International Journal of Contemporary Research In Multidisciplinary, 2026;5(3):1140-1144
The Last Archive: Science Fiction Exploring What Remains of Human Culture in A Post-Digital Age
Author Name: Ankit Singh;
Abstract
This paper examines contemporary science fiction as a site of cultural anxiety and speculative preservation, focusing on narratives that imagine the collapse or obsolescence of digital infrastructure and its consequences for human memory, identity, and civilizational continuity. Drawing on close readings of selected texts alongside theoretical frameworks drawn from media archaeology, archival theory, and postcolonial digital humanities, the study argues that the post-digital imagination in literary science fiction does not represent a simple return to analogue modes of culture but rather enacts a complex negotiation between materiality, ephemerality, and the politics of what deserves to be remembered. The paper traces recurring tropes — the lone archivist, the salvaged book, the oral custodian, the fragmented dataset — and situates them within broader debates about technological dependence, cultural hegemony, and the unequal distribution of archival authority. It concludes that science fiction's post-digital turn constitutes an ethical intervention, one that asks not merely what survives the end of the digital age but who decides what is worth saving, and for whom.
Keywords
post-digital fiction, archival theory, science fiction, cultural memory, media archaeology, technological collapse, oral tradition, digital humanities.