Product Description
The Priesthood of Science, Second Edition (2017)
(Book Two of The Herasaga)
Pages xxxii, 350
Pictures and Illustrations
Publisher: Magnus & Associates Ltd.
The second edition features a new concluding chapter, entitled “Such Clever Microbes!†which deals with the implications of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique.
The work originally published in 2008 had two components that were central to its purpose as a work belonging to a specific genre, namely, science-based utopian fiction: First, a collection of essays, grounded in scientific literature, on the history of science, social impacts of science and technology, and mammalian reproductive biology. Second, a series of dialogues, involving different combinations of characters, that are philosophical in nature, largely concerned with exploring the social and ethical implications of the technologies associated with modern science. Works of utopian fiction in modern times have always been “novels of ideas,†and the present work seeks to remain faithful to that tradition. This edition has had minor changes to the text throughout, as well as the addition of an entirely new chapter on genome editing at the end, Chapter 17: “Such Clever Microbes!†focusing on the CRISPR-Cas9 technique.
I read in the paper recently that you are supposed to have said: “If I were to be born a second time, I would become not a physicist, but an artisan.†These words were a great comfort to me, for similar thoughts are going through my mind as well, in view of the evil which our once so beautiful science has brought upon the world.
Max Born, Letter to Albert Einstein (1954)
Plotline:
Hera and her sisters are now sealed off from the rest of the world in their private enclave at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. She is still tormented by the decision of her parents, two neuroscientists, to make genetic modifications in the brains of their twelve daughters—and by her own agreement to allow a similar procedure to be used later on a much larger group of human embryos.
Her doubts now spill over into a series of debates with a molecular biologist, Abdullah al-Dini, about whether scientists have the right to hand over the vast new powers they have discovered to a world still riddled with religious fanaticism, ethnic hatred, and a longing to see the prophecy of the “end of days†be fulfilled. These debates refer back to what happened during the Second World War, when physicists were unveiling the secrets of nuclear power, and the possibility of the atom bomb, just as the time when Nazi Germany and its allies were launching their terrifying bid for world domination.
Meanwhile, that group of engineered embryos has become one thousand young people, just turning eighteen, and the gender politics among them is threatening to bring down in ruins her own little experiment in redesigning human society.
The first (2008) edition is available from the University of Ottawa Press in three formats:
- Paperback (a beautiful book!)
- ePub & ePDF