When identity cannot be ascertained against the standard measures and “guarantees” such as personality or gender, substitute means must be employed to create a new way of perceiving and processing identity. Without such tactics, life would descend into chaos as defining identity—both our own and that of those around us—is something essential to humankind. Science fiction creates landscapes and societies where the common and subconsciously automatic task of assigning identity is made complex because of a lack of or a twisting of traditional identity markers such as apparent motivations, personality types, and genders.

In these texts, as in modern life, symbols stand as markers for identity and without these important tools we experience alienation and isolation. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, two highly differentiated settings and situations confront these issues and grant readers the special opportunity to step outside of the boundaries of traditional means of identity association by offering an alternate landscape and set of cultural associations. By doing so, both authors present the postmodern struggle for identity in an increasingly complex, diverse, and partitioned by positioning their narratives apart from our comfort zone, thus causing us to reflect on what creates or destroys the self.

In Gibson’s Neuromancer, identity and alienation are intertwined and in some ways, also interdependent. The Sprawl and the almost post-apocalyptic setting of this science fiction novel influence and create identity as each character is usually defined in terms of what he or she does for a living or by what possessions they own, wear, or otherwise exhibit. This same system of identification inevitably creates a sense of alienation since many characters are driven by selfish and often covert motivations so that although there is always a sense of making one’s identity known through products or modifications, the true identity remains concealed or even lost in the sea of constant input that pervades all of the settings.

One scholar points out how, in terms of this novel, “technology and global capitalism influence our ontology by generating a world of images that have no original referent; meaning is cut loose from our surroundings, so that the self and the world we knew are in question” (Fair 92). In other words, throughout the science fiction work by William Gibson, Neuromancer,  the reader is presented with many character identities as a series of images that cannot always be separated from the products, bodily modifications, or influences of technology. The end result of this character presentation is that identity is simply a matter of the outside showing of personality or function in life. In this novel, despite the apparent ugliness of the settings, it is still called “an age of affordable beauty” (Gibson 4). This reflects the sense that there can be no understanding of true identity because of all of the images that mislead others.

 Gibson seems to want to make this tension between appearances and reality (thus true versus constructed identity) clear in his common descriptions of not only his central characters, but those who occupy the background as well. For instance, as the reader is becoming familiar with the setting the narrator relates the urban image of “Groups of sailors up from the port, tense solitary tourists hunting pleasures no guidebook listed, Sprawl heavies showing off grafts and implants, and a dozen species of hustler, all swarming the street in an intricate dance of desire and commerce” (Gibson 18). In this world it is clear that identity is a projection or something hollow that masks true intent and motivation. Even though he is careful to present these images as a group, the separate groups are described differently and one sees how isolating this is. Every character in this world seems to go to great lengths to project an identity and although this should make the reader (or the real inhabitant of such a place, imaginatively speaking) comfortable, it is alienating. For the main character, Case, his search for identity after he loses that of his main one—one of the best console cowboys—involves a complex rationalizing of how he should present himself.

It is as if to not feel isolated in this world it is necessary to go to great lengths projecting an image in much the same way Riviera can. Case wishes to shed the outside, the surface appearances but like Ai in Le Guin’s “Left Hand of Darkness“, he cannot comprehend or navigate through a world that is not utterly reliant on these surface reflections (thus validations) of identity. For instance, the pinnacle of his fall from comfort and understanding comes when he loses the image of being the best in his field and thus no longer attains the markers important for reflecting who he is. At one point the narrator explains, “In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh” (Gibson 21). Although this “falling into a prison of his own flesh” causes him problems, it can also be understood as literally getting comfortable in his own skin—finding his true self in a world of illusion, modification, and sensory input. It is an alienating experience for him but that is only because the world of Neuromancer is constructed so that a lack of outer manifestations of identity is seen to be isolating and perhaps even devastating.

One scholar suggests that, “to appreciate the experience of a reader of this text [Left Hand of Darkness], it is necessary to begin with the male narrator, Genly: he himself is a reader—a reader of cultures and of people, and he is also the central narrator—his readings are essential to our own” (Cornell 317). Part of the magic of science fiction is that the reader is able to place himself outside of the everyday world of common perceptions and encounter new places that deal with themes that remain pertinent to the “real world” he inhabits. If part of the issue with understandings of identity in these works is getting to understand the context, the narrator is obviously of the utmost importance. It is, therefore, only fitting that the narrator inNeuromancer is someone who sees everything.

Like the digital productions of humanity seen in the text, this narrator is able to shift personas and offer differing perspectives based on the data available. Furthermore, this narrator does not need to get caught up in direct confrontations of what identity means since he can merely lay it forth for the reader to decipher. Identity is thus, in Gibson’s novel, subject to our own perceptions of what identity should be and thus we find we are much like Ai since we are constantly trying to force our context and identity associations into the identities of the characters. For instance, the reader struggles along with Ai at the difficulty of assigning meaning of identity in a world that does not recognize identity in the same ways. He admits to reader his difficulty, stating, “Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters” (Le Guin 48). Because Ai’s entire notion of identity (and even historical, economic, and political meaning) is based on his own culture’s understandings. This inability to deal with the problem makes him alienated just as Case’s slippery sense of self in a world full of images makes him feel so as well.

Through the comparison of the two works of science fiction discussed here it is easy to understand the way identity is something created, that it is a construct and completely dependent on cultural perceptions. Although the process of trying to immediately an identity of one’s self and others is natural, certain conditions make this task nearly impossible. While in Neuromancer identity is reflected through outward manifestations of self, the exact opposite is true in Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”. In this case, the outward identity is something that is meaningless and constantly shifting. As a result, the concept of identity is something that is focused inward. This can be proven by the utter lack of spiritual philosophy discussed by characters in Neuromancer versus the plethora of it discussed by characters in Le Guin’s novel. Clearly, identity is something that is internalized and while not necessarily private, it matters more than any outward symbols could. This whole concept stresses our main character, Genly Ai as he attempts to pin down the essence of identity as it exists on the wintry planet. The idea in science fiction of male and femaleas distinct identities “stands in conflict with the world presented in this novel, where female nature as well as male nature are both part of every person, and where specific sexual identities operate only inside certain contexts” (Rudy 22).

Through this understanding, we see that perhaps true identity does exist in both novels, if only we can understand the context in which those identities are created. With this in mind, it would be natural than in a context that emphasizes the physical in Gibson’s novel, the context of identity construction could be found in images just as words and associations construct the context for Le Guin’s novel. In the world of The Left Hand of Darkness contradictions remain the greatest hindrance to identity. Those on the planet are never what they seem to those who have not been culturally indoctrinated. Like Ai, the reader is assaulted by blatant contradictions such as a “pregnant king” and sayings such as is put in one of the important quotes from “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin, “perpetually starving but also indefinitely stuffing” (Le Guin 11) or “to oppose something is to maintain it… to be an atheist is to maintain God” (Le Guin 153). The issue of gender is one of the greatest contradictions and language (instead of images as in Gibson’s work) is a symptom of the barrier of identity problems. As Ai states of the problem of turning identity into language, “You cannot think of a Gethenian as ‘it.’ They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish ‘human pronoun’ used for persons in somer, I must say ‘he’ for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god” (Le Guin 94). Once he is finally able to feel comfortable with the language markers of identity, he is able to progress just as Case is able to move on when he makes peace within the union of two machines.