Biopunk dystopias : genetic engineering, society, and science fiction / Lars Schmeink.

Includes bibliographical references (pages247-265) and index.

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Dystopia, science fiction, posthumanism, and liquid modernity -- The anthropocene, the posthuman, and the animal -- Science, family and the monstrous progeny -- Individuality, choice, and genetic manipulation -- The utopian, the dystopian, and the heroic deeds of one -- 9/11 and the wasted lives of posthuman zombies.

'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.

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In English.

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