Let’s Get Real: Shifting Perspectives of Virtual Life

A hallmark of the cyberpunk era, virtual reality is now a real and readily available
medium for technological entertainment and lifestyle. Cyberpunk texts and contemporary
SF that incorporates virtual reality provide a framework for considering the implications
of this newly popularized technology. By allowing the user to explore new forms of
identity in an alternate reality, virtual reality poses many interesting opportunities for
undermining current social constructs related to gender, race, and identity. This thesis
investigates real and fictional examples of virtual reality and the significance of
authorship and narrative construction, race and social hierarchies, death and selfpermanence,
and gender performance across the boundary between virtual and material
space.