Transhumanism in fiction

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Many of the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as similar to the goals of transhumanism. Science fiction literature contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, occasionally set in utopian (especially techno-utopian) societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.

Examples of "transhumanist fiction" include novels by Linda Nagata, Greg Egan, Zoltan Istvan, and Hannu Rajaniemi. Transhuman novels are often philosophical in nature, exploring the impact such technologies might have on human life. Nagata's novels, for example, explore the relationship between the natural and artificial, and suggest that while transhuman modifications of nature may be beneficial, they may also be hazardous, so should not be lightly undertaken.^[1] Egan's Diaspora explores the nature of ideas such as reproduction and questions if they make sense in a post-human context. Istvan's novel The Transhumanist Wager explores how far one person would go to achieve an indefinite lifespan via science and technology.^[2] Rajaniemi's novel, while more action oriented, still explores themes such as death and finitude in post-human life.

Fictional depictions of transhumanist scenarios are also seen in other media, such as movies (Transcendence), television series (the Ancients of Stargate SG-1), manga and anime (Ghost in the Shell), role-playing games (Rifts and Eclipse Phase) and video games (Deus Ex or BioShock).

Transhumanist literature

Notable transhumanist authors

In television and film

In comics or graphic novels

• Battle Angel Alita/Gunm
• The webcomic Dresden Codak stars a transhuman cyborg named Kimiko Ross who augments her body over the course of the strip's stories.
• The comic Transmetropolitan is about a transhuman society several centuries in the future that includes many cyborgs, uploaded humans, and genetically modified mutants.
• The dystopian graphic novels Upgrade and Monkey Room by Louis Rosenberg convey satirical views on the human march towards singularity.

In musicals

• Be More Chill

In video games

• BioShock series
• Crysis series
• Deus Ex series
• Halo
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• SOMA
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III
• Read Only Memories

In table-top games

• The role playing game Eclipse Phase takes transhumanism to a post-apocalyptic horror setting in which Seed Artificial Intelligences have gone rogue, introducing itself with the slogan “Your mind is software. Program it. – Your body is a shell. Change it. – Death is a disease. Cure it. – Extinction is approaching. Fight it.”
• The GURPS Supplement Transhuman Space deals with a closer transhumanist future of our solar system, describing a role playing game setting “in the year 2100”.
• Another prominent and long-lived example is the Warhammer 40,000 universe--Games Workshop's longstanding tabletop strategy franchise, which includes several video games and dozens of novels. While usually focusing on concepts like the loss of technology and the death of knowledge, and nowhere near what could be called a "utopia", the Warhammer 40,000 universe does depict a setting where transhumanism and even posthumanism are both quite widespread. Cybernetic and genetic modifications, human-machine interfaces, self-aware computer "spirits" (advanced AIs), ubiquitous space travel and even true posthuman gods are all quite prominent and featured throughout. The main protagonists of many novels and campaigns, the Imperial Space Marines, are literal textbook transhumans: normal human men who have been so vastly augmented and changed by technology that they are no longer Homo sapiens but some other, new species. However unlike many transhuman or posthuman futures depicted by authors on the subject, Warhammer 40,000 is bleak, violent and filled with war and even with the existence of posthuman gods (like the Emperor of Mankind or his Primarchs) humanity is still beset on all sides by threats—including those of actual, supernatural gods, namely the Chaos Gods, the two Orkish deities, Gork and Mork, and their fungal offspring and the C'Tan, the star eating gods who tricked the Necrons into becoming what they are now.

See also

• Biopunk
• Postcyberpunk
• Cyborgs in fiction
• Utopian and dystopian fiction
• Genetic engineering in science fiction
• Superhumans in fiction
• Uplifting in science fiction

References

External links

• List of transhumanist books