Synopsis The author experiences multiple encounters with AI discourse and struggles to make sense of the tension in their body that results. The author makes no argument and finds no answers; the author invites you, Reader, into the mess, where it sits there, looking at us. — Scene 1: At the recent Rhetoric of…
Tag: science fiction
Therapy or Enhancement? Bioethics in Transhumanist Science Fictional Interpretations of the Body
Image Credit: Sanderson, Bill. “The gyri of the thinker’s brain as a maze of choices in biomedical ethics.” Scraperboard drawing, 1997. Wellcome Collection. [Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)] Therapy or Enhancement? Bioethics in Transhumanist Science Fictional Interpretations of the Body Since the Enlightenment, the idea of perpetual progress and the hegemony of rationality have…
“Edible Panopticons”: Hour-Man, the Pill, and the Superpower of Pharmaceutical Autonomy
Before he was the square-chested, slick-haired icon, Superman was a villain’s pharmaceutical test subject. In their 1933 short story, “The Reign of the Superman,” Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster (who would later create the iconic Clark Kent comics) describe an evil chemist who goes to the bread-line and indiscriminately chooses one of the many “disillusioned…
Aversion to Aging: Futuristic Science Fiction and Ageism
Science fiction, a genre known for its extrapolations into the future, seem Science fiction. For a genre that is known for its seemingly equitable futures, it sure seems to take issue with age and aging. Indeed, disability studies scholar Alison Kafer notes that “Whenever I tell people I have been working on a book about…
Is Your Baby Even Human? The Science, and Science Fiction, of Observing Babies
Naomi Michalowicz // Babies are full of potential. Every parent, looking at their infant child, will inevitably ask themselves, who will this baby become? What will he like doing? What will her strengths, abilities, and skills, turn out to be? It’s impossible not to wonder what the future holds for a small baby when their…
Special Issue Review: Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein
Diana Rose Newby // Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein, theme issue of Literature and Medicine, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2018. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley concludes with well wishes for her creation’s second life: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper” (25). Today,…
Painful Memories and Memorable Pain
Gabi Schaffzin // The following contains spoilers for Amazon’s Homecoming series. Proceed with caution. I’ve been thinking a lot about memory. This started after I recently finished bingeing on the Amazon series, Homecoming, a quick but worthwhile watch for the psychological-thriller fan in all of us. Briefly, the show, directed by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail,…
Love in the Time of Science Fiction
Retrieved from WikiMedia Commons. Anna Fenton-Hathaway “I think we’re gonna be surprised by how deeply emotional we’ll [be] . . . with the things that we’re gonna invent, coming soon, the robots and things like that, because we’re gonna program emotion into them. . . . [W]e’re not really ready for how much love…
Cyborgs Pt. 2: Cellular Agencies in Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea
Kathryn Cai Reviews of Chang-rae Lee’s 2014 novel On Such a Full Sea note its “bureaucratic aesthetic,”[1] its unsatisfactory narrative trajectory in which nothing seems to build, and Fan as an opaque, “monochromatic,”[2] and ultimately unsatisfactory heroine lacking in interiority,[3] particularly compared to the “adventure” heroines, such as Katniss Everdeen, that populate conventional heroic and dystopic…
Bad Readers or Bad Sci-Fi?
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Aki Hoshide. Retrieved from NASA. Anna Fenton-Hathaway 1. A recent lunch conversation skittered around awhile before landing, not atypically these days, on how we should all be preparing for the AI apocalypse.