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A Critical History of the Human in Anglo-American Science Fiction

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A Critical History of the Human in Anglo-American Science Fiction Bio/Techno/Homo: a critical history of the human in Anglo-American science fiction By Thomas Connolly A major thesis submitted for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy in English Maynooth University Department of English October 2017 Head of Department: Prof. Colin Graham Supervisor: Prof. Emer Nolan Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments...................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction: ‘Beyond the common range of men’ .................................................................... 7 H.G. Wells and the OncoMouseTM......................................................................................... 7 Posthumanism, nature, and technology ................................................................................ 19 Posthumanism and science fiction ....................................................................................... 39 Chapter One: Worlds Lost and Gained .................................................................................... 56 Two lineages of the human in nineteenth-century SF: Shelley’s Frankenstein and Verne’s voyages extraordinaire ......................................................................................................... 58 Three forms of humanity in Conan Doyle’s The Lost World ............................................... 70 Socialism, evolution and the pre-human in London’s The Iron Heel .................................. 89 Chapter Two: Soma and Skylarks.......................................................................................... 112 The First World War and technology in interwar SF ......................................................... 114 The ‘life-worshipper’ and the end of time in Huxley’s Brave New World ........................ 126 Early pulp SF: Skylark and ‘a universe ruled by the human mind’.................................... 148 Chapter Three: Homo Gestalt ................................................................................................ 173 Atomics and empire in the ‘Golden Age’ and beyond ....................................................... 176 Benevolent biopolitics in Asimov’s Foundation ............................................................... 189 Ontological humility and the body as metaphor in Clarke’s The City and the Stars ......... 208 Chapter Four: Disaster and Redemption ................................................................................ 230 Utopia and the rejection of ‘Faust’ in 1960s and 1970s SF ............................................... 233 Alienation and human transcendence in Ballard’s The Crystal World .............................. 245 Embedded identity and ontological parity in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed ....................... 266 Conclusion: Bio/Techno/Homo ............................................................................................. 291 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 306 2 Abstract Science fiction (‘SF’) is often understood as a literature of radical possibilities—but to what extent do SF writers break the mould of humanist thought that has informed much of the western literary and cultural tradition? In this thesis, I will examine the concept of the ‘human’ as it has been incorporated into works of Anglo-American SF from the nineteenth century to the 1970s. By ‘human’, I mean the diverse sets of beliefs, ideas, and qualities attached, consciously or unconsciously, to the terms ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ in these texts. More specifically, I will examine the diverse ways that SF writers have narrativised the human in relation to technology and the natural world. As has been argued by a number of prominent critics, including Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, and Jacques Derrida, attitudes and relationships towards technological systems and material nature have been fundamental in determining the nature and meaning of the ‘human’ in western culture. These critics form part of the field of posthumanism, a branch of critical studies which has been centrally concerned with unearthing, investigating, and challenging what precisely is meant by the terms ‘human’ and ‘humanity’. Deploying a model of posthumanism as a hermeneutical principle for deconstructing the human figure in literary SF, I will stage the argument that, despite the radical ontological and epistemological possibilities generated by SF’s speculative framework, SF texts have been reluctant to embrace models of subjectivity and embodiment that move beyond the narrow humanist tenets of scientific rationalism, biological and material transcendence, teleological progressivism, and instrumentalist views of nature. Through an analysis of a range of human ‘archetypes’ found throughout the history of the genre, I will argue that SF has instead consistently deployed a liminal conception of the human that is ambiguously situated between ‘assimilative’ humanist and ‘transformative’ posthumanist conceptions of the human and nonhuman subject. 3 Acknowledgments During a class I once took on the topic of ‘Thesis Completion and Submission’, the instructor advised us that the acknowledgments section of a thesis should be kept as brief as possible. ‘No one’, she told us, ‘wants to read as you thank your parents, or your housemates, or your spouse, or your cat for getting you through the Ph.D.’ This struck me as a very begrudging attitude—after all, the acknowledgments section is perhaps the only part of the whole thesis that will not be subject to endless scrutiny and correction. Accordingly, I have followed the only sensible course and utterly disregarded this advice here. I would first like to acknowledge the support of my supervisor, Prof. Emer Nolan. From her first act of supervision—a research essay in the final year of my undergraduate degree in 2011—Emer’s advice, encouragement and guidance have been instrumental in helping me to improve as a scholar. Emer’s careful readings of my chapters were the decisive factor in transforming a collection of scattered insights into a coherent argument, while her thoughtful supervision has helped me profoundly in my efforts to become a more effective thinker and writer. Of all the influences on my growth as a scholar during the course of my postgraduate studies, it is Emer who has had by far the most enriching impact—in return, I can offer only my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. My thanks also to the various individuals who devoted time to proofreading this thesis: Dr. Alison Farrell in the Maynooth University Writing Centre, Dr. Michael Cronin in the Department of English, and Dr. Katherine Bishop at Miyazaki International College in Japan. Their thoughtful comments and suggestions were invaluable in preparing the thesis for submission. My thanks also extend to my colleagues in the Department of English in Maynooth, for their input and advice at my various annual reviews over the years. My research was funded by a generous scholarship from the Maynooth University Graduate Studies Office, to whom I extend my thanks and appreciation. I would also like to acknowledge the support and comradeship of the other Ph.D. students in the English Department of Maynooth University, as well as the other users of the postgraduate workspace in the Iontas Building: Páraic, Francis, Matt, Conor, Sarah, Alan, Chris, 4 Greg, Cait, Brenda, Jack, Kira, and all the Dans. Misery loves company, as they say, and the various academic, financial, and personal pressures of doing postgraduate research can at times make a person fairly miserable indeed. At such times, it is helpful to be able to look to a group of friends and peers and see that, if nothing else, they seem to be at least as miserable as yourself, and for much the same reasons. The comfort gained from this admittedly grim thought is not trivial: Ph.D. life takes no prisoners, as anyone who has undertaken one will know, and without a sympathetic group of fellow travellers the road to completion, I am sure, would have proven significantly more rocky. So my thanks to you guys. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family and friends for their unfaltering support over the last few years: my mother Betty and father Eugene—who must at this point be despairing of ever seeing their youngest son finally leave university—brothers Patrick and Anthony and sister Áine, and my friends Virginia, Stefan, Eoin and Fiona. Each of these will know what their encouragement, patience, and endless supply of tea over the last few years have meant, and will surely appreciate, to an even greater extent than myself, the satisfaction of never having to hear the words ‘Ph.D.’, ‘thesis’, or ‘Only X months left to go’ ever again. Humble as a dedication in a thesis of this kind is, it is to them, with love, that the dedication goes. 5 6 Introduction ‘Beyond the common range of men’: H.G. Wells, the OncoMouseTM, and the human in Anglo-American SF H.G. Wells and the OncoMouseTM With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.1 In the early 1980s, researchers at Harvard Medical School produced a new kind of animal in their laboratories: the ‘oncomouse’. Named
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