Uplift (science fiction)


In science fiction, uplift is the intervention in the evolution of species of low-intelligence or even nonsapient species in order to increase their intelligence. This is usually accomplished by cultural, technological, or evolutionary interventions such as genetic engineering. The earliest appearance of the concept is in H. G. Wells's 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. The term was popularized by David Brin in his Uplift series in the 1980s.

History

The concept of uplift can be traced to H. G. Wells's 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which the titular scientist transforms animals into horrifying parodies of humans through surgery and psychological torment. The resulting animal-people obsessively recite the Law, a series of prohibitions against a reversion to animal behaviors, with the haunting refrain of "Are we not men?". Wells's novel reflects Victorian concerns about vivisection and the power of unrestrained scientific experimentation to do terrible harm.
Other early literary examples can be found in the following works:
  • Franz Kafka's A Report to an Academy is a short story in which Red Peter, an ape, describes his capture by humans, adaptation and mimicry of their behavior, habits and speech, and subsequent integration into human society.
  • L. Sprague de Camp's "Johnny Black" stories about a black bear raised to human-level intelligence, published in Astounding Science-Fiction from 1938–1940.
  • In Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of Mankind series "underpeople" are created from animals through unexplained technological means explicitly to be servants of humanity, and were often treated as less than slaves by the society that used them, until the laws were reformed in the story "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell". Smith's characterizations of underpeople are frequently quite sympathetic, and one of his most memorable characters is C'Mell, the cat-woman who appears in "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" and in Norstrilia.
David Brin has stated that his Uplift Universe was written at least in part in response to the common assumption in earlier science fiction such as Smith's work and Planet of the Apes that uplifted animals would, or even should, be treated as possessions rather than people. As a result, a significant part of the conflict in the series revolves around the differing policies of Galactics and humans toward their client races. Galactic races traditionally hold their uplifted "clients" in a hundred-millennium-long indenture, during which the "patrons" have extensive rights and claims over clients' lives and labor power. In contrast, humans have given their uplifted dolphins and chimpanzees near-equal civil rights, with a few legal and economic disabilities related to their unfinished state.  A key scene in Startide Rising is a discussion between a self-aware computer and a leading human about how the events during their venture relate to the morality of the Galactics' system of uplift.
More recent examples include the board game Race for the Galaxy, which features uplift genetics mechanics, and Adrian Tchaikovsky's 2015 novel Children of Time, which depicts the accidental uplift of spiders by a nano-virus originally intended for monkeys.

Analysis

Some commentators, such as, have argued that some pieces of literature have used uplift as an allegory for the white man's burden and colonialism. Booker singles out Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth as a novel that mirrors Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in a science-fiction setting. Other authors, by contrast, have used uplift as a narrative foil to colonialism, presenting uplift not only as benevolent but as a virtuous reversal of colonial attitudes.

Selected works