Disability in Science Fiction Representations of Technology as Cure

by Allan, Kathryn

• ISBN13: 9781137343420
• ISBN10: 1137343427
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-08-14
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In science fiction, technology often modifies, supports, and attempts to 'make normal' the disabled body. In this groundbreaking collection, twelve international scholars – with backgrounds in disability studies, English and world literature, classics, and history – discuss the representation of dis/ability, medical 'cures,' technology, and the body in science fiction. Bringing together the fields of disability studies and science fiction, this book explores the ways dis/abled bodies use prosthetics to challenge common ideas about ability and human being, as well as proposes new understandings of what 'technology as cure' means for people with disabilities in a (post)human future.

Author Biography

Kathryn Allan is an independent scholar of science fiction and disability studies. She received her PhD from McMaster University, Canada. She operates an academic coaching and copy-editing business, Academic Editing Canada. She is the author of the blog, Bleeding Chrome, and work focusing on the intersections between the body and technology.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reading Disability in Science Fiction; Kathryn Allan
PART I: THEORIZING DISABILITY IN SCIENCE FICTION
1. Tools to Help You Think: Intersections between Disability Studies and the Writings of Samuel R. Delany; Joanne Woiak and Hioni Karamanos
2. The Metamorphic Body in Science Fiction: From Prosthetic Correction to Utopian Enhancement; António Fernando Cascais
3. Freaks and Extraordinary Bodies: Disability as Generic Marker in John Varley's "Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo;" Ria Cheyne
4. The Many Voices of Charlie Gordon: On the Representation of Intellectual Disability in Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon; Howard Sklar
PART II: HUMAN BOUNDARIES AND PROSTHETIC BODIES
5. Prosthetic Bodies: The Convergence of Disability, Technology and Capital in Peter Watts' Blindsight and Ian McDonald's River of Gods; Netty Matar
6. The Bionic Woman: Machine or Human?; Donna Binns
7. Star Wars, Limb-loss, and What it Means to be Human; Ralph Covino
8. Animal and Alien Bodies as Prostheses: Reframing Disability in Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon; Leigha McReynolds
PART III: CURE NARRATIVES FOR THE (POST)HUMAN FUTURE
9. "Great Clumsy Dinosaurs": The Disabled Body in the Posthuman World; Brent Walter Cline
10. Disabled Hero, Sick Society: Sophocles' Philoctetes and Robert Silverberg's The Man in the Maze; Robert W. Cape, Jr.
11. "Everything is always changing": Autism, Normalcy, and Progress in Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark and Nancy Fulda's "Movement;" Christy Tidwell
12. Life without Hope? Huntington's Disease and Genetic Futurity; Gerry Canavan