Electronic Eros

A study of the "love affair" between humans and machines, which has now expanded into cyberspace, where computer technology seems to promise heightened erotic fulfilment and the threat of human obsolescence. The author explores the techno-erotic imagery in films, cyberpunk fiction, comic books, television, software, and writing on virtual reality and artificial intelligence, showing how these futuristic images actually erode current debates concerning gender roles and sexuality. Drawing on psychoanalytical and film theory, as well as the history of technology, the author offers an analysis of eroticism and gender in such films as "RoboCop", "The Terminator", "Eve of Destruction" and "Lawnmower Man", and cyberpunk books such as "Neuromancer", "Count Zero", "Virtual Light", "A Fire in the Sun", and "Lady El". She also looks at comic books like "Cyberpunk" and "Interface", and at the television series "Mann and Machine", demonstrating that while new technologies have inspired change in some pop culture texts, others stubbornly recycle conventions from the past, refusing to come to terms with the new social order.