Review of Jay Clayton’s “The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics and the Posthuman”

摘要

Focusing on the bioethical challenges associated with genetic engineering, Jay Clayton's article explores the relation between postwar works of science fiction and the recent policy-oriented publications on transhumanism that often allude to these works. This wide-ranging exploration covers a broad range of texts, from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) to Octavia Butler's Dawn (1987) and Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future (2002), and further includes references to the writings of H.G. Wells and Margaret Atwood and to films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Gattaca (1997).