Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BARBELLION PRIZE

As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week

An eye-opening account of disability, identity, and how robotics and AI are altering our understanding of what it means to be human - from the bestselling author of Anatomy of a Soldier

Harry Parker's life changed overnight, when he lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. That took him into an often surprising landscape of a very human kind of hacking, and he wondered, are all humans becoming hybrids?

Whether it's putting on contact lenses every day or DIY biohackers tinkering in garages, Parker introduces us to the exhilarating breadth of human invention - and intervention. Grappling with his own new identity and disability, he discovers the latest robotics, tech and implants that might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be.

'I loved Hybrid Humans. A way of looking at the future without nostalgia for the past' - Jeanette Winterson