In The Ex-Human, Michael Bérubé looks closely at several well known novels – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Oryx & Crake, The Three Body Problem, Lilith’s Brood, Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Dispossessed – as well as some films – the Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bladerunner – and considers how these works’ explorations of the fate of humanity function to open up perspectives that might be called ex-human.

I come to reading this book having read every novel Bérubé discusses and have seen all the films.

I also have an academic background in Cultural Studies and, like the author, have taught some of these novellists’ work in undergraduate courses (I’ve taught Butler and LeGuin) – this inevitably impacts my reading.

If you haven’t read these novels, this book will obviously include major spoilers. I think that Bérubé does a good job of explaining and contextualizing the scenes and passages he refers to, so someone who hasn’t read a particular novel would certainly still be able to follow his line of argument.

I will not say I’m 100% on board with every interpretation that Bérubé offers about every work, but all in all, this text is wonderfully thought provoking and I can see chapters from it being wonderful supplementary reading alongside the novels they discuss (on a syllabus or just for personal interest). I appreciate his inclusion of autobiographical context, including situating the writing of this book in the context of how the COVID19 pandemic has thusfar impacted his family’s lives and within the context of the American political landscape. I would definitely recommend this text to readers interested in thoughtful political analysis of science fictional works.

Content warnings: this is a scholarly analysis of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction; it refers to and discusses all the kinds of content you'd expect in these kinds of works.