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.