47 pages • 1-hour read
Burning Chrome
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Themes
Using Technology to Control Actions and Emotions
Gibson’s style, unlike that of some science fiction, depicts technology not as a miraculous wonder, but rather as an ever-present aspect of everyday life—for better or worse. Several characters throughout the collection exhibit a fascination with technology, like Parker, who is attached to his ASP machine, and Deke, who is obsessed with the Fokkers and Spads game. Other characters have extraordinary talents with technology, like the brilliant coder Nance or the deft hackers Automatic Jack and Bobby Quine.
Nevertheless, there is a running thread throughout Burning Chrome that positions technology as a means of controlling individuals and societies. In some cases, technology is utilized to compel someone to do something. In “Johnny Mnemonic” there are multiple examples of this. Johnny’s body and mind are used to deliver data, for example, and his self-control is relinquished in the process. Likewise, the cyborg-dolphin Squid is used by the navy for data encoding and decoding, controlled by a combination of sophisticated technology and heroin. “Burning Chrome” shows a similarly sinister example when it reveals that Rikki and other women are used as prostitutes controlled by “neuroelectronics” to enable customers “to have it both ways” (203): sex with someone without having to communicate, because the neuroelectronics put the women into a coma-like state.
In more specific cases, technology is used to control or impact the emotions that characters can sense. One dramatic example of this is the cybernetic thought controls called brainlocks mentioned in “Dogfight.” Deke’s brainlock causes him to react violently to the thought of Washington, DC, and was put in place as a punishment for his criminal activity in that location. Nance’s brainlock was installed by her parents to force her to remain chaste in an attempt to improve her career prospects as a programmer. Ironically, these high-tech controls over Deke’s and Nance’s emotions are the impetus that drives them to empathize with each other as they bond over the shared experience of living with a brainlock.
Other stories from Burning Chrome exhibit characters’ talents for leveraging technology to control people and situations themselves. The most notable examples of these are highly skilled hackers. Johnny from “Johnny Mnemonic,” for instance, is eventually able to turn the tables and leverage the technology that uses his mind for data trafficking to instead blackmail his clients, an enterprise he smugly says is “really ok.” Likewise, Bobby and Jack from “Burning Chrome” use their sophisticated talents to hack into the bank accounts of the mysterious, formidable Chrome. These contrasting examples that show characters can both be controlled by technology and use it to control others emphasize Gibson’s ambiguous characterization of technology throughout Burning Chrome.
Cyberpunk and Countercultures
Part of the cyberpunk aesthetic is an exploration of cultures and behaviors outside norms and at the fringes of society. The proto-cyberpunk stories contained in Burning Chrome exemplify this trend. The Lo Teks in “Johnny Mnemonic” are an exemplary case of a counterculture: They reject the high-tech, heavily corporatized mainstream world of the Sprawl, choosing instead a lifestyle that is “[l]ow technique, low technology” (15).
Ultra-capitalist, corporatized economic, social, and political powers are a recurrent theme in Burning Chrome, and criminal organizations and individuals are a corollary throughout the collection. These can take obvious forms, like the Yakuza in “Johnny Mnemonic,” but at times the criminal elements are more ambiguous. In “New Rose Hotel,” for instance, corporations kidnap intellectual talent in the name of business; the “zaibatsus” are figured as an all-absorbing “life form.”
In many cases, behavior that might be presented as criminal from certain perspectives is instead cast in a more ambiguous light. For example, the resistance group that Korolev leads in “Red Star, Winter Orbit” is technically a rebellion, yet it is one that he leads with an overt “moral authority.” Likewise, in “Johnny Mnemonic,” Johnny and Molly’s ultimate plan to profit by blackmailing past clients does not seem completely unjustified in the light of the assassination attempts on their lives. Even more notably, Jack and Bobby from “Burning Chrome” are hackers, but they aren’t merely self-serving when they clean out Chrome’s bank accounts. Instead, they are motivated in part to financially support their friend Rikki. Moreover, in a Robin Hood fashion, they give away the majority of the wealthy Chrome’s money to charity organizations, albeit in part “to break her, burn her straight down” so that she didn’t pursue them (200). These ambiguous situations position cyberpunk counterculture characters as complex and fully formed and show that their actions and motivations can’t be reduced to simplistic terms.
The cyberpunk elements of Gibson’s fiction mark it as a break from stereotypical works of science fiction like those described in “The Gernsback Continuum.” While stereotypical works feature morally clear authorities exercising power from the top down, cyberpunk protagonists are more complicated and flawed. Characters like Automatic Jack, Molly Millions, and Nance explore the ways in which resistance to accepted systems and powers can emerge from below. Ranging from genius hackers and programmers to criminals and social outcasts, they are counterculture figures coming from outside mainstream society.
Isolation and the Psychology of the Individual
The social and economic worlds of the stories collected in Burning Chrome are typically harsh, threatening, and challenging to navigate. In every story from the collection, characters face isolation or the threat of being forced to make their way in a harsh world alone. Numerous characters—such as Jack and Bobby in “Burning Chrome” or the narrator of “New Rose Hotel”—experience the pain of being separated from or losing others, or the challenges of not fitting into mainstream society. Burning Chrome consistently explores the impact of these pressures on the psychology of its characters.
Corretti, from “The Belonging Kind,” is a paradigm of the isolated individual, finding it difficult to relate to others and envious of those who conform to society. Ironically, his encounter with Antoinette only deepens his separation from others, leading him to lose his job and become an alcoholic. Even when he reconnects with Antoinette in a bizarre “mating” ritual, he ends up alone. Lise from “The Winter Market” presents a twist on this situation. Though she becomes a star of virtual reality productions, she herself remains mysterious and remote from other people. This separation is symbolized in her exoskeleton, which “she refused to remove […] because she’d start to choke and die at the thought of that utter helplessness” (139), emphasizing the metaphorical wall she has put between herself and others.
Two stories, “Hinterlands” and “Red Star, Winter Orbit,” utilize the vast, mysterious emptiness of outer space as a metaphorical backdrop for characters who confront isolation. In “Hinterlands,” Halpert and the other crewmembers of a remote space station grapple with attempts to reach an alien civilization that may or may not be benevolent. In “Red Star, Winter Orbit,” Korolev experiences isolation first as an aging member of a soon-to-be-decommissioned space station and subsequently as the lone survivor of a rebellion. In both cases, characters respond to stressful situations in remote, dangerous outer space with a psychological reaction called “the Fear.” In a reversal of the stereotypical sci-fi story of contact with an alien civilization, Halpert from “Hinterlands” curses the expeditions attempting to reach the Highway: “damn all the ones who bring things home, who bring cancer cures, seashells, things without names—who keep us here waiting, who fill Wards, who bring us the Fear” (82). In this case, isolation and ignorance of the unknown even seem preferable.
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