The Science Fiction of Technoscience: The Politics of Simulation and a Challenge for

New Media Art

Author(s): Eugene Thacker
Source: Leonardo , 2001, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2001), pp. 155-158
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1577019

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 The Science Fiction of Technoscience: ABSTRACT

The Politics of Simulation This article sketches

of the relationships betwe

and a Challenge for New Media Art technosciences (primarily

nology and biomedicine)
ence fiction. Taken as a d
sive practice, science fict
constructs futurological n
tives of progress as well
Eugene Thacker ditions the very technique
research that may have t
place. The tensions and i
tencies within the biotech
are considered as a zone w
science fiction is put to w
negotiator and mode of le

In fact, science fiction ... is no longer anywhere, and it is ev-lar, biotechnology) is one of the mization. However, as cul
theorists such as Fredric
erywhere, in the circulation of models, here and now, in themost significant domains where Jameson and Jean Baudri
very principle of the surrounding simulation. issues pertaining to science, tech- suggest, science fiction

-Jean Baudrillard nology and power relationships fulfill a critical function, h

in society intersect, what possible ing the contingencies and

spaces are there for critically un-
Biology is becoming an information science ... and it will take
derstanding, analyzing and con-
increasingly powerful computers and software to gather, store,
tributing to the discussions over
analyze, model and distribute that information.
the future of medicine, health
-Ben Rosen, Chairman, Compaq Computer and normativity? In a domain
tions in biotech's self-fulfil
rative of future-medicine.
consideration of the emer
category of "net.art" prov
one starting point for a c
science fiction practice.

Corporation where concepts of health, dis- __

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-Richard Feynman
One of the significant characteristics of the last decade, and
the new millennium, is the way in which advancements in bio-
technology and medicine have come to the attention of the
public, through the media, as one of the primary areas in
which the future is being vigorously imagined. What distin-
guishes biotechnology from other sciences is the way in which
it is increasingly fusing genetic code with computer code, en-
capsulated in what Incyte Pharmaceuticals calls "point-and-
click biology" [1].
Likewise, the development of the Web, along with parallel
advancements in computer graphics and modeling, has made
possible a unique domain within the arts that has been vari-
ously called "new media" and "net.art." Combining elements
of programming, electronic writing, digital imaging and ani-
mation, virtual environments and streaming performances,
net.art is rapidly emerging as the cultural vanguard in tech-
nologically advanced cultures.
Linking these two trends (contemporary biotechnology and
net.art) is an array of computer-based technologies of simula-
tion and virtuality. In Jean Baudrillard's famous formulation,
the simulacra is the "copy without an original"; that is, the
logic of simulation proceeds through a paradoxical circuit in
which "the real" is lost at the very moment that it can be per-
fectly simulated [2]. Both biotechnology and net.art highlight
issues concerning the simulation of the real (for instance, in
medical imaging and simulation, or in the construction of in-
teractive virtual environments), though in very different ways.
Both also are engaged with computer, networking and
simulation technologies, which, at the same time, challenge
traditional notions of embodiment, presence and subjectivity.
This paper begins with an exceedingly difficult and com-
plex question: If contemporary "technoscience" (in particu-
ease, identity, race, gender and
mortality all inform "hard" sci-
ence research, such a question arises ou
ways in which a "biopolitics" is curr
through developments in the relations
genetics and computer technologies.
paper asks, and which will remain
whether the emerging category of n
critical space.
THE BIOTECH CENTURY
Molecular biotechnology is at the forefront of developments
in both science and technology, attracting both investment
capital as well as government endorsement, a recent example
being U.S. President Clinton's inauguration of the new mil-
lennium by namingJanuary 2000 as "National Biotechnology
Month" [3]. The president's statement was clear in its vision
of a future biotechnology in which medicine is both curative
and preventive, in large part due to advances in both molecu-
lar science and information technology. Such sentiments
were also echoed, at the same time, by a special section pre-
sented by Biospace.com, the leading hub for the biotech in-
dustry. Entitled "Biotech 2030: Eight Visions of the Future,"
articles and interviews with leading researchers followed
French Anderson's comments concerning gene therapy: "By
the year 2030, I think that there will be gene-based medicine
for essentially every disease. ... We will all know our indi-
vidual genetic weaknesses by then via chip technology.... It
should be possible to receive a gene or gene-based medicine
to alter how important genes are regulated, to prevent dis-
ease from occurring in the first place" [4].
Eugene Thacker (educator), Program in Comparative Literature, 205 Ruth Adams
Bldg., Douglas Campus, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, U.S.A. E-mail:
<maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu>.

