Ayn Rand and the Posthuman The Mind-Made Future [Hardcover]

Ayn Rand and the Posthuman is a study of the American novelists relationship with twenty-first-century ideas about technology. Rand wrote science fiction that has inspired Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, politicians, and economists. Ben Murnane demonstrates Rands connection to, and impact on, those with a posthuman vision, in which human and machine merge. The text examines the philosophical intersections between Rands philosophy of Objectivism and posthumanism, and Rands influence on transhumanism, a major branch of posthumanist thought. The book further investigates Rands presence and portrayal in various examples of posthumanist science fiction, including Gene Roddenberrys Andromeda, popular videogame BioShock, and Zoltan Istvans novel The Transhumanist Wager. Considering Rands influence from a cultural, political, technological, and economic perspective, this study throws light on an under-documented but highly significant aspect of Rands legacy.

Chapter 1: Introduction: A Posthuman Objective.- Chapter 2: Points of Entry.- Chapter 3: The Posthuman and the Objectivist.- Chapter 4: Rand Noir vs Rand Incorporated.- Chapter 5: Objectivism in BioShock.- Chapter 6: Howard Roark, John Galt, and The Transhumanist Wager.- Chapter 7: Afterword: The Mind-Made Future.

Ben Murnane was born in 1984. He is the author of a memoir, Two in a Million (2008), and a collection of poetry, Feather Silence (2010), and has written for several newspapers and academic publications. He completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland in 2016.