Frankenstein's Cat by
(PRINT) Winner of 2014 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Best Young Adult Science Book Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of Nature's Summer Book Picks One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring 2013 Science Books For centuries, we've toyed with our creature companions, breeding dogs that herd and hunt, housecats that look like tigers, and teacup pigs that fit snugly in our handbags. But what happens when we take animal alteration a step further, engineering a cat that glows green under ultraviolet light or cloning the beloved family Labrador? Science has given us a whole new toolbox for tinkering with life. How are we using it? In Frankenstein's Cat, the journalist Emily Anthes takes us from petri dish to pet store as she explores how biotechnology is shaping the future of our furry and feathered friends. As she ventures from bucolic barnyards to a "frozen zoo" where scientists are storing DNA from the planet's most exotic creatures, she discovers how we can use cloning to protect endangered species, craft prosthetics to save injured animals, and employ genetic engineering to supply farms with disease-resistant livestock. Along the way, we meet some of the animals that are ushering in this astonishing age of enhancement, including sensor-wearing seals, cyborg beetles, a bionic bulldog, and the world's first cloned cat. Through her encounters with scientists, conservationists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs, Anthes reveals that while some of our interventions may be trivial (behold: the GloFish), others could improve the lives of many species-including our own. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world's wild things? And what do our brave new beasts tell us about ourselves? With keen insight and her trademark spunk, Anthes highlights both the peril and the promise of our scientific superpowers, taking us on an adventure into a world where our grandest science fiction fantasies are fast becoming reality.
Digital People by
(PRINT) Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious a " and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life. In a lab at MIT, scientists and technicians have created an artificial being named COG. To watch COG interact with the environment a " to recognize that this machine has actual body language a " is to experience a hair-raising, gut-level reaction. Because just as we connect to artificial people in fiction, the merest hint of human-like action or appearance invariably engages us. Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger. In short, we are going beyond what was once only science fiction to create bionic people with fully integrated artificial components a " and it will not be long before we reach the ultimate goal of constructing a completely synthetic human-like being. It seems quintessentially human to look beyond our natural limitations. Science has long been the lens through which we squint to discern our future. Although we are rightfully fearful about manipulating the boundaries between animate and inanimate, the benefits are too great to ignore. This thoughtful and provocative book shows us just where technology is taking us, in directions both wonderful and terrible, to ponder what it means to be human.
Bioethics in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by
(PRINT) Collects essays regarding the topic of bioethics in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," including a brief biography the author and information on the ethics of organ donation and stem cell research.
Bioethics and Biolaw Through Literature by
In recent years, the well-established field of human anthropology has been put under scrutiny by the new data offered by science and technology. Scientific intervention into human life through organ transplants, euthanasia, genetic engineering, experiments connected to the genetic code and the genome, and varied other biotechnologies have placed ethical beliefs into question and created ethical dilemmas. These scientific inventions influence our views on birth and death, on the construction of the body and its technical reproducibility, and have problematized the concept of the human persona. The purpose of bioethics, the science of life, is to find new values and norms which will be valid for a multicultural society. Bioethics is, today, a well-respected topic of research that has brought together philosophers and experts to discuss the limits of science and medicine. The aim of this book is to merge the two fields of bioethics and law (or biolaw) through the literary text, by taking into consideration the transformations of the concept of persona at which we have nowadays arrived. The new meaning of the term ‘persona’ represents in fact the final point of a long-standing quest for man's sense of his own being and human dignity, and of his capacity to live in social interrelations. The volume presents a wide range of perspectives, comprising methodological approaches, legal and literary aspects.
Arguments and Analysis in Bioethics by
Is there any justification for the common practice of allocating expensive medical resources to rescue a few from rare diseases, when those resources could be used to treat devastating diseases that affect the many? Does the use of Prozac and other anti-depressants make us inauthentic beings? Is it immoral and irrational to have children?
The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction by
This study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the beginnings of Irish gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland.
