Contemporary Chinese cyborg narratives highlight the characteristics of Chinese science fiction. This is manifested in three specific ways: first, the high-tech anti-hero narrative, which expresses the concerns of Chinese science fiction writers about the conflict between humans and machines and their worries about the future society of artificial intelligence; second, the exploration of the cyborg image in ancient Chinese thinking and concepts, using dreams to connect the relationship between humans and machines and to ponder the nature of humanity; and third, to use the cyborg as a cultural practice and social adjustment for human alienation, and to place it in the context of Chinese history and culture to rethink the relationship between past and present, tradition and modernity, and human and non-human, and to attempt to achieve a new balance in the relationship between humans and machines and a stable future.

This paper returns to the vexed question of the status and meaning of “science” for science fiction (SF) and its criticism, examining the widespread tendency in contemporary SF criticism to downplay the role that science and scientific rationality play in defining SF. Prominent theorists have argued that SF “has no essence” (Rieder, “On Defining SF”) and that “sf will include more and more assemblages involving incongruous ontologies…. as naturalized alternative rationalities” (Csicsery-Ronay, “Global SF”). While this embracing of hybridity, often accompanied by claims regarding the perceived emancipatory potential of what are called “alternative sciences” or "alternative epipstemologies," responds to a progressive sociopolitical desire to foster inclusion and combat (Western) technoscientific hegemony, this paper argues that settling uncritically with the notion of the "non-essence" of SF would bring about more mystification than clarity, both in terms of our study of SF literary history, and of SF’s potential progressivism. One problem is that this critical tendency is based on a view science as inherently tied to sociopolitical exploitation: however, as this paper seeks to show, this judgement rests on a fallacy in fact-value distinction that the humanities, and literary studies in particular, have strikingly contributed to perpetuate. Furthermore, thinkers such as Indian cultural critic Meera Nanda or Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm have shown that the secularization of consciousness promoted by the transition from mythic to scientific rationality often acts as the truly emancipatory force able to oppose certain “local” and “traditional” practices and beliefs that enable the oppression of women and cultural minorities, thus problematizing any association of science or rationality per se with either emancipatory or oppressive social mores. Finally, the paper suggests that erasing the distinction between the science of SF and other worldviews and ontologies (“folkloric, mythological, supernatural” are some of those mentioned by Csicsery-Ronay) as expressed in other fictional genres also erases the historical and cognitive/existential specificity of SF (historian David Wootton, philosopher Michael Strevens, and physicist Carlo Rovelli are among the most brilliant explainers of the various aspects of such specificity regarding science). The paper thus proposes that rather than expanding our definition of science fiction to the point of unrecognizability, we should instead rely on the ample spectrum of possibilities afforded by the umbrella-label speculative fiction, actually able to encompass ontologies other than science’s naturalism.

Argentine author Ricardo Piglia’s 1992 novel The Absent City is often classified as science fiction, primarily because of its female cyborg, the Macedonio machine. With the help of the exiled Hungarian engineer Russo, Macedonio transplants the consciousness of his deceased wife Elena into a mechanical device, thus creating a cyborg that transcends the simple “organism-machine” and possesses the body of a machine and the soul of a human being who is capable of storytelling. Rather than placing the novel in a futuristic context, Piglia situates the narrative within the period of Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-1983). Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, serves as the stage of the story, a city on the periphery of the Western-dominated global power structure, yet caught up in the wave of cybernetics. In this way, Piglia creates a space that moves beyond linear history, offering a platform to reflect on the complexities of human history while simultaneously considering the potential of a rapidly advancing digital future. The novel parodies the Huemul Project of the Perón government, and critiques patriarchal capitalism, militarism’s dedication to the technological development for its own sake, as exemplified by Argentinean nuclear energy research in the broader context of the Cold War-era global nuclear arms race. Within this historical context,the novel is rich in cyborg figures, both technical and metaphorical. Due to disembodiment and forced immortality in the form of information, Elena loses the ability to perceive the world through sense. This loss brings a profound sense of emptiness and existential confusion, resulting in a crisis of identity and subjectivity. From Elena’s absent body, Piglia reflects on the two dominant pursuits of modern technology: the creation of artificial life and the resurrection of the dead. Through the figures of Arana, a doctor with aluminum teeth who is as cold as a machine, and Fujita, an emasculated spy engaged in surveillance, Piglia interrogates the blurred boundaries between man and machine. The novel explores modern humanity’s anxiety in the face of technological advancement and reveals the potential crises faced by cyborged humans.