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 What merits our attention here is that logical goal is the delineating of a technologies
total of simulation? In a text dis-
after a stormy decade that saw Dolly the space in which certain events occur; cussing
that "Simulacra and Science Fiction,"
sheep, human embryonic cloning, de-is, the construction of entire worldsJean that Baudrillard outlines a set of analo-
bates over human stem cell research, the operate according to their own distinct
gies between his theories of simulation
pressure put on the Human Genome and three
set of rules that form their own "reality" different modes of science fic-

Project by privatized genome mapping(what has been called the "ontological" tion [9]. Corresponding to Baudrillard's
projects, the boom of the pharmaceuti-mode in science fiction) [7]. Finally, first stage (that of "counterfeit" or classi-
cal industry (or "Big Pharma"), the pat- more and more genre science fiction is
cal modes of representation) is the cat-
enting of cell lines from indigenous coming to terms not just with technical egory of the utopia, the creation of a
populations, gene therapy tragedies and concerns, but also with social, cultural wholly different sphere whose primary
a plethora of new research technologies and political concerns. As such, the use intention is to stand in contrast to the
(including DNA chips, DNA fingerprint-of extrapolation or speculation and the real world (just as the counterfeit is
ing and DNA profiling), it is becomingconstruction of ontological worlds move qualitatively differentiated from the
science fiction into a realm that involves
clear that a certain type of futurological, original). Corresponding to the second
forward thinking is a key component tothinking about the complex dynamics stage of simulation (that of industrial
the continued development of the between technology and globalization, "production") is genre science fiction,
biotech industry and its future applica- science and gender, race and colonial- especially as characterized during the
tions in medicine and health care. ism, and related concerns. so-called "Golden Age." Here science
So then, we might pose our initial Such a complexification of science fic-
fiction operates according to its original
question in another way: In a domain tion definition given by Hugo Gernsback in
in has been highlighted by critics such
which the science-fictional future of bio- the 1930s: as "scientifiction," as the use
as Fredric Jameson as a critical function.
technology has always already arrived,In an article entitled "Progress versus of the knowledge of science and tech-
what functions does or can science fic- Utopia," Jameson articulates two critical nology to produce technically plausible
tion have? functions that science fiction can have (and entertaining) visions of the future
[8]. The first is characterized by the[10]. de- In the same way that industrialism
velopment of "future histories" or ways also implied automation, genre science
SCIENCE FICTION MODE
in which science fiction places itself in during the early part of the twen-
fiction
In order to approach such a question, relationit to history. Discussing sciencetieth
fic- century became heavily con-
will be helpful for us first to attempt tion asto the dialectical counterpart tostrained
the by the limitations of genre writ-
outline something like a "definition" genre ofof the historical novel, Jameson ing for pulp magazines (a constraint
contemporary science fiction. To be suggests
sure, that one of the primary roles thatofscience fiction was rarely to break
histories of science fiction as a genre science out of until the New Wave).
re- fiction is not to "keep the future
fer to as many definitions as there alive"
arebut to demonstrate the ways Finally, in corresponding to the third or-
movements or types of science fiction which visions of the future are first and der of simulacra (that of simulation it-
[5]. However, for our purposes here, foremost
we a means of understanding aself, in which the real becomes the
might begin with the following: science particular historical present. hyper-real, and representations become
fiction names a contemporary mode in
A second role Jameson ascribes to sci-copies-without-originals) is a zone that
which the techniques of extrapolation ence fiction is a more symptomatic one.Baudrillard does not or cannot name:
and speculation are utilized in a narra-Referencing the work of the Frankfurt"The most likely answer is that the good
School on the "utopian imagination," old imaginary of science fiction is dead
tive form, to construct near-future, far-fu-
science fiction can form a kind of cul-
ture or fantastic worlds in which science, and that something else is in the process
technology and society intersect. tural indicator of a culture's ability oforemerging" [11]. The crisis that
inability to imagine possible futures. Baudrillard
This is of course a provisional defini- For is isolating here is the
tion, but in it are three important Jameson,
com- writing during the high point gradual effacement of the distance that
ponents that characterize contemporary of postmodernism, science fiction had was traditionally enabled science fiction
science fiction (most often in fiction, an indicator of a pervasive loss of histo- to function as a mode of envisioning the
film and video games). The first ricity is theand the atrophying of the will future.
to Without the distance between

distinction between the methodologies critically imagine utopias. Thus, imagined not future and historical present,
of extrapolation and speculation only [6].
is each vision of the future condi-between virtual realities and real virtuali-

