Ana Matronic: ‘I’d love to be a cyborg and have bionic legs – a little bit longer than my current ones’
You've just published a book about robots. When did your love of them begin?
I don't remember not loving robots. During my childhood, there were so many amazing sci-fi stories on TV, from Battlestar Galactica to Buck Rogers, plus Star Wars at the cinema. I was into robots aesthetically. Blade Runner made me get into them sartorially too. Then in my teens, I studied [mythologist] Joseph Campbell's theories about heroes and applied them to The Bionic Woman (laughs). I turned that into a religion called Bionic Love and wrote a fanzine about it.
And you became a trans-humanist?
By the 90s, I was living in San Francisco at the height of the cyberpunk movement and through a friend, discovered the work of [feminist scientist] Donna Haraway, who wrote A Cyborg Manifesto. That was my introduction to trans-humanism and the idea that bionic people might not be such a far-off possibility. I'm excited by the opportunities that tech gives us to transform our capabilities. The ways AI can be applied to improve or extend human life. Nanotechnology, too. It's all fascinating - and, of course, a little scary.
