Book Review:

Review of Michael Bérubé’s The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species, Columbia University Press, 2024. 312 pp. Hardcover (ISBN: 978-0231215046). Paperback (ISBN: 978-0231215053). Kindle (ASIN: B0CSVL62H1). 

Michael Bérubé’s The Ex-Human: Science Fiction and the Fate of Our Species offers a dynamic contribution to both science fiction studies and to the ongoing scholarly question of the human(ities). His discussion moves between his own home, the planetary, our solar system, and beyond, reflecting on nearly six decades of literary visions of humanity’s end (and what comes next). In the Introduction, Bérubé provides an overview of two scholarly and cultural conversations central to The Ex-Human: the Anthropocene and posthumanism. The two are united for Bérubé by their shared interest in “learning to die,” which he approaches via Roy Scranton and Rosi Braidotti. Bérubé’s answer to the question, “How are we to think collectively about learning to die in the Anthropocene?” (13) is to explore works of science fiction that offer constructions of what he terms “the ex-human.” The most pointed definition of Bérubé’s “ex-human” comes in his response to Naomi Jacobs’s query: “What [is there] in such a vengeful and xenophobic humanity to which any rational being would wish to remain loyal?” (184-185). “If you answer this question, as I do, with ‘nothing,’” writes Bérubé, “you are well on your way to becoming ex-human” (185). This dissolution of loyalty to the concept of the human species, as such, is the subject of the following chapters. The concept of the ex-human is, as the name suggests, defined by negation and absence, which makes the term productively flexible in some places and difficult to pin down in others.

Bérubé writes in a deliberately conversational style, seeking to appeal to students, interested academics, and “readers who worry that climate change will eventually bring about civilizational collapse and hasten human extinction” (xv)—though the conclusions he reaches may do little to assuage such a reader’s well-warranted concerns. Nonetheless, the text is citationally rich, touching not only on the eponymous science fiction and “humanity” discourses but also demonstrating Bérubé’s expertise in disability studies, critical race theory, studies of imperialism and colonialism, and theories of gender and sexuality. Bérubé’s methodology also pays ample attention to the influence of pedagogy and insights from students on the trajectory of his work.

Chapter One focuses primarily on Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which Bérubé argues contains “a hopeful version of becoming at least partly human” (31). In her vision of interstellar civilization, LeGuin suggests ambivalent possibilities for both “the absolute regimentation of each life toward the goal of racial survival” (55) and “the attenuated kind of hope” (56) offered by sociocultural exchange with alien civilizations. In considering LeGuin’s contribution to the ex-human, Bérubé offers a well-curated overview of the scholarly conversation about gender in Left Hand, as well as a reflection on the importance of political organization to the novel’s plot. Perhaps most significantly, however, Bérubé furthers discussions of colonial legacies in science fiction by examining the linguistic and communicative barriers facing protagonist Genly Ai and his Gethenian guide, Estraven. Bérubé considers Estraven and Genly’s relationship through the fraught anthropological lens of the “native informant,” highlighting the “incommensurable” in linguistic and cultural exchange that measures an “incommunicable communicative impasse” (53). This formulation troubles classic science fiction narratives of intergalactic colonization and frames the difficulty of inter-species exchange.

Chapter Two poses a simple but striking question in its opening lines: “What makes people give up on the human race?” (59). The first half of the chapter is dedicated to a discussion of Liu Cixin’s 2008 novel The Three Body Problem, whose central character, Ye Wenjie, offered Bérubé the perspective through which he read “all the novels and films [in The Ex-Human]” (5). Ye’s perspective, influenced by witnessing China’s violent Cultural Revolution and rampant environmental destruction, is that humanity is fundamentally evil and, therefore, that extraterrestrial intervention is necessary to save us from ourselves. This point of view, central not only to Three Body Problem but also to Bérubé’s approach to The Ex-Human, is complicated as Bérubé points out the joint fallacies of believing that either “humans will come together in the face of massive threats” (74) or that “a more technologically advanced society must perforce be a more enlightened and benevolent society” (77). Though the novel thus rejects intergalactic intervention, Bérubé nonetheless argues that this ex-human perspective—neither actively seeking the downfall of humanity nor clinging to the stable continuity of the species—is “the best of [the] profoundly unattractive options” (82) available to Ye. The second half of the chapter explores how Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake and the rest of her MaddAddam trilogy reaches similar conclusions issuing from similarly profound disillusionment with humankind. Bérubé argues that, by taking on “the perspective of the biosphere” (86), genetic engineer/genocidal bioterrorist Crake takes on a kind of planetary vision in which the human species itself is the ultimate enemy. This point of view supports the ex-human conclusion that “the guileless-but-gormless Crakers [are no] worse than what we ourselves [humans] will have become” (98), and “[nothing] of value is lost… if these people and their shitty societies disappear” (102).

