In the universe of Jeff Noon's Vurt stories (Vurt, Pollen, Pixel Juice, and, debatably, Automated Alice), there are five recognized types of sentient: dogs, humans, shadows, angels, and robots (we shall ignore zombies). People who are 100% human are proud of their purity and guard it jealously. But, as Game Cat points out, people like having sex too much... and so there are endless mixings. Hybrids have formed their own sort of gothic / cyberpunk subcultures at the edge of society, where their slogan is "pure is poor" -- and indeed, they seem a hell of a lot more interesting.
Analogical applications to cyberpunk fiction, as well as to reality circa 2001 AD should be plentiful. |
