Beyond High-Tech Posthumanism: Biological Survival, Ethics of Care, and the Science-Fiction Short Story — A Critical Review

Abstract

Posthumanism has become an influential framework in contemporary literary studies, particularly in scholarship on science fiction and post-apocalyptic narratives. Much existing work has prioritized technologically driven imaginaries of the posthuman—artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and digital embodiment—often treating technological transformation as the primary horizon of posthuman existence. By contrast, narratives that foreground biological survival, ecological constraint, collective regulation, and ethics of care have received comparatively limited sustained attention, especially within science-fiction short stories. This review revisits key debates in posthuman theory and post-apocalyptic criticism through a sustained engagement with short-form speculative fiction. By synthesizing posthumanism, ecological thought, ethics of care, and science-fiction short-story studies, the paper argues that short stories offer a distinctive space for imagining posthuman survival as embodied, relational, and regulated rather than technologically transcendent. While the review does not claim to exhaust the field, it highlights significant gaps in existing scholarship and outlines directions for a more materially grounded posthuman literary criticism.