37 Art and Communication November 2006

REALITY STRIKES AGAIN
A small digression into the history of the word «cyber» in the arts

Jorge Martins Rosa
Communication Sciences Department, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Portuguese

Whenever technological arts are called «cyber», there is an undeniable influence from that subgenre of science fiction known as «cyberpunk». However, both artists and critics — knowable of art history but hardly of SF history — hold this subgenre as something autonomous (which obviously it is not), as if it appeared ex nihilo and, suspended in a limbo, bore no relations of literary «affiliation» or «affinity». It is our goal in this article to clear up that mistake, by framing cyberpunk literature in the wider context of the history of science fiction.