From human to posthuman bias: mapping discrimination in futuristic societies through speculative fiction

This study investigates the morphologies of bias in speculative fiction that depict futures populated by augmented humans, artificial intelligences, sentient machines, other posthuman entities, and algorithmically governed societies. It maps how traditional vectors of discrimination, such as race, gender, class, color, creed, and species, are reimagined, displaced, or re-entrenched in these fictional worlds. The study addresses bias through three interrelated dimensions: ontological, epistemological, and ethical. Proceeding from the premise that technological advancement may alter both the lexicon and locus of discrimination, the research argues that the underlying logics of exclusion and hierarchy persist, often in more insidious or abstract forms and harder to perceive and resist because they are cloaked in the rhetoric of neutrality, objectivity, and efficiency. Moreover, such narratives frequently imagine emergent forms of bias and exclusion, projecting how new hierarchies might develop in posthuman societies where categories such as biological intelligence, machine consciousness, or access to data and enhancement technologies create fresh axes of privilege and marginalization. To ground these theoretical concerns, this study examines speculative fiction including Luminous by Silvia Park, Death of the Author and Noor by Nnedi Okorafor, Machinehood by S.B. Divya, The Passenger by John Marrs, and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Through close textual analysis, it explores how these narratives represent both the persistence of inherited bias and the emergence of novel discriminatory structures in technologically mediated worlds.