Cyberpunk and Frye's Theory of Literature
Stage 1:Myth
Tragic myths, according to Frye, are "Dionysiac...stories of dying gods" (36). Stories of the Norse Gotterdammerung, or of the death of Greek figures such as Orpheus or Hercules, are examples of such literature. The divine hero, according to Frye, is "superior in kind both to other men and the environment of other men" (33). Such a "hero" is more than a man; he is an actual god or a demi-god, as in the case of Hercules. These characters possess powers and abilities far beyond the range of normal men. Christ's healing powers and resurrection; Hercules' strength; Zeus' thunder bolts; Ares' wrath and power: these demonstrate a superiority to the normal world and to normal men. It is no wonder that these stories would be the stuff of myth and religion.
But is cyberpunk to be considered purely mythical? Certainly, there are those who call themselves gods and "Cyberchrists". There are even those who possess the strength of Hercules, as in the massive cyborg who can even rip doors off hinges or "toss a car out of the way" (Moss 82). What differentiates cyberpunks from Frye's definition of "divine" is the fact that for all of their claimed godhood and power, the cyberpunk character is still human in some form, at some point in the story. Gibson's Molly, with her razor-fingernails and artificially quickened nerves, suffers broken bones and partial blindness at the end of Neuromancer. Case, in the same novel, may be zooming around cyberspace like a god through the heavens, but when all is said and done he must still buy himself a new pancreas and liver (270), unable to escape his humanity.
In the few cases where an AI acts as an impersonal, godlike being (some examples earlier in this essay come to mind), the AI is not acting as a major character. In these cases, I feel that the impersonality of the AI is merely the result of a character not being "fleshed-out" enough. Often, even these artificial intelligences are trying to act like a human, as in the case of Neuromancer presenting himself to Case as a boy, wearing "ragged, colorless shorts, limbs too thin" (Gibson Neuromancer 243). As we are concerned chiefly with the main characters, who are thoroughly developed, we can safely eliminate the term "divine" as applied to cyberpunk characters. For all their power, they are, after all, "resolutely human" (Sponsler 637).