Male/female, white/black, mind/body: the ways in which we think about ourselves and others can be reduced to apparently simple dichotomies based on the body. But these fundamental distinctions, part of our thought since the time of the ancient Greeks, face irrevocable breakdown as we stand on the edge of revolutions in artificial intelligence, robotics and genetic engineering that will change for ever what these oppositions attempt to define: what it means to be human.

Anne Cranny-Francis gives a lucid and stylish introduction to the ways in which the body is represented in literature and films such as the Terminator series, Blade Runner and Educating Rita. Her clear, considered analysis shows how these representations are used as critiques of our society by writers on gender, sexuality, race and class, and describes how these representations have changed the relationships between our understandings of the body and the ways in which we live and think about our world.