This blogpost post is about the character of Automatic Jack, the narrator in William Gibson’s Burning Chrome. The Burning Chrome master blogpost is here.

Automatic Jack

The narrator is called Automatic Jack. The name “Jack” is a typical William Gibson cyberpunk main character: it signals that the narrator is your average everyday white guy. He’s the type of guy Tom Hanks would play. The 90s never had a great cyberpunk movie, but if there had been one Tom Hanks would have played the main character.

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The “Automatic” part of his name is also pure cyberpunk. It recalls the gunslinger archetype – the whole “console cowboy” – so instrumental in cyberpunk with its deregulated and lawless economy. “Automatic” also hints at Jack’s Duralumin arm.

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But the thing that really stands out to me – in a negative way – is how Jack reacts to the whole love triangle part of the story. He takes an interest in Bobby’s girlfriend, disapproves of Bobby’s casual attitude to her, sleeps with her – then seems to have no emotional reaction to her continuing to hang around Bobby. This seems unnatural to me.

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Call me a jealous guy I guess, but Jack should have a more emotional response to the sexual competition between him and Bobby. But the text shows nothing. There’s no feeling at all. It’s almost as if Jack is just the narrator and not a real flesh and blood person. If you’re going to write it like that, why write it in the first person? Just do the omniscient third person “view from God.”

Maybe The Duralumin Arm Explains It

Maybe Jack’s lifeless personality is intentional. I think not, but the possibility is worth exploring.

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One way Jack’s lifeless personality makes sense is if the effect of his cybernetic arm – the Duralumin – has made him lifeless. The text explains that he got injured in some war and now has this cybernetic arm that he uses during the Matrix run to burn Chrome. It’s not that interesting of a backstory actually. Johnny Mnemonic’s silicon brain and Asian eyes are much more interesting.

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In fact, Jack doesn’t really need the cybernetic arm at all. Unlike Jonny Mnemonic, he can perform his duties with a normal human hand. So maybe the reason Gibson throws a cybernetic arm on him is to show how technology desexualizes and neuters a person. Jack has porn dick basically.

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But that interpretation is doubtful. It probably only occurs to me from the other side of 30 years of internet pornography. I doubt that’s what Gibson was talking about. Instead, Burning Chrome, like all of Gibson’s cyberpunk stories, simply lack sex. Either due to 1980s censorship or for whatever reason that a writer who is known for me tactile and detailed decided didn’t include any actual human sex in his most famous works.

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I wrote a cyberpunk story that revolves around a last-ditch tryst between two lost souls in a forgotten rust belt town. It’s called THE LAST BLONDE. You can find it at www.blackflagliterature.com