Re: OT: Clones

> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 18:38 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> How have other SF authors handled the theme?
The main classic in this area that comes to mind is
Kate Wilhelm's _Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang_,
a post-apocalyptic novel where the few remaining humans
propagate themselves more by cloning than by normal
reproduction.

More than one of John Varley's Eight Worlds stories
involve a legal system where cloning is illegal and
therefore it's legal for anyone to kill a clone *or* its
parent -- as long as that reduces the number of people
with a given genetic pattern to one.  (I forget how
his society handled natural identical twins.)

Greg Egan had a very disturbing story about producing
deliberately brain-damaged clones as organ transplant
fodder;

http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Extra&pagetitle=The+Extra&section=fiction

My introduction to the idea of cloning was a juvenile SF
novel, _Clone Catcher_ by Alfred Slote; it involved
a similar premise as Egan's "The Extra", clones produced
as sources for transplanted organs, but they were
mentally normal and willing and able to try escaping
to avoid getting carved up for their organs, thus the
job niche for the titular protagonist.

Robert Reed's _Sister Alice_ involves a number of
clone families as the aristocracy of a far-future Earth.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/