ABSTRACT
Science fiction has always had a deep concern with the technology of the flesh. Ever since Descartes argued for the diremption of the body from the mind, writers and thinkers have wrestled with the machinic implications of the body. Indeed one might argue that Julien Offray de la Mettrie’s L’homme machine (Machinic Man, or The Human Mechanism) of 1738, in which La Mettrie argued for the mechanical nature of the mind-like a serial computer avant le lettre-represents one of the first examples of ‘science fiction philosophy,’ preceding Baudrillard and Haraway by several centuries.1 Seen in this light, L’homme machine becomes the first in a long line of works that explore the implications of machine bodies and mechanical souls, a lineage that would include Shelley’s Frankenstein, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Eve Future, innumerable pulp fiction stories of the 20th century, as well as the Terminator series of movies, among many, many others.
