Fiction about technology has a long and equivocal trajectory, reflecting our ambivalent relationship with it. Over the course of time and across cultures, the response to technology in imaginative literature has vacillated between celebration and apprehension. Some stories, like More’s Utopia or Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, establish and reinforce the dominant narrative; others, like Dicken’s Hard
... [Show full abstract] Times or DeLillo’s Underworld, challenge that narrative, warning of the dangers and damages technology poses and causes. While some fiction portrays our successful assimilation and use of technology, these stories more often mirror our unease and struggle with it. For most authors, technology has been an ominous presence—more menacing and malevolent than comforting and benevolent. As the literary narratives make clear, technology penetrates and complicates our lives.