Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis: The Evolution of Body and City in Science Fiction Narratives

Abstract

This essay explores changes over time in the depiction of spatiality in narratives of machine-human hybrid embodiments, as humans have imagined and reimagined their relationship to technology and the physical environment. In particular, I focus on the way that the city is imagined and depicted vis-à-vis its opposite—the wilderness, the unsophisticated provinces, or the suburbs, depending on the time period—and how changing visions of the city parallel changes in the way people conceptualize human embodiment.