SOURCE: Moylan, Tom. “Global Economy, Local Texts: Utopian/Dystopian Tension in William Gibson's Cyberpunk Trilogy.” Minnesota Review 43, nos. 43-44 (fall 1995): 182-97.

In the following essay, Moylan places Gibson's cyberpunk trilogy in the context of developments in the global economy during the 1980s and elucidates the relationship between utopian and dystopian elements in his fiction.

I

In 1990, in his speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, George Bush invoked the utopian figure of the millennium as he called for a new world order, an order of peace and prosperity that would remove the darkness of the Cold War.¹ In 1980, Ronald Reagan invoked another utopian figure: the “city on the hill” that recalled the dream of a New World that would inspire everyone with its harmony and enterprise. However, in the years between Reagan's imagery rooted in the local history of the Americas and Bush's image that envelopes...