Generally speaking, extrapolationtioned is de-by a historical moment in which ties, between information and the thing-
fined as an imaginative extension ofimagined,
it is a itself, science fiction begins to lose its
but, increasingly, science
present condition, usually into a fiction's
future main concern is with the con- own placement in our culture. If the
world that is "just around the corner" tingency
or involved in producing thetechnologies
fu- that define the "informa-
even indistinguishable from the present ture, as well as interrogating the con- tion society" are predicated on their abil-
("the future is now"). By contrast, straints
specu-and limitations that enable the ity to create virtual spaces and mediated
lation involves a certain imaginative capacity to imagine the future at all.experiences that attempt to approximate
leap, in which a world (either in the dis- "the real," then the need for a separate
tant future or altogether unrelated) THE DISAPPEARANCE space of imaginative future world-build-
markedly different from the present is ing begins to disappear; in other words,
OF SCIENCE FICTION
constructed. As can be imagined, most science fiction begins to disappear. As
science fiction involves some combina- But what happens when the distance Baudrillard comments, "the models no
tion of these, culminating in worldsthat thatseparates the imagined future of sci- constitute either transcendence
longer
are at once strange and very familiar. ence fiction from the empirical reality of
or projection, they no longer constitute
Secondly, science fiction's narrato- a society is effaced through advanced the imaginary in relation to the real,

156 Thacker, The Science Fiction of Technoscience

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they are themselves an anticipation of culture (that is, of culture's critically the range of what it is possible to do and
the real, and thus leave no room for any commenting upon the intersection of what kinds of questions it is possible to
sort of fictional anticipation" [12]. society, science and technology). In-ask. This is a discourse informed by eco-
In such a scenario, the imaginative ca- stead, science fiction has come to be nomic imperative and the traditions of
pacity of fiction becomes irrelevant be- self-consciously embodied as part and"discovery science," but its mode of oper-
cause it is already built into the tech- parcel of the domains of biotech and ating is that of using extrapolation and
nologies themselves. To keep with our biomedicine. To take two examples: re-speculation to ask research-based ques-
theme of biotechnology, such a confu- searchers at the NASA Ames Center for tions of the present. The developments of
sion of technology and science fiction is Virtual Surgery explicitly utilize thethe DNA chip, neurosoftware implants,
seen in areas such as genomics and rhetoric of science fiction in a language
and tissue engineering are examples of
telemedicine, where "the model" is the infused with the giddiness of new tech-
this "precession" of science fiction.
genetic code of an individual subject, nologies. They clearly envision a future Finally, the ways in which science fic-
and the science fiction extrapolation is of telemedicine that would be at hometion is manifested in biotechnology re-
contained in the technical capacity for in the Cyberpunk worlds of Gibson, veals radical changes that ultimately
"disease profiling" (where susceptibility Sterling or Cadigan [13]. Their experi-
pose difficult philosophical and bio-ethi-
to genetic disease is read from an ment in the spring of 1999 of a three-
cal questions concerning the ways in
individual's genetic code) and a future way, fully simulated, telesurgical collabo-
which "health" and "normativity" will be
telesurgery (where surgeons focus on a ration is a concrete manifestation of defined in the future. Already, with the
computer simulation and not the pa- what the discourse of science fiction can
prevalence of genetic science, the no-
tient on which they are operating). make possible. Similarly, in a recent ar- tion of the genetic code as both preced-
If we take Baudrillard's basic claim ticle in Scientific American, researchers ing and forming an essential core of the
here (that, in the contemporary scene of
reporting on advances in tissue engi- subject is becoming a widespread no-
hyper-media and virtuality, science fictionneering made references to the founda- tion. The distance that separates the in-
