SOURCE: “The Metaphors of Cyberpunk: Ontology, Epistemology, and Science Fiction,” in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, edited by George Slusser and Tom Shippey, The University of Georgia Press, 1992, pp. 230-45.

In the following essay, Curl explains the historical metaphors of science that led to the development of science fiction and cyberpunk.

Science is not generally considered metaphoric. Rather, metaphor has been more or less consigned to the nonscientific realm, and more particularly to the literary sphere. A dichotomy has been established in which an either-or-proposition is expressed: if it is scientific it is not metaphor, and vice versa. However, there are those who, looking at metaphor from a general perspective, consider it the fundamental property of all human thought; and others who, focusing more specifically on science, believe metaphor to be as much a part of the scientific realm as the literary.

John Middleton Murry sees...