Fearful Symmetry: Technophilia and the Science Fiction Cyborg in J. G. Ballard’s and David Cronenberg’s Crash

“Cybernetic organism,” or cyborg, is one of science fiction‟s (hereafter sf) numerous oppositional terms, like “virtual reality” or “artificial intelligence.” As these phrases become less fantastic and more conversational, the tension between their oppositions frequently goes unnoticed. By contrast, the tension between sf, where the cyborg is most familiar, and reality has never been more noticeable. Sf has prophesised many technoscientific developments, including the escalator, the credit card and the video call. On the extreme end is the atomic bomb, a wild invention in H. G. Wells‟s The World Set Free (1914)1 that inspired scientific inquiry. But where does the cyborg, as trope and mega-text, iconography and perhaps social reality, fit in?