Gothic Literature by
New edition of bestselling introductory text outlining the history and ways of reading Gothic literatureThis revised edition includes:* A new chapter on Contemporary Gothic which explores the Gothic of the early twentieth century and looks at new critical developments* An updated Bibliography of critical sources and a revised ChronologyThe book opens with a Chronology and an Introduction to the principal texts and key critical terms, followed by five chapters: The Gothic Heyday 1760-1820; Gothic 1820-1865; Gothic Proximities 1865-1900; Twentieth Century; and Contemporary Gothic. The discussion examines how the Gothic has developed in different national contexts and in different forms, including novels, novellas, poems, films, radio and television. Each chapter concludes with a close reading of a specific text - Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Dracula, The Silence of the Lambs and The Historian - to illustrate ways in which contextual discussion informs critical analysis. The book ends with a Conclusion out
Neo-Victorian Gothic : Horror, Violence and Degeneration in the Re-imagined Nineteenth Century by
This volume, the third in Rodopi's Neo-Victorian Series, reassesses neo-Victorianism as a quintessentially Gothic movement. Through their revival of bygone spectres, their obsession with forgotten skeletons in the cupboard, and their exploration of nineteenth-century extremities, neo-Victorian works not only reflect our contemporary Gothic culture but also reactivate it and even enrich it with new variations such as postcolonial, eco or steampunk Gothic. Addressed to scholars and students of both Gothic and Neo-Victorian Studies, this volume will also interest contemporary literature specialists, cultural theorists, and those working on popular historical memory, as it explores the paradox of culture's coincident turn to ethics and sensationalism. As exemplified in its generic variety and hybridity, neo-Victorian Gothic resorts to the spectacularisation of horror while simultaneously demonstrating the hyperreal, textual and self-reflexive nature of these spectacles, just as it resorts to the exploitation of hyperbolic and violent sexuality at the same time as challenging sexual norms and identity politics. In spite of these apparent contradictions, the Gothic forms of neo-Victorianism demonstrate their fundamentally ethical goal of interrogating the uncertain limits between self and other, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, past and present.
Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood by
The first substantial study comparing Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood, this book examines a selection of their speculative/fantastic novels from a feminist postcolonial perspective. Reading Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake alongside Shelley's Frankenstein and The Last Man, the author brings out the broad convergences in the way the two authors-separated by more than a century-perceive the dialectic of science, gender and the processes of history and history-making.Both authors, as this book shows, critique the ideologies and praxes of modern science, pointing out the sexism and reductionism innate to them. The meaning of the (post)human is explored in the context of the Nature/Culture debate and contemporary biotechnology's eugenic ambitions. Shelley's prescient anti-colonialism-part of her critique of masculine (Romantic) egotism-is reflected in Atwood's critique of the nexus between technoscience and the imperialism of global capital. The negative futurities envisioned by the two authors undercut scientific positivism and subvert the notion of history as Progress. Historiography, too, becomes a theme as both Shelley and Atwood bring out the masculinist biases inherent to mainstream history making. The cultural constructs of 'femininity', intergender 'love' and motherhood are examined by both authors and women's inordinate absorption in relational existence is lamented. The stratified and gendered schism between the Public/'cultural' and the Private/'natural' -- basic to the scientific worldview and, ultimately, to patriarchy itself -- is denounced and the connection between the personal and the (sexual-)political is underscored.The vision that emerges is that of a shared perception of the values of technoscience and capitalistic imperialism as being at odds with personal liberty and individuality, especially for women, and with familial and communal wellbeing, economic equity and environmental stability. 'Reason' and rationalistic intelligence on the one hand and feelings and the imagination on the other, both authors imply, need to be equally cultivated and integrated: humanistic education and Art, especially literature, emerge as the saving graces. One major highlight of the book is the way the author goes beyond a strong critical consensus on Frankenstein and reads the novel not as a denunciation of technological violation of nature, but as a subversion of the thematic itself of Nature versus Culture. Similar fresh readings are offered on the gender question in The Last Man and on Atwood's engagement with 'feminist mothering' in Oryx and Crake.
