This year, for National Novel Writing Month, I am not writing a novel. I aim to use it to write more short stories, and try and write more challenging ones for me. Ones that try to be more ambitious in their scope, or explore ideas I am interested in in some new way. This is one of those, a response to what is best called cyborg fiction – that introspective science-fiction about the meaning of humanity in a transhumanist world, about being a machine. I dearly love Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell and even, in lighter handlings of the story, Full Metal Alchemist, Astro Boy and Robocop. I think these stories are if anything even more timely the closer science comes to the science-fiction prosthetics they depict – in a real life where transhumanism is discussed seriously as a possible future for mankind, asking questions about whether it is morally acceptable, and where boundaries should be drawn is vital.

My perspective, which comes across very plainly in this piece, is that transhumanism is entirely the wrong attitude to approach this technology from; rather than considering the idea that “mankind” (as argued generally from positions of privilege, and at times implicitly referring only to those privileged humans) needs uplifting to something beyond human, a better use of technology would be to give everyone equal opportunity. Before one can even begin considering what comes after humanity, humans should try to give everyone a fair opportunity in the world as it is – rather than creating an introspective circle dedicated to “improvement” of the lives of the already affluent and healthy.

Thus I wrote my own, arguably Oshii-esque, internal monologue of a cyborg. It is more than a little Robocop…

Continue reading →