Scientific-Fictional Thought and the Poetics of the Intellectual Thriller in Bakhtiyor Abdug‘afur’s Novel “Azal Muhri”

Abstract

The transformation of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biotechnology and pandemics into objects of artistic reflection has substantially expanded the scope of contemporary science fiction. This article examines scientific-fictional thought and the poetics of the intellectual thriller in Bakhtiyor Abdug‘afur's novel Azal muhri (2025), with particular attention to historical memory, the relationship between science and faith, and the literary representation of contemporary technological threats. The material of the study is the text of the novel (Tashkent: Akademnashr, 2025). Structural-semantic, narratological, comparative-typological and conceptual methods of analysis were applied, supported by the theory of the novum and cognitive estrangement (D. Suvin), the theory of posthumanism (N.K. Hayles), the concept of the chronotope (M.M. Bakhtin) and Uzbek theoretical approaches to plot, conflict and genre synthesis. The novel is organised as a dual-temporal parallel plot linking Professor Anvar Abdulhamid, a contemporary molecular biologist, and Abu Bakr Bukhari, a physician in Baghdad approximately a millennium earlier, through the motifs of epidemic, science and faith, and hereditary memory. Artificial intelligence, embodied in the figure of Alisa Ingrid, functions as an agent of power that reveals the dangers of technology divorced from ethical responsibility. Scientific discourse on genetic engineering and biotechnology performs four poetic functions: it establishes the science-fictional foundation of the events, develops the intellectual conflict, intensifies suspense and foregrounds the philosophical problem of human nature. The title concept "Azal muhri" operates as a polysemantic symbol uniting DNA, hereditary memory, fitrat, faith and historical continuity. Azal muhri can be characterised as a generically synthetic novel in which science fiction, the intellectual thriller, the historical novel and the philosophical novel converge around a conflict between technocratic determinism and a spiritual-ethical anthropology.