In William Gibson’s post-cyberpunk Interstitial trilogy – Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996) and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999) – he maps an oppressive, urban and globalisedAmerican monoculture.However, the most provocative spaces in these...
moreIn William Gibson’s post-cyberpunk Interstitial trilogy – Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996) and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999) – he maps an oppressive, urban and globalisedAmerican monoculture.However, the most provocative spaces in these novels are those liminal spaces ‘in between’ the rigid corporate, military and governmental structures. Utilising a theoretical framework derived from Fredric Jameson, David Harvey and
Vivian Sobchack, among others, this paper argues that Gibson’s novels both reflect the increasing domination of categories of space over categories of time as well as examining and to a certain extent championing the interstitial spaces—those new spaces of resistance populated by those people that cannot orwill not easily fit into the bland urbanised world surrounding them. The two interstices focused on are the bridge – an amorphic collection
of society’smost unwanted in a near-future San Francisco – and the Walled City, an eclectic digital recreation of Hong Kong’s demolished Kowloon City. Modes of resistance as well as new and changing approaches to personal and collective histories in these spaces are also examined.
