Biopunk Dystopias Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction

• Main Author: Schmeink, Lars (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Liverpool Liverpool University Press 2017
• Series: Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies
• Subjects: Science fiction; Literature; Science Fiction; Dystopia; Genetic engineering; Humanism; Late modernity; Posthuman; Posthumanism; Utopia
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

'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.