The papers collected in this volume document the exchange and development of ideas that comprised the 5th Global Conference on Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace, and Science Fiction, hosted at Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom, in July 2010.  As in the past, the conference was driven by questions related to how cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction can provide new insights into the nature of what it is to be human and the understanding of what it means for human beings to live in communities. In addition to these recurring themes, there is just as importantly a disposition that is shared by those participating in this volume. The authors, as well the writers, thinkers, and filmmakers they consider in their essays, demonstrate an intrepid and inquisitive approach that tests age-old questions within the rapidly expanding, but still vaguely-defined spaces that new technologies have afforded us.  Moreover, in many ways, the conference and present volume reflect their subject, which has always been situated self-consciously and comfortably between the receding boundaries that have traditionally served both to delineate various academic disciplines and to distinguish real scholarship from popular discourse. Thus, as evidenced in the chapters of this volume, the conference benefited from the participation of delegates who represented a variety of fields, methodologies, and perspectives.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Jordan J. Copeland

Part I Reconsidering Post-Human Concepts

John Scalzi's Old Man's War Trilogy: A User's Guide to Post-Humanity
Fábio Fernandes

'We walk amid crowds, ride, fly or fall with the hero': Avatars and Posthumanism
Jenna Ng

Reading the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional Media as Narrative
Jim Barrett

Part II Issues of Immersion, Ethics and Identity

The Ethical Experience in Controversial Videogames
Daniel Riha

Making Science Fiction Personal: Videogames and Inter-Affective Storytelling
Kevin Veale

Heterotopias of Genders in Digital Space: Gender Representations in Facebook
Sophia Damianidou, Konstantina Vasiliki Iakovou and Katerina Zygoura

Immersion and Surveillance in Virtual Worlds 
George J. Stein

Part III Technology, Community and Anthropology

Anthropological Reflections on Knowledge Interfaces: Swarm, Wikinomics and Design
Michał Derda-Nowakowski

Intelligent Shoes, Smart Teeth and Lunch with a Cyborg: Anthropological Reflections on the Change of Communication Paradigms
Anna Maj

Mission to Earth: Planetary Proprioception and the Cyber-Sublime
Marc Barasch and Ksenia Fedorova

Avatar: A Tale of Indigenous Survival? 
Dolores Miralles-Alberola

Part IV Science Fiction and the Literatures of Cyberspace

Loss of Connection: Science in Romanticism and Modern Science Fiction
Susan Rose Nash

Human Identity in the World of Altered Carbon 
Grzegorz Trębicki

The Mind Body Problem through Science Fiction: Charles Stross and Richard Morgan in Philosophical Review
Benjamin Manktelow

Human Magic, Fairy Technology and the Place of the Supernatural in the Age of Cyberculture
Anna Bugajska

Part V The Future of Humanity in Film and Television

Enemy Metaphors and the Countdown for Mankind in the American TV Series Space: Above and Beyond and Battlestar Galactica
Petra Rehling

Quest for Closure: Re-Visioning Humanity in Battlestar Galactica
Dagmara Zając

Who's Your Saviour? The Changing Messiahs of Contemporary Science Fiction Film and TV
Sofia Sjö

Endgame: Mitchell and Webb's 'Remain Indoors' Sketch Series, Absurdist Comedy and the Collapse of Meaning in Apocalypse Narratives
Ewan Kirkland