ABSTRACT
There are various definitions of what it means to become posthuman and if a posthuman future is desirable or not. This chapter focuses on transhumanism and critical posthumanism as the two major strands of posthumanism and elaborates on how cyberpunk fiction relates to them. Transhumanists like Nick Bostrom, Max More, or Hans Moravec understand the posthuman condition as what comes ‘after the human’ and seek ways to surpass the capacities of human bodies and minds. In contrast, critical posthumanists like Rosi Braidotti, Donna J. Haraway or N. Katherine Hayles evoke the concept to challenge anthropocentrism and the dominance of positivism in modern science and thus define posthumanism as what comes ‘after humanism.’ Asking what makes the human ‘human’ and thinking about human enhancement, relations between humans, machines and non-human animals, as well as space travel and virtual spaces, both these posthumanisms are closely linked to the main concerns of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk fictions like those of Madeline Ashby, Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson, provide thought experiments for what the posthuman condition could look like, but primarily complicate too simplistic visions of posthuman futures by never letting the economic, political, and social aspects out of sight.
