Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age (AnthropoScene)

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Synopsis
Personal genome testing, gene editing for life-threatening diseases, synthetic life: once the stuff of science fiction, twentieth- and twenty-first-century advancements blur the lines between scientific narrative and scientific fact. This examination of bioengineering in popular and literary culture shows that the influence of science on science fiction is more reciprocal than we might expect.Looking closely at the work of Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, and other authors, as well as at film, comics, and serial television such as Orphan Black, Everett Hamner shows how the genome age is transforming both the most commercial and the most sophisticated stories we tell about the core of human personhood. As sublime technologies garner public awareness beyond the genre fiction shelves, they inspire new literary categories like “slipstream” and shape new definitions of the human, the animal, the natural, and the artificial. In turn, what we learn of bioengineering via popular and literary culture prepares the way for its official adoption or restriction—and for additional representations. By imagining the connections between emergent gene testing and editing capacities and long-standing conversations about freedom and determinism, these stories help build a cultural zeitgeist with a sharper, more balanced vision of predisposed agency.A compelling exploration of the interrelationships among science, popular culture, and self, Editing the Soul sheds vital light on what the genome age means to us, and what’s to come.
Copyright:
2017

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780271080529
Publisher:
Penn State University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Onion Inc.
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Science, Art and Architecture, Literature and Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Technology, Language Arts, Medicine
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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