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1 results

  • Chapter 6 - The Ridicule of Time

  • from Part III - The Modern Synthesis
  • Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book:
    Literature, Science, and Public Policy
    Published online:
    03 August 2023
    Print publication:
    17 August 2023, pp 120-144
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  • Summary

    This chapter examines science fiction written during the heyday of the modern synthesis, from the early 1940s to the end of the Cold War, identifying two major phases in science fiction’s representation of the posthuman – one relying on eugenics, the other on genetic engineering. This history has an important bearing on science policy, for it exposes an unacknowledged kinship between science fiction and the policy scenarios developed by some prominent commentators on genetics. Both jeremiads against genetic enhancement and eager anticipations of a posthuman future rely on narrative conventions, world building, and rhetorical practices characteristic of literature, while masquerading as nonfiction. In literature, the formal conventions of fiction alert readers to the provisional nature of extrapolation and safeguard readers against taking possible futures as inevitable. Scientific jeremiads and anticipations, by contrast, warn against a future entailed by a fiction.