Trans/Posthumanist Themes in American Science Fiction Novels. 2nd Ed.

Our world goes through a constant change due to technological and scientific progress. Whether such transition bears pleasant possibilities or constitutes a step toward an undesirable future is a question which occupies many thinkers' minds. As an important field to discuss about the interaction of technology, science and humans, science fiction reflects dystopian perspectives on the co-evolution of the human and the machine. The best examples to such pessimistic perspective is portrayed in "cyberpunk," a sub-genre of science fiction which is mostly concerned with a dystopian near future in terms of technological advancements, exploring realms of the unknown through unpleasant interactions between man and technology. My aim is to read science fiction through two colliding perspectives: pessimistic and optimistic. To do that, in this book, taking the transhumanist and posthumanist discourses as a basis, I aspired to analyze the apocalyptic perspective in science fiction, focusing on cyberpunk narratives and contrasting these dystopian portrayals to the optimistic stance offered by transhumanist thinkers.