Postmodern Singapore, ed. William S W Lim
"Interestingly, and perhaps paradoxically, Singapore, more than any other city in Asia, has been featured quite often in contemporary science fiction writings, particularly in the near future scenarios of the cyberpunk genre. As defined in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, these writings are normally set in the context of industrial or political blocs which are global rather than national, and are intricately linked or controlled through information networks. Centarl to cyberpunk fiction is the concept of Virtual Reality, as seen in William (61) Gibson’s Neuromancer, where the world’s data networks form a kind of machine environment by jacking into a cyberspace deck and projecting “his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the Matrix”. The image of Singapore as a controlled and orderly high-tech environment has continually appeared in many of these writings. Singapore is often portrayed both positively as the quintessential data haven, as well as mockingly as the perfect of typical societal manifestation of the technology or machine controlled dehumanized future. For example, in his latest book, All Tomorrow’s Parties, William Gibson has described the Lucky Dragon Convenience Store, whose parent corporation in Singapore introduced “curb checks” to demonstrate its concern for neighbourhood safety. … (62) Singapore is also featured quite strongly in the science fiction of Bruce Sterling. For example, in Islands in the Net, the city is seen as part of the increasingly growing complexity of political powers propagated through an extensive electronic communication network, all set in the near future. Likewise, in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, the city is linked in cyberspace, an indisputable data haven. In all these cases, there is the familiar vision of the island state as a Virtual City, as articulately characterized by architectural critic Deyan Sudjic in an issue of Blueprint magazine. (63)
Rem Koolhaas, in S, M, L, XL, described Singapore thus:
“Almost all of Singapore is less than 30 years old; the city represents the ideological production of the past three decades in its pure form, uncontaminated by surviving contextual remnants. It is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and randomness: even its nature is entirely remade. It is pure intention: if there is chaos, it is authored chaos; if it is ugly, it is designed ugliness; if it is absurd, it is willed absurdity. Singapore represents a unique ecology of the contemporary.” (63)
disagree with Koolhaas's first statement... but anyhows this is going to be really fun. urbanism, femininity, postmodern Singapore!
