Some research questions:

- How have new digital technologies (digital photography, the internet, the database) remediated the relationship between SF and realism in contemporary literature? What about the relationship between SF and popular discourse? SF and reality?

- Did (first wave) cyberpunk prefigure this remediation? If so, what does that mean for contemporary (post-)cyberpunk authors? Look at how Gibson deals with his legacy.

- Has ‘googleability’ effaced the boundaries of the SF text? What is the relationship between the ‘aura’ Benjamin attributes to the unique artwork and Gibson’s ‘google novel aura’ of implied hyper- or inter-textuality?

- Rather than scarcity / status of the auteur, to what extent is the (post-)cyberpunk text’s ‘value’ derived from an ‘aura’ of plausibility?

- Most of these authors maintain some form of low-latency web presence (blog, twitter account, website, whatever). What is the interplay between the roles of SF author and curator?

- With a comparatively brief shelf life, is the ‘value’ of the (post-)cyberpunk text derived from its capacity to reflect/extend/interact with the social world within which it is produced? To what extent does it constitute a curation of information?

…

Further thoughts:

Thinking research methodology - perhaps an analysis of reviews and peer endorsements?

The notion of Doctorow’s fiction combining theory and practice is certainly interesting, and resonates with the Creative Media Forum of my MA convenors.

Though my theoretical concerns are more focused, the research remit is still far too broad. How to delineate the project further?