Colin Milburn's research focuses on the cultural relations between literature, science, and technology. His interests include science fiction; gothic horror; the history of biology; the history of physics; nanotechnology; video games; and posthumanism. He is the director of the UC Davis Science and Technology Studies Program.

Publication Spotlight:

Nanovision: Engineering the Future
by Colin Milburn
"There has been so much hype and controversy surrounding nanotech that it has been hard to figure out what it really is or might become. This wonderful book spectacularly clarifies matters, providing the new field with its history and with a paradigm that allows us to judge its present situation and whatever future may emerge. That Colin Milburn is also often wickedly funny is much appreciated, and a very appropriate response to nanotech's constant evocations of paradise or apocalypse."
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy 

Duke University Press, 2008

Reviews

Selected Publications:

• "Modifiable Futures: Science Fiction at the Bench," Isis 101 (2010): 560-569. Download
• "Tactical Atomism," in Art in the Age of Nanotechnology, eds. Vashti Innes-Brown, Chris Malcolm, and Pauline Williams (John Curtin Gallery, 2010).
• "Digital Matters: Video Games and the Cultural Transcoding of Nanotechnology," in Governing Future Technologies: Nanotechnology and the Rise of an Assessment Regime, eds. Mario Kaiser, Monika Kurath, Sabine Maasen, and Christoph Rehmann-Sutter (Springer, 2009). Link
• "Atoms and Avatars: Virtual Worlds as Massively-Multiplayer Laboratories," Spontaneous Generations 2, no. 1 (2008): 63-89. Download
• “Science from Hell: Jack the Ripper and Victorian Vivisection,” in Science Images and Popular Images of the Sciences, eds. Bernd Huppauf and Peter Weingart (Routledge, 2007), pp. 125-158. Download
  • Translated and updated as “Wissenschaft aus der Hölle: Jack the Ripper und die viktorianische Vivisektion,” trans. Verena Hutter, in Frosch und Frankenstein: Bilder in und über Wissenschaft—Popularisierungen und Mythenbildung, eds. Peter Weingart and Bernd Huppauf (Transcript, 2008).
• “Nanowarriors: Military Nanotechnology and Comic Books,” Intertexts 9, no. 1 (2005): 77-103. Download
• “Syphilis in Faerie Land: Edmund Spenser and the Syphilography of Elizabethan England,” Criticism 46 (2004): 396-632. Download
• “Monsters in Eden: Darwin and Derrida,” MLN 118 (2003): 603-621. Download
• “Nanotechnology in the Age of Posthuman Engineering: Science Fiction as Science,” Configurations 10 (2002): 262-295.

  • Republished in N. Katherine Hayles, ed., Nanoculture: Implications of the New Technoscience (Intellect Books, 2004), pp. 109-129.

  • Republished in The Cybercultures Reader, 2nd edition, eds. Barbara Kennedy and David Bell (Routledge, 2007), pp. 730-758.