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The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Auth...

Long, Aaron M.

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The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles./
Author:	Long, Aaron M.
Published:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2020,
Description:	249 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 82-02, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International82-02A.
Subject:	Design. -
Online resource:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=27998990
ISBN:	9798662554238

The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles.
Long, Aaron M.

The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2020 - 249 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 82-02, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Kansas, 2020.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

Whereas many have surmised that the technological vision for biorobotics originated with science fiction, it actually originated much earlier, in a constellation of science-influenced works of fiction in the romance tradition little-known as the "scientific romance". The scientific romance has been suppressed by science fiction scholarship, and this suppression has occluded science fiction's own connection with a history of imperial politics, including imperialism's appropriation of scientific inquiry for its own ends. As nineteenth-century scientists sought to legitimize their research in terms of imperial priorities, anatomists and physiologists lent their discoveries to the technological development of vehicles that would reshape society economically and militarily. These vehicles, patterned after the bodies of nonhuman animals and designed to replicate their locomotion, are called "mechanimals". Samuel Butler elided the difference between animal and machine by imagining mechanical development in evolutionary terms, which also portrayed machines as extensions of the self in space. He saw the technological ingenuity required to develop such machines as essentially British, and argued that this is why the British Empire would outrun its European competitors. Jules Verne designed the mechanimal body by refining the designs of the vessels the Royal Navy used in polar exploration, ultimately imagining a cetacean submarine that solved the problems and surmounted the obstacles faced by surface ships. His machines' effectiveness, predicated on their biomimicry, imbued the biomimetic with an aura of futurism. Tom Greer drew attention to the fact that, when he was writing in 1885, Ireland was scientifically more advanced than England, and imagined the Irish Rising that would occur should a scientifically-educated Irishman develop a flying-machine before the English did. In contrast with the wonder Verne's machines inspired, Greer incited terror, particularly at the notion that a flying-machine would bypass the English Channel and the Irish Sea, making England more susceptible to invasion than ever. H.G. Wells commingled wonder and terror in The War in the Air, which reads as a propagandistic attempt to get the Americans to develop mechanimal vehicles since England, Wells's own country, was technologically lagging. This was one part of Wells's oeuvre, which he used to influence the modern future throughout the world.

ISBN: 9798662554238Subjects--Topical Terms:

518875
Design.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Biomimicry

The Rise of the Mechanimal: How Authors of Scientific Romances Imagined Future Vehicles.
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520 $a Whereas many have surmised that the technological vision for biorobotics originated with science fiction, it actually originated much earlier, in a constellation of science-influenced works of fiction in the romance tradition little-known as the "scientific romance". The scientific romance has been suppressed by science fiction scholarship, and this suppression has occluded science fiction's own connection with a history of imperial politics, including imperialism's appropriation of scientific inquiry for its own ends. As nineteenth-century scientists sought to legitimize their research in terms of imperial priorities, anatomists and physiologists lent their discoveries to the technological development of vehicles that would reshape society economically and militarily. These vehicles, patterned after the bodies of nonhuman animals and designed to replicate their locomotion, are called "mechanimals". Samuel Butler elided the difference between animal and machine by imagining mechanical development in evolutionary terms, which also portrayed machines as extensions of the self in space. He saw the technological ingenuity required to develop such machines as essentially British, and argued that this is why the British Empire would outrun its European competitors. Jules Verne designed the mechanimal body by refining the designs of the vessels the Royal Navy used in polar exploration, ultimately imagining a cetacean submarine that solved the problems and surmounted the obstacles faced by surface ships. His machines' effectiveness, predicated on their biomimicry, imbued the biomimetic with an aura of futurism. Tom Greer drew attention to the fact that, when he was writing in 1885, Ireland was scientifically more advanced than England, and imagined the Irish Rising that would occur should a scientifically-educated Irishman develop a flying-machine before the English did. In contrast with the wonder Verne's machines inspired, Greer incited terror, particularly at the notion that a flying-machine would bypass the English Channel and the Irish Sea, making England more susceptible to invasion than ever. H.G. Wells commingled wonder and terror in The War in the Air, which reads as a propagandistic attempt to get the Americans to develop mechanimal vehicles since England, Wells's own country, was technologically lagging. This was one part of Wells's oeuvre, which he used to influence the modern future throughout the world.
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