Although there were early writers of “cyberpunk,” the term gained wide literary currency since the publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer in 1984. Linking “cybernetics” with “punk,” cyberpunk concerns with freaky and wanton escapades that take place in the non-geographical virtual space simulated and manipulated by use of computer and the Internet. It has its shades of influence on even popular films ranging from Blade Runner, the Terminator series to The Matrix Trilogy, and is now become a significant (postmodern science fiction) genre to reckon with. Innocuously introducing a hacker counterculture where silicon chips substitute drugs like LSD in causing the ‘consensual hallucination,’ and by making black market bio-tech firms open, where AI and clone-governed-corporations punctuate the real, the cyberpunk writers raise issues related to the blurring of art and literature with technology; the interface between man and machine; ecological disasters vis-à-vis virtual Edenic dreams; (postmodern) ethics and (post) human values. This special number of Creative Forum on “Cyberpunk Literature” aims at examining the orbit of cyberpunk, from its origin as well as point of departure from Science Fiction to its trajectory through the postmodern, hyperreal, cyberspace, and its apparently dystopian destination that deglamorises its scintillating movement.

Critical interpretations of cyberpunk by authors as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, K. W. Jeter, and Rudy Rucker, and application of postmodern theories (Jean Baudrillard, Donna Haraway, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, et al.) to study the hyperreal, cybernetic condition, and identification of possible links with anticipatory cyberpunk works as Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow are encouraged.

Possible topics of consideration may include, but are not restricted to:

Articles pertaining to the topics mentioned above, or an equally relevant area, not exceeding 7500 words in length prepared in accordance with the MLA style may be emailed or sent to the editors/guest editor at their contact addresses given below, not later than 31st June, 2008.

All papers submitted to Creative Forum - CF should be original, neither having been previously published nor being considered elsewhere at the time of submission

Guest Editor:
Dr. T. Ravichandran
Assistant Professor
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
IIT Kanpur, Kanpur 208016
E-mail: ravic4@rediffmail.com

Editors:
Harpreet Kaur Bahri
Deepinder Singh Bahri
C/o BAHRI PUBLICATIONS
1749A/5, Govindpuri Extension
Kalkaji, New Delhi 110019
E-mail: bahrius@vsnl.com

As a literary genre, autobiography has its origin in the West. To be precise, St. Augustine’s Confessions, is considered to be the first autobiography. However, the tradition of writing autobiography started in India quite late. Several factors are responsible for its late arrival. Out of many, one important factor is that Indian caste society is basically “communal” and hence it is very difficult to have an “enlightened self” which is a pre-requisite condition to write one’s autobiography. Banarasi Das’s Ardhakathanaka (1671) is considered to be the first full-fledged Indian autobiography.
Indian autobiographies are innumerable now even though there is hardly any critical tradition to evaluate them. It is therefore important, that we closely look into several issues relating to autobiography in general and Indian autobiographies. Like the caste society autobiographies are also complex in their forms and structures. In order to critically study them one has to closely look into several concerns such as caste, class, ethnicity, language, region, religion and above all gender. Thus, we propose to invite articles from scholars on the following broad areas:

1. Theoretical / Philosophical / historical issues relating to autobiographies.
2. Indian upper caste Men’s/Women’s autobiographies.
3. Dalit Men’s / Women autobiographies.
4. Forms, structures, styles and language of autobiographies
5. Narrated/mediated autobiographies etc

The papers pertaining to the areas mentioned above should be submitted in MS-Word format to the Guest Editor/Editors, at their contact addresses given below not later than 1st June 2009.

All papers submitted to Creative Forum - CF should be original, neither having been previously published nor being considered elsewhere at the time of submission.

Manuscripts should be in conformity with the MLA format.


Guest Editor:
Dr. Raj Kumar
Senior Lecturer, Department of English
SGTB Khalsa College
University of Delhi
E-mail: rajkumarofkld@yahoo.com

Editors:
Harpreet Kaur Bahri
Deepinder Singh Bahri
C/o BAHRI PUBLICATIONS
1749A/5, Govindpuri Extension
Kalkaji, New Delhi 110019
E-mail: bahrius@vsnl.com