Fluid Selfhood, Human and Otherwise: Hindu and Buddhist Themes in Science Fiction
Issue: Vol 17 No. 4 (2014)
Journal: Implicit Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
Abstract:
Science fiction has creatively imagined future and alternative worlds in which Hindu and Buddhist concepts figure prominently. Rebirth is a particularly rich idea, manifested both literally and metaphorically in the literary works considered here. The distinctive Indic understandings of human consciousness that underlie the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions’ conceptions of human nature lend themselves to literary incarnations of artificial intelligence in a variety of ways. Traditional Hindu and Buddhist religious discourses on selfhood and rebirth have been adapted and integrated into the science fiction works discussed in this article in their reflections on human nature and artificial intelligence. However, this fiction also presents science and technology as implicitly religious, as being means to attain traditional religious goals such as immortal life.
Author: Bruce Millen Sullivan
References :
Austin, James H. 1998. Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. 2000. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikāya, 2 vols. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.
Davidson, Richard J., & Anne Harrington, eds. 2002. Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. Original edition in French, 1966. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Geraci, Robert M. 2006. “Spiritual Robots: Religion and Our Scientific View of the Natural World.” Theology and Science 4(3): 229–246. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14746700600952993
Geraci, Robert M. 2008. “Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76(1):138166. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfm101
Geraci, Robert M. 2011. “There and Back Again: Transhumanist Evangelism in Science Fiction and Popular Science.” Implicit Religion 14(2): 141–172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v14i2.141
Haney, William S., II. 2006. Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Haney, William S., II. 2009. Globalization and the Posthuman. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Hayward, Jeremy and Francisco Varela, eds. 1992. Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind. Boston, MA: Shambala.
Johnson, W. J., trans. 1994. The Bhagavad Gita. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Gwyneth. 1997. “Metempsychosis of the Machine: Science Fiction in the Halls of Karma.” Science Fiction Studies 24(1): 1–10.
Markoff, John. 2009. “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man.” New York Times, July 26. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com July 27, 2009.
Marriott, McKim and Ronald Inden. 1977. “Toward an Ethnosociology of South Asian Caste Systems.” In The New Wind: Changing Identities in South Asia, 227–38. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton.
McDonald, Ian. 2006. River of Gods. Amherst, MA: Pyr.
McDonald, Ian. 2009. Cyberabad Days. Amherst, MA: Pyr.
Mehan, Uppinder. 1998. “The Domestication of Technology in Indian Science Fiction Short Stories.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction 74: 54–66.
Menon, Anil. 2009. The Beast with Nine Billion Feet. New Delhi: Zubaan Books.
Prettyman, Gib. 2009. “Living Thought: Genes, Genres and Utopia in the Science inthe Capital Trilogy.” In Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays, edited by William J. Burling, 181–203. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Prettyman, Gib. 2011. “Critical Utopia as Critical History: Apocalypse and Enlightenment in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt.” Extrapolation 52(3): 338–364. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/extr.2011.52.3.5
Ramanujan, A.K. 1990. “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay.” In India Through Hindu Categories, edited by McKim Marriott, 41–57. New Delhi: Sage.
Ricard, Matthieu. 2003. “On the Relevance of a Contemplative Science,” in Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, edited by B. Alan Wallace, 261–279. New York: Columbia University Press.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 1993. Red Mars. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 1994. Green Mars. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 1996. Blue Mars. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2002. The Years of Rice and Salt. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2004. Forty Signs of Rain. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2005. Fifty Degrees Below. New York: Bantam.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. 2007. Sixty Days and Counting. New York: Bantam.
Sax, William S. 2002. Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pāndav Līlā of Garhwal. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0195139151.001.0001
Sinha, Niranjan. 1993. “The Elevation.” In It Happened Tomorrow, edited by Bal Phondke, 162–176. New Delhi: National Book Trust.
Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.
Wegner, Phillip E. “Learning to Live in History: Alternate Historicities and the 1990s in The Years of Rice and Salt.” In Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays, edited by William J. Burling, 98–112. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Zelazny, Roger. 1967. Lord of Light. New York: Doubleday. Reprinted, 2004. New York: Eos/Harper Collins.