Techno-Scientific Progress in Science Fiction

Extract

[...] The double-faceted hero eventually commits suicide to escape the horror of the situation. In a broader sense, this science ultimately to turn against humanity as a whole with which it enters into competition. This competition takes many forms that can go as far as the destruction of men, but one of its most interesting manifestations is undoubtedly the shame that seizes humans in the face of the perfection of the machines that he himself created, which he no longer understands and seems to surpass him (« the Promethean shame according to the philosopher Gunther Anders, The Obsolescence of Man). [...]

[...] The Impact of Techno-Scientific Progress on Science Fiction Exposition on Science Fiction 1. At the turn of the 19th-20th century, the anxieties sparked by techno-scientific progress fuel a pessimistic, even nightmarish science fiction literature. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and increasingly throughout the 20th century, the warlike, ecological, and human horrors made possible by scientific modernity modify the vision of the future offered by science fiction: far from advancing humanity, techno-scientific progress could cause it to regress or even annihilate it. [...]

[...] Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) is exemplary: a scholar, the brave Doctor Jekyll, driven by the desire to understand the complexities of the human soul, develops a potion to try to separate the vicious part of his soul from its virtuous part. The experiment results in the temporary transformation of Dr. Jekyll into a bestial and diabolical creature: Mr. Hyde, the physical incarnation of the evil contained in Dr. Jekyll's soul, which allows him to do all the evil he wants without the slightest guilt. But soon Dr. Jekyll is no longer able to control the process, and Mr. Hyde, who only emerged when the doctor ingested the potion, begins to emerge spontaneously . [...]