Spiritual & Esoteric Book Reviews

Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture

Bucking the received wisdom of the wired elite, the authors collected in Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture suggest that when we log on, we take our genders with us. Editors Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth balance penetrating critical theory with examples of fiction from authors like Octavia Butler, Amy Thomson, and C.L. Moore. The mix can be thought-provoking, but requires some quick shifting of mental gears to follow the arguments from essay to fiction and back again.

Exposing some cherished cybermyths as groundless or at least unproven (e.g., identity is less ephemeral than the utopians would have us believe), the anthology also makes a compelling argument simply by its uniqueness: if gender doesn't matter, then why do these writings feel so different from men's writing on cyberculture? Those readers impatient with academic jargon will find some of the theory tiresome, but much is refreshingly clear. - Rob Lightner