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Chapter 10 - Technological Fantasies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2024

Sherryl Vint
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Summary

Technology has served a recurrent role as a utopian imaginary for speculative fiction writers and consumers. As a utopian promise, technology appears to provide individuals, communities, and whole societies with the means to overcome nature – whether it is base human natures, relationships with one’s environment, or the perceived limitations of one’s body. This chapter focuses on two similar technological fantasies, James Cameron’s Terminator films and Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. In both series, central figures – namely the T-800 played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Murderbot – approximate being human but are limited by their technological being. Yet, in being not-fully-human, they expose how technology always serves as a false utopian promise: there is no way out of our humanness through technology. In this way, technological fantasies serve as a form of horror, at once tempting readers with possibilities, but revealing those possibilities to be empty – or malignant.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Technological Fantasies
  • Edited by Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009180078.011
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  • Technological Fantasies
  • Edited by Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009180078.011
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Technological Fantasies
  • Edited by Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945
  • Online publication: 09 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009180078.011
Available formats
×