The Loneliness of Cyborgs

Lloyd, Michele, author, ed., publisher. "The Loneliness of Cyborgs," Parts 1 and 2. In The Decline of Civilization: News for the Paranoid, issues 17 and 18 (Nov., Dec. 1995). A desk-top published newsletter available from ML at 128 Twin Lakes Drive / Fairfield, OH 45014 (MELloyd@aol.com).

Part 1 briefly covers THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE BIONIC WOMAN, THE TERMINATOR, ROBOCOP and the "I, Borg" episode of The Trek: The Next Generation (all cited under Drama). Part 2 briefly handles CYBORG and NEMESIS (q.v. under Drama), AMERICAN CYBORG: STEEL WARRIOR, DIGITAL MAN, JUDGE DREDD, PROTOTYPE X29A—and covers in more detail ROBOCOP (1987) and ROBOCOP 2 (q.v.). Especially in Part 2, ML elegantly relates cyborgs to motifs of nature vs. technology, and the questions of human identity and free will; she situates cyborg films (and such SF novels as J. Brunner's The Jagged Orbit][1]]) in the world of high-tech late capitalism and the world of «technocracy» in the sense of rule by those who have mastered techniques, including psychological techniques (see in this section, J. Ellul's The Technological Society). And in a world in which the assembly-line factory can be taken as a metaphor for a clockwork life (see MODERN TIMES, cited under Drama).