The Science Fiction of Technoscience

The Politics of Simulation and a Challenge for New Media Art

Bibliographic Data

ID3981337
AuthorsEugene Thacker (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume34
Issue2
Pages155-158
Publication date2001-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLeonardo (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-094X • E-ISSN: 1530-9282
PublisherMIT Press - Journals (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1162/002409401750184726
OpenAlexW2122067089
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited1

This article sketches some of the relationships between the technosciences (primarily biotechnology and biomedicine) and science fiction. Taken as a discursive practice, science fiction constructs futurological narratives of progress as well as conditions the very techniques and research that may have taken place. The tensions and inconsistencies within the biotech industry are considered as a zone where science fiction is put to work as negotiator and mode of legitimization. However, as cultural theorists such as Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard suggest, science fiction can also fulfill a critical function, highlighting the contingencies and limitations in biotech's self-fulfilling narrative of future-medicine. A consideration of the emerging category of "net.art" provides one starting point for a critical science fiction practice

Aesthetics · Art · Biology · Biomedicine · Epistemology · Function (biology) · Literary criticism · Literary fiction · Literature · Mode (computer interface) · Narrative · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Techno-thriller · Technoscience · Computer Science · Law · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophy · Science Education and Perceptions

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