Illustrative Mechanism and Fantastic Organism in Postmodern American Science Fiction

Postmodern American science fiction authors often dramatize the human fear and hope for the newly emerging artificial life forms. For example, Helen as an advanced artificial intelligence Richard Power's Galatea 2.2 shows that the student's memorizing efforts for exams can be useless someday. In Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash machines are liable to be infected with viruses like human bodies. In He, She and It, Piercy's parallel of an artificial human (Yod) and a mythic personification (Golem) allegorically reveals the pandora-like unpredictable effect of advanced technology. More than the mechanical entities (the diffusion and linear models for Latour), these biologically artificial entities reveal the limitations of even the fantastically idealized technology simply because the human being as the creators or impersonators of these machines are not perfect. Compared to illustrative mechanism, biologically artificial entities (Latour's transition or whirlwind models) are inherently rebellious because of their closeness to the creators. The Butler's organic environmental interaction of the Earthseed convincingly demonstrates how the wrong use of science ruins the holy earth and also how human beings survive through the right use of effective science with the aid of anthroposophy.