Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction

Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890

By: Wendy C. Nielsen

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Hardcover | 31 May 2022 | Edition Number 1

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264 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.6

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This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion's statue, Frankenstein's creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called artificial life, living systems made through manufactured means. Fantasies about creating life ex-utero were built upon misconceptions about how life began, sustaining pseudoscientific beliefs about the birthing body. Physicians, inventors, and authors of literature imagined generating life without women to control the process of reproduction and generate perfect progeny. Thus, some speculative fiction before 1890 belongs to the literary genealogy of transhumanism, the belief that technology will someday transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. Female motherless creations tend to operate as sexual companions. Male ones often emerge as subaltern figures analogous to enslaved beings, illustrating that reproductive rights inform readers' sense of who counts as human in fictions of artificial life.

Industry Reviews

"This fascinating exploration of the quest for mechanical life in the Western imagination is beautifully written, thought provoking, and riveting. By situating these fantasies of "motherless creations" within a cultural context of medicalized misogyny and slavery, Nielsen presents a deeply rich, timely study relevant for understanding today's transhumanist debates."

-Joanna Ebenstein, Founder of Morbid Anatomy

"What impressed me most about this book is its prospicience, its boldness to position itself in the discursive field between posthumanism and transhumanism...With Motherless Creations, Nielsen offers long overdue explanations about the genesis of motherless creations in American, British, French, and German literature."

-Sibylle Erle, University of Lincoln,United Kingdom

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