Anthropological aspects of the problem of immortality in modern science fiction literature

Abstract

The paper deals with the peculiarities of the interpretation of the problem of immortality in the English-language science fiction literature of the late 20th 21st centuries. On the example of the works of R. Sawyer, P. Watts, G. Egan, N. Stevenson, V. Vinge, the author analyzes various ways of considering anthropological aspects of the problem of immortality in science fiction, related to the rethinking of the goals and meaning of existence in the case of the implementation of a transhumanist project to extend the human life. The author concludes that in modern science fiction the theme of immortality is presented in the form of two main options: physical immortality, which implies the impossibility of separating human consciousness from the brain as its material carrier, and digital immortality, associated with a hypothetical technology for scanning consciousness and moving it into a virtual world. Considering these options for immortality, science fiction writers discover in them both technological and humanitarian problems: firstly, it is the unattainability of real immortality, associated with the finiteness of the existence of the universe and (in the second version) with the technical impossibility of eternally ensuring the functioning of the virtual world. Secondly, this is the problem of the semantic fullness of immortal existence, recognized by all the listed writers, associated with the need for a person to set new long-term goals, and, in the case of digital immortality, the problem of rethinking by a person who has turned into pure consciousness, his own nature and acceptance of virtual reality as the only option for him. In general, the ways of revealing the theme of immortality in modern science fiction literature make it possible to see in the transhumanist concepts of immortality a serious anthropological problem related to the fact that the improvement of a persons physical and intellectual abilities will have to entail a change in his consciousness and self-awareness, but to predict the character and the result of such changes is much more difficult than to predict the results of physical modifications of the human body.