and female, while Orgoreyn represents the oppressive and masculine. Both, however, operate on somewhat Marxist principles, reflecting the collectivism inherent in interdependency. Are we, then, to interpret the female as collectivistic, or the ambisexual (with all its Taoist, yin-yang undertones) as collectivistic?

At the time that LhoD was written, LeGuin was likely unversed in the collectivistic versus individualistic dichotomy. Her gender associations are certainly supported by empirical research: studies have shown that male children tend to be competition or game-oriented during socialization, while female children are more relationally competitive. This seems to reflect the different styles (genders) of government proposed by Russ, but LeGuin complicates it with notions of ambisexuality. For example, the lack of persistent sexual energy in everyday life is thought to push society towards personal vendetta and intrigue instead of war and domination. One might view this as a result of feminine government, but LeGuin seems to suggest that Winter is simply more feminine (without being exclusively so) than our traditional notions of dominion. In addition, collectivism does not necessarily remove the desire for war, nor does it associate with a particular gender (in fact, one might conceptualize both individualism and collectivism as the products of largely patriarchal societies).

The underlying, anthropological foundations of the individualistic versus collectivistic dichotomy looks at the relationship between the self and society. In the Left Hand of Darkenss, Ursula LeGuin attempts to break down this relationship by exploring many dichotomies, including the pervasive and complicated dualism of gender. Though I cannot deny its identity or importance as a work of feminist science fiction, I am impressed and intrigued by how LeGuin's discussions of gender forces one to look at the self and soceity as well.