The modern age in literature was grounded in achievements that are amazing in their potential for both emancipation and destruction: atomic energy, space exploration, genetic and biomedical engineering and telecommunications. Technological advances in these areas could either save millions of human beings and the planet or destroy them several times over. They can free people from the ‘bondage’ of disease, poverty and oppression or mire them in worse conditions. The literature of the 20th century has consistently addressed these extreme situations of freedom and oppression, fear and freedom from fear, ruins and achievements.

The increasing role of, and dependence on, electrical and mechanical devices, from everyday life and housework to gigantic industries, marks the 20th century. The technologization of the world and life has also resulted in massive environmental problems, some of which have attracted socio-political and legal attention and activism across the world. Right from the first decades of the 20th century, North American and European continents underwent rapid urbanization, as rural populations fled to cities for jobs. Science became the most significant discipline (perhaps at the cost of the humanities and social sciences). The race to colonize space began. Medical science crossed unbelievable distances and provided treatments for assorted illnesses. It cracked open the secret of life – the discovery of DNA stands on par with the discoveries of the radio waves, the theory of relativity, the steam engine and other such achievements of the industrialized age.