Artificial Intelligence as a Symbolic Colonizer: A Posthuman Reading of H. G. Wells’s the War of the Worlds

This paper offers a posthumanist reading of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds wherein it will discuss how the extraterrestrial invaders can be symbolic representatives for the artificial intelligence (AI) component in an exercising colonial invasion. Applying posthuman and decolonial theoretical perspectives, this article endeavors to explore how fears regarding technological domination, cultural extinction, and human agency disempowerment could be foregrounded through the literary representation of nonhuman intelligences. Mechanized highly intelligent beings, the Martians simultaneously symbolize imperial invaders and future-oriented anxiety whereby artificial intelligence emerges as a new colonizer—over identity, labor, and information. This paper applies the writings of decolonial AI scholars N. Katherine Hayles, Francesca Ferrando, and Homi Bhabha for an account of how Wells anticipates the problematic of technological imperialism and human-machine hybridity that comes quite vividly into prominence in the twenty-first century. Thus, science fiction has become the ground on which to do battle philosophically and prophetically over negotiating posthuman identity as an act of resistance against technological colonization. The book shall be framed as a prescient critique of technological imperialism so people can meditate on how algorithmized the world has to become before humans finally exercise their full potential