Science Fiction
From its beginnings as a literary genre science fiction has displayed ambivalence toward the ethical implications of scientific discovery and technological development. As a form of literature devoted in large part to evoking the potential futures and possible worlds engendered by mechanical innovation, science fiction (SF) has emerged over the last century as the preeminent site within Euro-American popular culture where the social consequences of modern technology may be explored creatively and interrogated critically.
As Brooks Landon has argued, SF "considers the impact of science and technology on humanity" by constructing "zones of possibility" where that impact can be represented and narratively extrapolated (Landon 1997, pp. 31, 17). Landon's understanding of the genre builds on James Gunn's definition of SF as the "literature of change," a mode of writing that investigates the outcome of technological progress at a level "greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger" (Gunn 1979, p. 1). This broad focus on the promises and perils of techno-scientific transformation requires a degree of concern, however implicit, for its moral repercussions, and the best SF has not shrunk from ethical engagement.
From Frankenstein to Brave New World
If, as several critics have argued, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1816) was the first true SF novel, the genre's founding text provides a paradigm of moral ambivalence toward the processes and products of scientific inquiry.
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