When the Imaginative Becomes Real! Future Anticipation as Depicted in ‎Some Cyberpunk and Thriller Novels ‎

نوع المستند : بحوث علمية محکمة

المؤلف

Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Fayoum University

المستخلص

Imagination is one of the mental faculties that distinguishes humans from other creatures. This explains why it has captured attention throughout history. Technological and scientific inventions that the world has witnessed since the late twentieth and early tewnty-first centuries are prime examples of the power of imagination as a peculiar human trait. As a term, ‘Imagination’ is a cornerstone of literary theory, as demonstrated in S.T. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria and his theory of imagination. Coleridge divides ‘Imagination’  into two forms: ‘Primary Imagination,’ shared by all people, and ‘Secondary Imagination,’ restricted to people with artistic genius. Although creative works are related to Secondary Imagination, but Coleridge asserts that both forms are integrated. Thus, this study aims to examine how imagination enabled some novelists in the past to anticipate the future, which is now the present reality.The study focuses on two mind-hunting global issues: the dominance of technology, embodied by the internet and its applications, over all aspects of life, and biological warfare (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic), which has sent millions into death.The selected novels are William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), a cyberpunk novel, and Dean Koontz’s thriller novel, The Eyes of Darkness (1981). Based on Coleridge’s theory of imagination, the study concluded that diverse genres of fiction, such as cyberpunk and thrillers, can reflect the present reality and anticipate the future. Gibson and Koontz are visionary novelists whose creative imagination generates new perceptions of future global complexities.
 

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