Flowers for Algernon is a classic science fiction novel by American author Daniel Keyes, published in 1959. It was awarded the Hugo Award in 1959 and the Nebula Award in 1966. Sixty years later, since the Chinese translation was published in 2015, the novel has sparked a "resonant" reading trend, particularly from 2022 to 2024, becoming one of the most influential science fiction works among the Chinese public. The narrative employs the story of Charlie, a protagonist with intellectual disabilities, using technological enhancement of intelligence as a catalyst, to fulfill a plot structure and emotional interaction of "nostalgia-acceleration-equilibrium". It also reflects on technological ethics and the acceleration of individuals throughout this process.

Acceleration is a defining characteristic of the technological era, and "nostalgia" represents an intuitive resistance to this acceleration. The "nostalgia" here refers to that which bears the marks of primitive and backward within the linear progression of technological rationality. In the novel, the societal acceleration of technology discards the appreciation of emotions and the attachment to things. Daniel Keyes adeptly perceived the crisis of acceleration lurking behind the progressive development brought about by technological rationality. Acceleration is not only a matter of daily and emotional experience but also a technological issue, which technology has already or will push to an unimaginable extent. The novel cruelly expresses the aspect of technological acceleration through a lobotomy, offering a warm and romantic narrative, and serves as an important representative reflecting on the future societal technological issues through the narrative of science fiction.

Technological progress has disrupted the integrity of life and the experience of growth. From the moment Charlie developed social awareness, he struggled between being accelerated or abandoned, without contemplating alternatives beyond these two. An accelerated life is another form of "precocity" and "aging", and the anxiety and fear for acceleration are also part of the process of adapting. Keyes imagines a view of natural balance as the ultimate means after nostalgia and acceleration, it is suggested that the explosive intellectual growth achieved through technological acceleration is unsustainable. The novel provides a vision of the near future that creates a "dislocation" of perception with China's compressed modernity, as the science fiction imagination of the near future from the 1960s now resonates with the echoes of the era. The near future of science fiction is impending yet not arrived, while the acceleration brought by technology has already impacted people's lives. Chinese readers' resonance with the nostalgic emotions in the novel, their extension of the anxiety about acceleration, and their reflection on the ultimate balance, is akin to picking up the Flowers for Algernon here and now.

As a contemporary American science fiction writer, Paolo Bacigalupi has always paid close attention to the ecological problems that have emerged since the 21st century, such as soil erosion, ocean pollution, species extinction, declining vegetation, climate deterioration, etc. This phenomenon is particularly salient in the context of near-future food imagination, where the confluence of natural factors and man-made factors, gives rise to a dystopian scene of “food apocalypse”. In works such as The Windup Girl, The Calorie Man, Pump Six, and The People of Sand and Slag, Paolo Bacigalupi explores a speculative approach, utilizing science fiction as an experiment to discuss potential solutions to the food crisis. By imagining the food system in the Near Future to shed light on the ecological challenges confronting the human world, The author posits a hypothetical scenario in which an unaltered human might have been able to achieve self-rescue through the severe shortage of food. However, the strategies employed to adapt to human survival by “Transform Nature”, such as gene-editing and the construction of dams, have instead accelerated the deterioration of the global environment and exacerbated regional tensions. It has even a direct impact on the human body, resulting in fertility disorders, epidemics, etc. The “Transform Nature” has led to a vicious cycle of self-rescue for the human group. Therefore, Bacigalupi has proposed a novel solution to the problem of food scarcity, by transforming the human body to create newcomers who have the capabilities to adapt to the “food apocalypse”. This involves a more varied nutritional intake and the ability to effectively cope with the problems caused by the decline of species, the homogenization of crops, and the toxicity of food. However, the imagination of posthumans adapting to nature actually obscures the pressing need to solve the food crisis and leave the ecological problems to the descendants as posthumans. The future in Bacigalupi’s works is generally characterized by a pessimistic outlook, with a notable absence of initiatives aimed at aiding the environment, and these experiments do not incorporate the efforts of “Restore Ecology”, whether involving the adaptation of nature to humanity or the creation of new species to adapt to an apocalyptic environment. The prospect of ecology writing in science fiction, as well as a potential method for avoiding ecological predicaments such as “food apocalypse ”, can only be realized by treating human beings as part of the whole ecology, by establishing the ecological community where human beings coexist with the planet Earth, and braking the further deterioration of ecology while implementing environmental restoration.