Biopunk Dystopias : Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction

Lars Schmeink

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781781383322
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Science Fiction
• Index: Literature

Biopunk Dystopias contends that we find ourselves at a historical nexus, defined by the rise of biology as the driving force of scientific progress, a strongly grown mainstream attention given to genetic engineering in the wake of the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), the changing sociological view of a liquid modern society, and shifting discourses on the posthuman, including a critical posthumanism that decenters the privileged subject of humanism. The book argues that this historical nexus produces a specific cultural formation in the form of "biopunk", a subgenre evolved from the cyberpunk of the 1980s. Biopunk makes use of current posthumanist conceptions in order to criticize contemporary reality as already dystopian, warning that a future will only get worse, and that society needs to reverse its path, or else destroy all life on this planet.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Dystopia, Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and Liquid Modernity
• 3. The Anthropocene, the Posthuman, and the Animal
• 4. Science, Family and the Monstrous Progeny
• 5. Individuality, Choice, and Genetic Manipulation
• 6. The Utopian, the Dystopian, and the Heroic Deeds of One
• 7. 9/11 and the Wasted Lives of Posthuman Zombies
• 8. Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Index