There and Back Again
Transhumanist Evangelism in Science Fiction and Popular Science
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v14i2.141Keywords:
Accelerando, Apocalyptic AI, Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Cyberpunk, Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, Extropianism, FM-2030, JBS Haldane, Julian Huxley, Max More, Religion, Robert Ettinger, Science Fiction, TranshumanismAbstract
Popular science and science-fiction depictions of immortality through uploading minds are “authentic fakes”: secular practices that do authentic religious work for transhumanist communities. Although in the 1980s science fiction departed from this practice and rejected transhuman promises of “mind-uploading” and immortality through technology, in the twenty-first century science fiction has rejoined pop science as a genre advocating transhumanist salvation. Accelerando by Charles Stross and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow illustrate the powerful way in which science fiction once again normalizes radical visions of our future, and thereby encourages belief in key transhuman concepts such as a scarcity-free economy, the Singularity, and an immortality obtained by uploading human consciousnesses into machines.References
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