Transhumanism in speculative fiction

ABSTRACT

I distill the content and moral lessons offered in four speculative fiction stories involving various types of transhuman. I derive insights from these stories involving six different issues: religious mythos, individual ethics, capitalist ethics, transhumanist ethics, humanity and the humanities, and love, sex, and murder. For each theme, I consider the deeper dilemmas raised by these tales and how they relate to different transhuman trajectories toward achieving immortality. These are ‘what if’ tales of possibility. They are neither uniformly utopian nor dystopian, even though some are apocalyptic and envision a cataclysmic bridge between humans and posthumans. I find that despite their sometimes-moralizing tones, the stories offer multiple sets of complex ethical perspectives that provide insight into present and future challenges to accepting transhumanism. Together, they offer rich glimpses into the possible roles of science and technology in affecting the future well-being of whatever beings the future may bring.

KEYWORDS:

• Transhumanism
• posthumanism
• science fiction
• myth
• capitalism
• ethics
• humanity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Russell Belk

Russell Belk is York University Distinguished Research Professor, Royal Society of Canada Fellow, and Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at the Schulich School of Business in York University. His research involves the extended self, meanings of possessions, collecting, gift-giving, sharing, digital consumption, and materialism.