Desire and Technology in Science Fiction and Beyond by
The concept of the 'desire for technology' originates with Jean Baudrillard, the French postmodernist and high-tech social thinker. Desire for Technology in Science Fiction and Beyond delves into this concept, seeking to understand the relationship between technology and human desire in science fiction and beyond. Academic disciplines have increasingly sought to bridge the gap between human beings and technology. Baudrillard points to three orders of simulacra to rethink the objectivity of science and history, taking simulacra from the Renaissance, through the Industrial Revolution, to the postmodern era, corresponding to counterfeit, production, and simulation. This title proposes three stages in the procession of science fiction. Fantasy literature belongs to the beginning, science fiction to the developing, and technological theory to the culminating stage: the expansion of science fiction. A Promethean rebellion against God's will announces the death of Nature, disclosing potential technological disasters, and stimulating the building of a human-centred technological utopia.
Science Fiction Before 1900 by
Paul Alkon analyzes several key works that mark the most significant phases in the early evolution of science fiction, including Frankenstein, Twenty Thousand LeaguesUnder the Sea, A Connecticut Yankee in King arthur'sCourtand The Time Machine. He places the work in context and discusses the genre and its relation to other kinds of literature.
Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture by
A strong preoccupation with the human body - often manifested in startling ways - is a characteristic shared by early modern Europeans and their present-day counterparts. Whilst modern manifestations of this interest include body piercing, tattoos, plastic surgery and eating disorders, early modern preoccupations encompassed such diverse phenomena as monstrous births and physical deformity, body snatching, public dissection, flagellation, judicial torture and public punishment. This volume explores such extreme manifestations of early modern bodily obsessions and fascinations, and their wider cultural significance. Agreeing that an interest in physical boundaries, extreme physical manifestations and situations developed and grew stronger during the early modern period, the essays in this volume investigate whether this interest can be traced in a wider range of cultural phenomena, and should therefore be given a prominent place in any future characterization of the early modern period. Taken as a whole, the volume can be read as an attempt to create a new context in which to explore the cultural history of the human body, as well as the metaphors of research and investigation themselves.
Vital Matters: Eighteenth-century Views of Conception, Life, and Death by
Eighteenth-century questions about the properties essential to life often explored the boundary between the physical world of the body and the immaterial world of the mind and soul. Locating materialism within the larger history of ideas, Vital Matters examines how and why eighteenth-century scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists questioned nature and its animating principles. In this volume, interdisciplinary essays by premier scholars in literary studies, art history, and the history of science and medicine analyse a wide range of subjects, including ghosts and funerary practices, dissection and digestion, automata, and monstrous births. Featuring new approaches to literary texts such as Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and paintings such as Girodet's Eternal Sleep, as well as new research on cases from the history of medicine and the history of science, Vital Matters reconsiders Enlightenment oppositions between body and mind, brain and soul, life and death, and the physical and the abstract.
The Lady and Her Monsters: a tale of dissections, real-life Dr. Frankensteins, and the creation of Mary Shelley's masterpiece by
(PRINT) The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. Montillo recounts how--at the intersection of the Romantic Age and the Industrial Revolution--Shelley's Victor Frankenstein was inspired by actual scientists of the period: curious and daring iconoclasts who were obsessed with the inner workings of the human body and how it might be reanimated after death. With true-life tales of grave robbers, ghoulish experiments, and the ultimate in macabre research--human reanimation--The Lady and Her Monsters is a brilliant exploration of the creation of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's horror classic.
The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the curse of Frankenstein by
(PRINT) The authors of the award-winning "In Darkness, Death" share the remarkable true story of "Frankenstein's" origins and the curse on its creators.
On Monsters: an unnatural history of our worst fears by
(PRINT) Monsters. Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, they have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. They attract and repel us, intrigue and terrify us, and in the process reveal something deeply important about the darker recesses of our collective psyche.Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters - how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Asma begins with a letter from Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. detailing anencounter in India with an "enormous beast - larger than an elephantthree ominous horns on its forehead." From there the monsters come fast and furious - Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, the leopard-bear-lion beast of Revelation, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaksand headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory just beyond the safe enclosures of rationalthought. Exploring philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, pamphlets, films, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many waysmonsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated. Asma suggests that how we handle monsters reflects how we handle uncertainty, ambiguity, insecurity. And in a world that is daily becoming less secure and more ambiguous, he shows how we might learn to better live with monsters - and thereby avoid becoming one.