Classic supernatural fiction (like M. R. James’s) acts as a living interpretive toolkit for today's cultural oddities: uncanny domestic moments, elite techno‑rituals, and intimacy with machines. Reading these stories reveals recurring templates — boundary violation, unpaid debts, ancient claims — that people use to narrate moral panic about AI, biohacking, and loneliness.
— Using literary genres as interpretive frames can clarify why certain technological and social phenomena provoke moral panic and political mobilization.
Alexander Poots
2026.09.11
100% relevant
The article links James’s themes to present examples — 'millionaires pumping themselves full of their own children’s blood' and 'vulnerable adults falling in love with computer programs' — to argue the uncanny in literature tracks modern anxieties.
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