is always already surpassed by technologi- tional visions of science fiction as the troduction of new ways of thinking ("I
cal advancement) we can begin to locate model for tissue engineering's ability am to my genetic code") with their natural-
anew the space left empty by Baudrillard grow tissues and organs in the lab: ization (through concrete practices) is
in the third order of simulacra. Put sim-
Promoting tissue and organ develop-the space of science fiction.
ply, the question is, if science fiction can ment via growth factors is obviously a
no longer play its traditional role of imag- considerable step forward. But it pales
THE SCIENCE FICTION
ining the future (because technological in comparison to the ultimate goal of
the tissue engineer: the creation fromOF NET.ART
advance has already virtualized the future
scratch of whole neo-organs. Science
for us), what happens to science fiction in fiction's conception of pre-fabricated This incorporation of science fiction by
the scene of simulation? "spare parts" is slowly taking shape intechnoscience is, certainly, not the most
the efforts to transplant cells directly to optimistic alliance between computer
the body that will then develop into the
THE SCIENCE FICTION technology and bio-technology, and it is a
proper bodily component [14].
complicated field, which contains as
OF TECHNOSCIENCE
This is, to be sure, a trend that has many promises as it does problems. How-
As third-order simulacra, science fiction
been with the technosciences for a long ever, looking at biotechnology and the
is not necessarily different from the tech-
time. But instead of functioning as an ex- ways it incorporates technologies of simu-
nologies and the sciences it narrativizes,
ternal promotional tool (that is, as a rhe- lation through the lens of science fiction
and in fact it creates the conditions for torical means of justification), science reveals some important tendencies.
fiction
their possibility. In fact, science fiction is now internally conditions and Clearly, the "science fiction" in
necessary in order for biotech and structures
bio- biotech research, finding itself technoscience is not the same "science
in the midst of governmental regulations fiction" that we are accustomed to in fic-
medicine to continue constructing their
over the possibility of human cloning, in tion and film. The science fiction in
narratives of technological advancement
and the increasing sophistication of thea new lines of automated software- technoscience does strategically utilize
biotechnology of the population. driven DNA sequencing machines, orextrapolation
in and speculation. It does
In other words, the functions and at-
the generation of financial investment create visions of future worlds in which
for the promises of biotech startups. advanced science and medicine have
tributes of genre science fiction (which
Given this formulation, we can cur-
still exist in genre science fiction, but new relations to disease and the body,
which can now only belatedly keeprently up see science fiction operatingand in in doing so it does make a comment
with developments in science and tech- three main ways with regards to the on the ways in which future biotechnol-
nology) have been incorporated by the biotech industry: ogy is largely dependent upon techno-
technosciences. As a powerful political First, science fiction operates as a
logical development to achieve this fu-
tool, science fiction enables the biotech meta-level discourse for the promotion,ture vision. Yet the critical function that
industry to create a narrative of a justification, potential application Jameson
and pointed to earlier, and which
bioinformatically based, disease-free, development of products and services was in danger of disappearing in the
corporate-managed future. In doing so, for the biotech industry. This can postmodern, be is markedly absent from
it is also creating a history, a self-fulfill-readily seen through press releases, stra-
the science fiction futures imaged by the
ing narrative of progress. biotech industry.
tegic corporate mergers, and advertising
What is unique about the manifesta- in specialist and non-specialist media. One way of discussing this is to mark
tion of science fiction at the opening of thea difference between science fiction in
Secondly, science fiction operates in
the biotech century is that science fic- more constitutive and foundational man- technoscience and science fiction as a
tion is no longer the proper domain of ner within biotech, actually conditioning cultural and critical activity. Incorpo-

