ORIGINAL PAPER More Than Merely Human: How Science Fiction Pop- Culture Influences Our Desires for the Cybernetic Rebecca Gibson 1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Abstract In this paper I will explore cybercultural thinking about inter-gender relations, seeking to understand certain mythologies about love and sex in the digital age. I will look at the burgeoning market for AI based companions, and seek to understand what causes people to look outside of the company of flesh-and-blood humans. What sensations or emotional needs are fulfilled by choosing a cyber- companion over a human? Is this a gender motivated choice? In this age of com- puter-dominated interaction, where we are told that more people reach for a keyboard than a hand, I hope to understand what can be learned about the human condition and its ever-changing cultural mores. To understand these questions, I will examine pop-cultural themes in science-fiction, and then relate these themes to real- world developments in cyber-technology. These include cyborgs who are ‘real enough’ to pass for human, such as the Replicants in ‘‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’’; androids who are fully functional, but somewhat less than or other than human, such as Lieutenant Commander Data in ‘‘Star Trek: The Next Gen- eration’’; demonstrations of new technology using robot/android story lines, such as Sony Playstation’s ‘‘Kara’’ by Quantic Dream project; and created, near-human races, such as Margaret Atwood’s ‘‘Crakers’’ and David Mitchell’s ‘‘Fabricants.’’ I will look at how human characters relate sexually and romantically to non-human characters, and then examine the phenomenon of medical cybernetic augmentation as a way of exploring when we are no longer merely human, but still ‘human enough.’ Keywords Sci-fi Á Pop culture Á Android Á Cybernetics Á Sexual attraction Á Romance & Rebecca Gibson rgibson.archaeo@gmail.com 1 American University, Washington, DC, USA 123 Sexuality & Culture DOI 10.1007/s12119-016-9391-9