“Everyone’s a Composite”: Rethinking Three of Cyberpunk’s Overlooked Women Writers as New Materialists

This chapter considers how cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction, emerged in the 1980s, in response to the growing influence and development of digital technology. This subgenre sought to contemplate the fears and possibilities that accompanied all that such technology promised—such as a bodiless environment. However, as the author argues, the bodymind is decisively not left behind in simulated worlds; it is a fact that is apparent in the earliest writing associated with the genre and the most contemporary. As an avenue to discuss the more contemporary literature that is the primary focus of the book, this chapter focuses on three women writers who got their start in the late twentieth century but have received significantly less attention than their male contemporaries: Pat Cadigan, Melissa Scott, and Lisa Mason. Through a selection of their work, this chapter aims to highlight their important contributions to the field of cyberpunk and their hitherto undiscussed relevance to disability studies and posthumanist-new materialist thought.