Dan Brown’s Inferno

Dan Brown’s latest action thriller Inferno follows art historian Robert Langdon in a fast-paced roller-coaster hunt for the source of a genetic hack delivered to everyone on the planet via a highly contagious airborne virus. As in previous novels, Langdon works against the clock to decipher hints hidden in the treasures of the world’s art and literature, fighting intrigue and deception. I was mainly interested in Brown’s portrait of transhumanists and their scientific and philosophical ideas, which play a central role in the novel. There’s a number of recently published transhumanist-themed novels, such asThe Transhumanist Wager, Nexus, and Human+. But this is Dan Brown, the writer who sold hundreds of millions of copies of previous “philosophical thrillers” The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and The Lost Symbol. It’s easy to predict that Inferno will be a bestseller, probably followed by a successful film, and the first introduction to transhumanism for millions of readers. This is an important moment in the history of transhumanism — but good or bad? A genetic-engineering mystery The book opens with the suicide of famous genetic engineer Bertrand Zobrist, a scientific genius who jumps to his death from a historical building in Florence. A few days after, Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital bed in Florence with a bullet wound and no memory of his last two days. A killer immediately breaks in the hospital to finish him, and Langdon escapes with the enigmatic doctor Sienna Brooks. He’s on the run, and everybody is looking for him with murderous intent, even the U.S. government. Or so it seems.As in previous novels, Langdon must unravel a mystery. The only hint is a high-tech biohazard container, and inside, an optical device that projects the “Map of Hell” (a version of the famous Botticelli Abyss of Hell, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy). But it seems that this version of the painting was modified … and something momentous will happen the following day.

Bertrand [Zobrist] had boundless hope for humankind. He was a transhumanist who believed we are living on the threshold of a glittering “posthuman” age — an era of true transformation. He had the mind of a futurist, eyes that could see down the road in ways few others could even imagine. He understood the astonishing powers of technology and believed that in the span of several generations, our species would become a different animal entirely — genetically enhanced to be healthier, smarter, stronger, even more compassionate [as we learn from one of the main characters later]. Except for one problem. He didn’t think we’d live long enough as a species to realize that possibility.

Zobrist was a Dante fanatic. He was also obsessed with the global population explosion, and an ensuing Malthusian hell — caused by overpopulation. So was he a transhumanist mad scientist? He thought that the Black Death, which killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population of Europe in the Middle Ages, was one of the best things that ever happened to Europe, because it reduced the population and created a surplus of food and wealth that opened the way to the Renaissance. So did Zobrist create a plague to curb the world’s population? Is Zobrist’s plague set to be released the following day? If so, where? Langdon’s search is desperate, but Zobrist left many hermetic hints based on Dante’s Divine Comedy and later Italian Renaissance masterpieces, which lead Langdon first to Florence and then Venice and Istanbul.