Of Machinicity And Dehumanization: Exploring The Apocalyptic Repercussions Of Singularity As Portrayed In Three Contemporary Science Fiction Novels

Abstract

The article undertakes the study of three 21st Century science fiction novels, namely Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse (2011) and Robogenesis (2014), and Ken MacLeod’s Newton's Wake: A Space Opera (2005) to see how these works imaginatively extrapolate the aftermath of a singularity that not only affirms the agency of machines as self-aware and autonomous entities but transforms the very relationship between humans and his machines. This machinic supremacy and the concomitant dehumanization, as the study attempts to bring out, can have apocalyptic repercussions and stand in stark contrast to the picture that many contemporary organizational theoretical approaches and various critiques of posthumanism like to depict. In those theories, the notion of man undergoes a re-envisioning, and thus from within their proposed framework of a highly symmetrical relationship between man and his/her non-human others, man can still reassert his authority even after the supposed decentering or erasure has taken place. Also, an accelerated explosion of technological power sans a thought for our posterity will only lead to a widespread dehumanization and thus, these novels can be read as an exhortation to us to integrate a genuine concern for the well-being of humanity with the rapid development of advanced technologies.