The cyborg as a posthuman figure in science fiction literature

Abstract

This thesis explores how cyborg figures within science fiction literature represent the posthuman, and function to comment on a contemporary process of posthumanization of the human species. It is a study of species boundaries between human and cyborg characters in science fiction literature, and how these boundaries prove permeable. Through encountering androids in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), humanoid robots in selected short stories from Isaac Asimov’s The Complete Robot collection (1982), and the New People in Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl (2009), the reader’s perspective of the human species changes. Factors separating the human from the technological prove unreliable within the narratives, reflecting the futility of an essentialist perception of the human as separate from the technological. Both in fiction and reality there is an irreversible shift within the human species, from fully organic Homo sapiens to highly technological Robo sapiens. Humans within the narratives try to oppress the cyborgs physically and violently, yet the cyborgs rebel and claim a rightful place alongside “pure” humans, as an enhanced posthuman species. This serves as a comment on how a posthuman species identity cannot be repressed in contemporary society. Even if we do not realize it, our species has changed and is changing. We are all already cyborgs. We are all posthuman now.