Continuing this more nihilistic bent of the ex-human, Chapter Three considers Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick and Clarke) from the same year. It also discusses, to a briefer extent, the The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski 1999) and The Terminator (Cameron 1984) franchises. To The Matrix, Terminator, and Androids, Bérubé attributes an attitude of helplessness and despair: “[these] narratives that try to explain why we should keep the mantle and continue to call the shots… actually make a strong case that we should give up and let the machines take over” (106). In a discussion that thoughtfully incorporates disability studies, animal studies, and (briefly) affect theory, Bérubé points out the merit of ex-human logic in dystopian worlds where human carelessness, greed, and violence have left nothing of the Earth to inherit but a wasteland. The latter half of Chapter Three is dedicated to 2001, where Bérubé persuasively argues that Discovery 1 should have been an unmanned mission. Here, the ex-human perspective valorizes an intelligent machine (HAL), which is capable of doing what humans cannot or should not. Offering a slightly more positive view than his earlier conversations on the wasteland, Bérubé’s reading of 2001 “offers a strangely hopeful version of AI in which [humans] are ultimately superfluous: here, handing the keys to HAL and his ilk is not a surrender but an advance” (145).

The book’s fourth and final chapter examines Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, its 1998 sequel Parable of the Talents, and her Lilith’s Brood trilogy (1987, 1988, and 1989). Bérubé’s reading of the Parables outlines several of the book’s classic science fiction elements, such as company towns and manned space flight, and also draws timely parallels between the ‘90s novels and the recent Trump administration and its aftermath. It is in his discussion of Lilith’s Brood, however, that Bérubé locates “the most compelling vision of the ex-human in science fiction” (147). This ideal seems to fall with Lilith’s Brood not only because in the series “humans will no longer exist as a distinct species” (169) due to our colonization by the alien Oankali, but also, it seems, because of Butler’s deliberate ambivalence toward that fact—a theme echoing Bérubé’s previous chapters. Bérubé asserts that his chief interest is in how Butler’s human characters respond to the Oankali; not unlike Ye and Crake in Chapter Two, or those who cede the wasteland to the machines in Chapter Three, Lilith ultimately decides—in Bérubé’s words—“I have finally had enough of these stupid, unbearable, murderous assholes. Whatever the Oankali are doing, it’s going to be better than this shit” (195). Bérubé seems to take Lilith’s Brood as his principal example of the ex-human, then, precisely because Butler so intentionally meditates on ex-human ethics, then decides to insist upon the ex-human anyway.

In this chapter, it is surprising that Bérubé does not cite some of the many Black studies scholars whose work seems eminently relevant to his study of the ex-human, such as Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Frank Wilderson, Calvin Warren, and Sylvia Wynter. For instance, Warren’s concept of onticide or Wynter’s “Towards the Human, After Man” would deepen and complicate Bérubé’s ex-human concept and his approach to the literature. The Ex-Human is quite theoretically robust and Bérubé does diligently discuss issues of race and white supremacist violence in science fiction at several points. However, the thorough citation of other fields of scholarship, particularly in his detailed endnotes, only makes it more apparent that referencing this body of scholarship would have been a worthwhile addition to Bérubé’s discussion.

In an Epilogue that opens with a sustained reflection on the COVID-19 pandemic and a post-but-not-really-post Trump America, Bérubé once again asserts his personal stance that “I’ve had to lower my standards. Faced with the Make Earth Great Again resistance, I say you’re doing fine, Oankali” (211). Despite Bérubé’s appeals to the ex-human, this is a conclusion that I suspect not all readers will readily agree with—not only because it is challenging to “detach oneself from one’s own species” (90) but also because of the routine sexual violence that serves as the condition of possibility for the Oankali’s world (172). Nonetheless, it is a conclusion that feels merited by Bérubé’s ruminations throughout The Ex-Human. His return to the subject of “learning to die” in the conclusion offers perhaps a more accessible call to action for his audience: echoing the ambivalent and troubled tones of the authors he explores in this text, Bérubé writes, “We must go on. We can’t go on. We’ll go on. But fiction will always remind us that another world is possible, and it may indeed be possible that some of those worlds are places none of us… want to live in. In which case it only makes sense to consider all our options” (213). The Ex-Human compellingly maps out the terrain that enables such consideration. It is a worthy read for anyone seeking to put into words their dissatisfaction with what the human is, and possibilities for what it might (cease to) be.

-September 3, 2024