Exploring the Technophobia/Technophilia Spectrum in the Anthropocene through Maggie Gee’s The Ice People and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

This thesis discusses the concepts of human, nature, culture and technology in the context of environmental crises in the light of the concepts of technophobia and technophilia. In order to exemplify and open up for discussion Maggie Gee’s climate fiction novel The Ice People and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods bring opportunities to rethink these relationships as well as opening to discussion the relationship between fictional environments, human, nature and technology. Through both selected novels, an attempt has been made to answer the question of whether technology is an enemy or a saviour. Also, the questions of whether technology works for the benefit of humanity or leads humans to further and greater extinction and eventually an ecological apocalypse have been simultaneously sought. The connection of technology with any past and recent ecological problems in the Anthropocene, the place of technological innovations in this connection, the transitions between technophobia and technophilia have been monitored with their connections with the Anthropocene have been investigated. Also, whether the source of technophobia is rational or irrational, whether it is a natural response to ongoing ecological crises are opened to discussion. In the selected novels, anthropocentrism, the agency of non-humans and the confusion of human-nature, human-non-human are indirectly addressed in the context of the spectrum of technophobia and technophilia. Under the influence of these spectrums, both narratives problematize the climate crisis and depict the critique of anthropos [human] oscillating on the spectrum of nature/culture, technophilia-technophobia. Thus, focusing the climate change which is the common theme of the selected novels, the ecocritical modes of thinking of readers and researchers have been traced, and the concepts of technophilia and technophobia have been brought into discussion. This thesis reveals the effects of technology on human lives and people's attitudes towards the concept of technology in all its aspects.