Rage against the Machine? Cyberspace Narratives in Rushdie's 'Fury'

Fury, published in 2001, explores the role of cyberspace as a vehicle for escapist and possibly Utopian imaginings, and questions the Web's effect on the "real world".  The novel's protagonist, Malik Solanka, a philosopher turned puppet maker, creates a cyber narrative featuring the revolt of slave - cyborgs against their puppet master. This cyber tale becomes a big commercial success, but also ends up influencing the "real world," inspiring a bloody revolution in the (fictive) island of Lilliput-Blefuscu.

Solanka's cyber saga is thus envisioned as a possible escape from the "fury" that had made him flee his home in London. But this rage is also a personal and a collective mental state which affects the "real" and the "imagined" worlds in the novel. The novel's ambivalent ending queries the possibility of finding salvation in the Web, or in Rushdie's words, of living "inside the electricity."