This is a creative book about a group of speculators, to use Jon Bialecki’s term, who stand at the intersection of two societies we might think of as “closed”—contemporary Mormonism and contemporary transhumanism. Closed societies are invested in static doctrines of the world and well-established networks of mutual obligation and authority. As Bialecki puts it, “Transhumanism and Mormonism are both open to everyone but only provided that everyone is willing to leave their own specificities, aesthetics, and aspirations aside” (48).
As odd as it may seem, this is not the only thing these two systems have in common. (Mormonism, of course, is the term Bialecki uses for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest of those religious organizations that trace their heritage to Joseph Smith Jr.) For Bialecki’s purposes, the most interesting aspects of Mormonism have to do with its professed materialism, insistence that God and humanity...
University of California Press