Posthumanism and Speculative Fiction

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of how speculative fiction (sf) and posthumanist histories have been entwined, including the differentiation between transhumanism and posthumanism that emerged in both scholarly and fictional contexts. It demonstrates the number of critical areas of analysis that are common to both posthumanist philosophy and sf literature, provides a summary of extant scholarship that has also theorized these connections, and argues for the importance of sf in the history of posthumanist thought. Posthumanist theorists frequently turn to sf to elaborate or provide concrete examples of their ideas, and sf itself is a type of philosophical enquiry conducted through the methodology of narrative. The number of sf texts that offer posthumanist ideas or futures is so vast as to preclude a full survey of all such titles. Instead, this chapter outlines several distinct areas of interest where sf and posthumanism have had particularly close intersections and demonstrates how the fiction itself is a site of posthumanist analysis and theory through reference to specific texts that are indicative of larger trends in the field.