Humanities Ph.D. student, Darren McClurg, will defend his dissertation titled "Visions of Catastrophe: Human Enhancement in Contemporary, Dystopian Speculative Fiction". He will share his research on genetic engineering and human-machine interface technologies which hold great promise, but also raise serious moral concerns and could plausibly lead to catastrophic consequences for humanity. While a variety of powerful forces push us to go faster, speculative fiction offers a unique perspective on what the future might hold if we are not careful. Novels from this sub-genre of science fiction envision a range of relatively realistic consequences which can help us recognize real dangers and act to avoid or mitigate them.