The Concept of the Soul in Current Nerd Fiction
Let’s get existential for a bit! One particular thing that has stood out to me lately is the emphasis on the concept of the human soul across “nerd” fiction. My first encounter with the idea came with Jonathan Hickman’s House of X/Power of X miniseries, followed by Ernest Cline’s follow-up Ready Player Two, and most recently the latest installment into the Sword Art Online franchise. I wanted to take a look at the three versions and discuss the science fiction approaches to the idea of the soul. X-Men: In this miniseries we learn that mutants have not only struck a deal with the living island of Krakoa to form a new home for their kind, but have also approached innovative uses of their abilities to basically create immortality. By taking five mutants with powers of healing/regeneration, time acceleration, egg creation, reality warping, and snychronization, mutants have learned to hatch identical physical copies of their bodies. Cerebro, the famous mutant detection machine of Xavier, is now used as a psyche backup system to store the thoughts, …