Emma Desserault

Between the Human and the Machine: Laurie Sheck’s Cyborg Fever

Cyborg Fever, by Laurie Sheck, is her most ambitious novel to date, weaving together science, philosophy, history, and poetic meditation. Cyborg Fever follows the narrator, a man in a dreamlike state, as he observes Funes, a paralyzed man whose life is tethered to his computer. Cyborg Fever, like many of Sheck’s previous works, continues to evolve her genre-blurring style, fragmentary form, and intellectual concerns, which are present in her other works, A Monster’s Notes and Island of the Mad. Many of the themes and ideas presented in A Monster’s Notes and Island of the Mad are also present in this novel, such as otherness, creation, science, embodiment, and disability. Sheck takes the ideas, themes, and narrative forms from her previous works and breathes new life into them. In Cyborg Fever, Sheck extends her explorations of otherness, embodiment, and knowledge into the realm of cyborgs and artificial intelligence, creating a novel that is speculative, lyrical, and ethically urgent.

The narrative structure of Cyborg Fever is decidedly one of its strengths. The narrator, a figure in a sort of fever-dream, observes Funes, a paralyzed man who is almost enmeshed within technology. Funes is obsessed with researching topics such as physics, antimatter, artificial intelligence, and the nature of consciousness. The novel also interweaves historical vignettes from individuals such as Ludwig Boltzmann, Nikola Tesla, Paul Dirac, George Cantor, and other scientists and philosophers. Borges’s “Funes the Memorious” is used as a frame for Cyborg Fever, but Sheck reimagines Funes as a cyborg-like figure. Sheck’s fragmentary blend of prose-poetry, scientific biography (Boltzmann, Tesla, etc.), and philosophical reflection offers a deep, thoughtful view on the effects of technology, transhumanism, and artificial intelligence. This speculative scope, as explored through the topics above, paints the cyborg as a figure of both possibility and alienation, of humanism and technology.

As mentioned previously, there are many thematic continuities between Cyborg Fever and Sheck’s previous works, A Monster’s Notes and Island of the Mad. A Monster’s Notes reimagines Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, blending fiction, historical narrative, philosophical inquiry, and archival text. The novel is narrated by Frankenstein’s Creature, and through his thoughts and memories, interspersed with historical documents, scientific reflections, and meditations, Sheck explores identity, memory, language, technology, and embodiment. A Monster’s Notes makes readers question, “When do you think a robot should be treated as intrinsically valuable?” (12).

Island of the Mad is a lyrical, fragmentary novel narrated by Ambrose, a man with osteogenesis imperfecta. Ambrose works as a book scanner at a digitizing company. The novel begins when Ambrose receives a mysterious letter from a coworker. In the letter, the woman writes about Venice, a lost notebook, and her illness. Prompted by her letter, Ambrose travels to Venice to search for the lost notebook. The novel explores Ambrose’s reflections on digitization, time, memory, illness, and history, and how these ideas are intertwined with his observations of Venice. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is referenced frequently. It’s themes of the devil, power, kindness, and the connection between the real and the fantastical bleed into Ambrose’s own journey.

Each of these texts reworks historical/canonical texts, using fragmented, hybrid forms to combine fiction, philosophy, and archival material. Sheck shifts her focus from Gothic, Nineteenth Century Literature in A Monster’s Notes and historical disability narratives in Island of the Mad to speculative artificial intelligence and cyborg ethics in Cyborg Fever, while retaining her core concerns with otherness and knowledge.

In Cyborg Fever, Sheck focuses on a few distinct themes, from scientific ideas such as antimatter to transhumanism. Sheck masterfully uses Boltzmann’s entropy and antimatter as catalysts for larger ideas. Boltzmann’s entropy is a formula that shows the relationship between entropy and the number of ways that atoms or molecules can be arranged. Sheck takes these scientific formulas and ideas and imbues them with humanity, using them as metaphors for dissolution, loss, and otherness.

Sheck also explores the role of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, and transhumanism. Funes, the object of the narrator’s fascination, is a cyborg figure. He is paralyzed, yet due to his association with technology, he is infinitely connected. Sheck also uses Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto as a powerful intertextual touchpoint. Sheck’s choice to make Funes a cyborg also brings in ideas of embodiment and disability. Funes is disabled, but he is also technologically superior in many ways. This idea connects greatly to Island of the Mad, as both texts explore the body as a site of knowledge, and disability as both limitation and advantage. Finally, the novel also explores themes of empathy and love. Despite its speculative and scientific focus, the novel explores longing and the desire for human connection.

Sheck’s fragmentary, collage-like form mimics cognitive processes, exploring the non-linear aspects of time and memory. This structure also works well in conjunction with the theme of technology, as one can often find oneself losing time to technology or getting fragmented, disjointed accounts of the truth online. Despite this fragmented structure, the novel is still incredibly lyrical and rooted in a meditative tone often found within poetry. The intertextual references also add to both the fragmentary nature and the meditative tone, providing both a new perspective and a new aspect to the structure of the work.

Sheck’s Cyborg Fever both builds upon and diverges from her earlier works. It is a distinct contribution to the literary space, but it still honors and draws from her past successes. From reimagining Frankenstein’s creature in A Monster’s Notes and disabled bodies in Island of the Mad, in Cyborg Fever, Sheck goes further, expanding to the speculative ethics of artificial intelligence and transhumanism. Sheck expands her scale, from the personal in Island of the Mad to the cosmic in Cyborg Fever.  The novel is a lyrical, philosophical manifesto on embodiment in a posthuman future.

Cyborg Fever is Sheck’s boldest work yet, extending her fascination with otherness, knowledge, and creation, which asks what it means to remain human, or cyborg, in an increasingly fragmented world. Sheck continues to hone her fragmentary, historical, philosophical, and scientific style while exploring abstract, nuanced concepts of otherness, technology, and artificial intelligence. Cyborg Fever is a demanding read, but readers will undoubtedly reap its intellectual rewards. As Sheck aptly writes, “Beauty is the only teacher. All truth is beauty” (32). Cyborg Fever embodies this conviction: it is, itself, a beautiful teacher—unyielding yet unforgettable.