Computing Technologies and Science Fiction Cinema

The chapter privileges the body as being key to understanding our intricate relationship with the latest advances in computing and robotics in contemporary societies. In doing so, it critically entrenches with a specific movement called “new materialism,” whereby matter is not perceived as fixed or passive but rather as a dynamic and shifting process. Specifically, the author stresses the importance of approaching popular representations of the so-called “body in transit,” as this shifting idea of corporeality reflects contemporary anxieties and interests fueled by the relationship between physical bodies, computing technologies, and gender representation. For this purpose, this chapter will focus on the notion of the fluid body or “body in transit” as represented in US popular Sci-Fi cinema to contend that this posthuman figuration is still informed by gendered practices and dominant structures of power, despite its hybrid nature.