A Study Of “Lines Of Flight” In William Gibson’s Cyberpunk Novels

William Gibson(1948-),the famous American science fiction writer,with his famous Neuromancer,has set off a wave of “cyberpunk” in science fiction literature.Driven by this trend,cyberpunk has rapidly spread from literature to many fields such as film,video,games,art,and culture.It has become a widely popular subculture in the world today.In his cyberpunk novels,William Gibson constructed a “high-tech,low-life” cyberpunk world with highly developed science and technology such as IT and genetic engineering.However,these technologies did not lead humanity towards freedom and liberation,but instead were used by the capital elite as a tool to control the bottom class of people.The whole world was in control of these elites.With the help of Gilles Deleuze’s(1925-1995)“lines of flight” theory,this thesis analyzes various dimensions of “lines of flight” in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels.The aim of the thesis is to further explore the escape routes of the society of control and give consideration to the plight of human survival in the society of control.The thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly analyzes the reasons for the formation of “lines of flight” in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels.The cyberpunk world constructed by the author is the product of the extreme development of the society of control.With the endless control,the underlying population is under all-round control,and the entire society has formed an invisible “prison”,while the human beings in it are gradually decomposed from a complete subject into digital and mobile subject.However,in the postmodern society,with the increasing diversification of power,the grand narrative of the past has been deconstructed,and the form of resistance has gradually shifted from macro politics to micro and differentiation,entering daily life.During his adolescence,William Gibson was influenced by the anti-mainstream and anti-authority “Beat Generation” literature and hippie culture,as well as by his reading of a large number of subversive and deconstructive science fiction works,which had a significant impact on the outline of “lines of flight” in the novel.The second chapter mainly discusses the multi-dimensional of the “lines of flight” in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels.In the spatial dimension,space and power are closely related.The author escaped from the society of control through geographical space from the center to the edge and cyberspace from reality to virtual reality.In the physical dimension,the control of the Cyberpunk era has penetrated into the human body.The escapee in the novel draws “lines of flight” of the body dimension,and escapes through transforming his body into a mechanical and digital form of cyborgs to achieve out of being controlled.In the ideological dimension,thought,the last piece of pure land of humanity,is also difficult to escape the fate of being controlled in the cyberpunk world.The writer reveals “lines of flight” of the ideological dimension through the deconstruction of consumption ideology from the characters in the novel and the self-awakening of artificial intelligence.Chapter Three explores the significance and value of “lines of flight” in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels.By presenting multidimensional “lines of flight”,the author emphasizes the search for self-worth and the pursuit of freedom and liberation,which demonstrates the humanistic spirit of anti-alienation.The cyberspace entered through escape in the novel is a new type of E-topia,which broadens the dimension of utopian literature.The “Cyborg” hero portrayed in the novel is also a new development of the heroic image,and has certain significance in literary history.Through the exploration of “lines of flight”,the writer not only actively seeks ways to escape from the society of control,but also ring the alarm bell for the end of humanity,caring for the fate of humanity in the possible world.This article takes the classic cyberpunk novel by William Gibson as the research object.The present author traces back to the context of the birth of cyberpunk novels to interpret the text by studying “lines of flight” of the characters in the novel.The thesis deeply cares about the survival plight of people in the society of control,and provides reference and reflection for humans to walk out of the society of control.