‘Your Kind Ain’t Welcome Here’: The Boundaries of Human, Post-human and Subhuman in the Fallout Video Game Franchise and Television Series

Abstract

Science fiction has long grappled with the question of what it means to be human, evident in the is cross-media fascination with both establishing and deconstructing the line between what is human and what is not in worlds where technology has allowed the creation of ‘posthumans’. However, as much as this question extends forward to the world of androids, cyborgs and robots, so too does it reach back to the realm of the monstrous, the degenerated human, or the ‘subhuman’. The Fallout series (1997-present) attempts to tackle this question head on in both directions, itself now a cross-media franchise that spans both video games and television. Incorporating both the ‘post-human’ and the ‘subhuman’ in their ‘synths’ (technologically advanced androids) and ‘ghouls’ (irradiated humans that slowly turn into what are essentially zombies) respectively, Fallout attempts to show that the line between what is human and what is not is not so easily drawn. Drawing on critical posthumanist theory alongside US American cultural theory this article analyses the portrayal of (and discrimination against) sub- and post- human characters in the Fallout series and how this can have broader implication in contemporary media when deconstructing the concept of ‘human’.