Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction

Schmeink, Lars. Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2016. In the series Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies.[1] "An Open Access edition of this work is available on the OAPEN Library."[2]

From the publisher's web page Description the book, linked at note 1 above.

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. The analysis deals with dystopian science fiction artifacts of different media from the year 2000 onwards that project a posthuman intervention into contemporary socio-political discourse based in liquid modernity in the cultural formation of biopunk.

See for the idea of the posthuman and for biotech generally as a permeable interface between the organic and the technological.

RDE, finishing 1Sep19