metahuman n.

Later writers have created for its descendants new names like ‘humanoid,’ ‘android,’ ‘robot,’ ‘cyborg,’ and ‘bionic man,’ projecting them into the future Mrs. Shelley invented without knowing it. And we who inhabit that future never tire of retelling her tale in print, in comic books, and on film. We have, moreover, gone further, imagining scientists who, unlike her doctor, deliberately make hideous metahumans, or—reversing the archetype—strive to eliminate all chance of their appearance by ‘biological engineering.’ But all that lay far ahead when Frankenstein appeared in 1818.

They say the Awakened have no touch for technology. Well, short, squat, and ill-favored, don’t believe everything you hear on the street. I am living proof that a metahuman, most especially an elf, can ride the Matrix and bend it to his will.

J. R. Isidore [...] explains his definition of ‘kipple’ to the android Pris. Both of these transformed humans (or metahumans) are treated as subhuman, useless objects by their society. They are defined (and despised) as metahuman kipple who threaten to drive out human nonkipple. Humans assign arbitrary definitions and enforce arbitrary rules pertaining to these two metahuman beings.

No doubt many of our subscribers remember reading papers whose authors were the first individuals ever to obtain the results they described. But as metahumans began to dominate experimental research, they increasingly made their findings available only via DNT (digital neural transfer), leaving journals to publish second-hand accounts translated into human language.

The news came late on a Friday afternoon, with the office still stinking of long, boozy lunches. He’d stayed in to type up his interview with Blue Simoom, a low-watt metahuman who did some hero work on the riverside. They met in a dim wine bar, where she got giggly after a few spritzers and made a small whirlwind appear in the peanut bowl.

He’s a metahuman, but he’s also a man who’s almost guilelessly attached to truth, justice and something called ‘the American way’: protecting the little guy, pummeling the baddies. Set that guy down in the 21st century, and things get complicated.