It was recently announced that ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’ is going to be turned into a movie. I’d never heard of it before but the synopsis sounded pretty cyberpunk and since it’s just a short story, I decided to give it a try.

It’s crazy to me that this story was written in 1974. It’s about an ugly girl who gets hired by a megacorp to remotely control the body of a beautiful celebrity in order to sell products in a world where advertising is banned. It’s literally about a social media influencer in a cyberpunk world and was written in 1974. Also, while the author is listed as James Tiptree Jr, that’s actually the pen name of Alice Sheldon. She used a male pen name in order to get published in the 1970s. The wikipedia page has an entire section about the role of gender in the story and the author.

The story is only about 30 pages long so it’s a quick read and I highly recommend it. The author even has what I would consider a “cyberpunk voice” where the narrator is constantly yelling at the reader. The narrator calls you a “zombie” and a “dummy” and it just feels more aggressive than I’m used to reading in a story from 1974. It very much feels like a precursor to cyberpunk writing.

As always, being a short story, it should be pretty easy to find online. Here’s a text version of the story but I’m sure you can find a pdf if that’s what you prefer.