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rated into technoscience (particularly
biotechnology), science fiction plays the
role of "actualization," the role of discur-
the construction of virtual environ- volves an imaginative leap, positing one or more
disjunctions with the empirical world which cannot
ments, tele-robotics and motion-capture,
be linearly extrapolated from the current state of
as well as an array of technologies for(p. 244).
affairs"

sive negotiator, with the main goal being presenting and broadcasting or Web
7. McHale [6] p. 247.
the emphasis on scientific advancement casting innovative work are all becoming
8. F. Jameson, "Progress versus Utopia; Or, Can We
and technological progress as the keys available not only to scientists butImagine
also to
the Future?" Science Fiction Studies 9, No. 27
to a realization of the future. In this (1982) pp. 147-158.
artists, performers, and cultural activists.
mode, science fiction's only purpose Theis challenge put forth to new 9. media
J. Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Science Fiction,"
to ensure the realization of the future art and net.art is thus to take up in J.this
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (Ann Ar-
critical function of science fiction and bor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997).
imaged by the biotech industry; science
fiction as an open-ended domain is re-insert
thus it back into the discourse of 10. Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967) is often referred
to as the father of genre science fiction. In the late
contemporary technoscience. This
displaced by science fiction as a pressing has
1920s, he began publishing a magazine called
concern for making the future a reality.already been happening in the intersec- Amazing Stories, which published a number of well-
By contrast, the science fiction that tions of art and technology for some known science fiction authors of the "Golden Age"
of science fiction. In addition, he formulated a
critics such asJameson, Donna Haraway, time, and it is taking new forms term with for a new type of fiction emerging at the turn
and others discuss is both critical and net.art and digital culture, with groups of the century (as exemplified by Verne and Wells):
"scientifiction," in which adventure and romance
multi-perspectival. In other words,such the as Critical Art Ensemble, Mongrel,
plots were combined with elements from science
critical mode of science fiction is not Fakeshop and Biotech Hobbyistand
[15].
technology (primarily physics, astronomy, engi-
about "actualization" but about "potenti- neering).
Whereas literary science fiction was lim-
ited to describing technologies in11. ex-
ality." Here potentiality serves to signify Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Science Fic-
trapolative, near-future scenarios,
futures that may exist, as well as futures new
tion," in Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation,
Sheila Faria Glaser, trans. (Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of
that will not exist (or that should not ex- and net.art contain the capacity to
media Michigan Press, 1994) p. 121.
ist-the critical function of the dysto-
actually embody and utilize these "future
12. Baudrillard [11] p. 122.
pia). Science fiction as potentialitytechnologies"
thus in radically new ways. In
13. More information on the NASA Ames Virtual
signifies a certain mobility to the ancat-
important way, then, such projects are
Collaborative Clinic can be found at:
egory of the potential (as what reserves
science fiction in as much as they utilize
<biocomp.arc.nasa.gov/teleMed/vcc.htm
the strategies of science fiction to ask
the right not to exist as well as to exist).
14. D. Mooney and A. Mikos, "Growing
Regarded as potentiality, as the workimportant
of questions concerning the fu-
gans," Scientific American 280, No. 4 (
imagining critical futures, science fiction
ture of the human-machine relationship.
1993) p. 62.
is not locked into the narrow path of 15. For some years, Critical Art Ensemble <http://
References and Notes
simply realizing the future or actualizing critical-art.net> has been critically re-appropriating
it. In this sense science fiction can serve the performativities of the biotech industry in pre-
1. For more on Incyte's approach to bioinformatics
sentations utilizing in vitro fertilization technolo-
a critical function, and it can do this by<http://www.incyte.com>.
see gies, cryonics and genotyping. Mongrel <http://
creating mobile zones whose primary 2. in- www.mongrel.org.uk> has been investigating the
J. Baudrillard, Simulations (New York: Semio-
deployment of race and biological determinism in
tention is to comment upon, and inter- text(e), 1983).
net culture through the development of critical
vene in, the "history of the present." software
3. S. O'Brien, "Biotech Industry Gets Clinton's En- and imaging applications. Through the
However, this distinction between sci-dorsement," CBS Marketwatch, 20 January use 2000of networked bodies in virtual and physical
<http://cbs.marketwatch.com>. The president's spaces, Fakeshop <http://www.fakeshop.com> is
ence fiction as actualization (science fic-
statement can be found at the White House web exploring the capacity of science fiction to re-
tion as it is manifested in technoscience)
site: <http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov>. contextualize the body. Biotech Hobbyist, a project
and science fiction as potentiality (sci- initiated by Natalie Jereminjenko and Heath
4. "Biotech 2030: Eight Visions of the Bunting, Future," promotes a DIY approach to biotechnol-
ence fiction as a critical mode) should
Biospace.com, 6January 2000 <http://www.biospace. ogy, offering tactics for growing human tissue and
not simply mean a return to the kindcom>.
of engineering plant seeds.
literary, dystopian science fiction works
5. Recent histories of science fiction include Brian
that served an earlier historical moment. Aldiss's Trillion Year Spree: A History of Science Fiction
(London: Gollancz, 1986) and EdwardJames's Sci-
In the same way that science fiction has
ence Fiction in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, U.K.:
been embodied in the very techniques
Oxford Manuscript
Univ. Press, 1994). A good reference work received 31 May 2000.
and technologies of the biotech industry
is J. Clute and P. Nicholls, eds., The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction (New York: St. Martin's, 1995).
(especially in its use of computer simula-
tion and the Web), science fiction can 6. In Constructing Postmodernism (New York:
Eugene
Routledge, 1992), Brian McHale discusses the dif- Thacker teaches technology and cul-
also work from within these technologies
ferences between extrapolation and speculation:
ture at Rutgers University, where he directs
to create points of slippage, fissures "Extrapolative
in SF begins with the current state of
[techne], a new media organization. He cur-
the production of homogenous futures. the empirical world ... and proceeds ... to con-
rentlyor
struct a world which might be a future extension lives in New York, where he is an editor
Continuing developments in the areas consequence
of at The
of the current state of affairs" (p. Thing and Alt-X Digital Publishing
computer animation, 3D modeling and 244). "Speculative world-building, by contrast, in-
and is working with Fakeshop.

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