SOURCE: “Cyberpunk and the Crisis of Postmodernity,” in Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative, edited by George Slusser and Tom Shippey, The University of Georgia Press, 1992, pp. 142-52.

In the following essay, Olsen examines the increasing conservatism and mainstream acceptance of cyberpunk and postmodernism.

The 1980s may have marked the beginning of the end of postmodernism—that mode of radical skepticism that challenges all we once took for granted about language and experience—as the dominant, or at least quasi-dominant, form of consciousness in American culture. This demise may be partially the result of our country's drift toward political conservatism in the Age of Reagan. The Equal Rights Amendment has scant chance of passing, anti-abortionists and fundamentalists gain power daily, and George Bush proudly follows in the footsteps of one of the most popular presidents in the history of the United States. About sixty miles south of...