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Reviewed By: Dr Bob Rich
Was it coincidence? Or karma? I'd just finished reading a
book by David Suzuki. This famous geneticist and media figure has written
a book of warning, and yet of hope, focusing on the ways humanity is currently
destroying itself. Two of the chapters in this wide-ranging work assessed
the likely impacts of genetic engineering, which after all is Suzuki's specialty.
His conclusion: it is as dangerous as all-out nuclear war.
And then I received a science fiction book for review: Kate
Saundby's 'The Orion Property'. This is the seventh volume of her 'Nublis
Chronicles'.
Orion, the hero of this story, is a genetically engineered
creation. He is a cloned and mechanically improved version of a scientist
who had sought immortality.
Suzuki shows that meddling with the genes of plants and animals
is fraught with deadly danger. Saundby explores dangers of a different kind.
Her story is centered on the social and personal consequences of attempts
to improve humanity by these means, the dangers facing us if genetic engineering
should prove to be as successful as its proponents hope.
We follow the attractive and lovable hero through misfortune
and escape, and in the process, learn of some of the bad things about having
been created instead of born. We learn about the effects of greed, that
universal poison, and how it inevitably transforms what should be a boon
into a terrible problem.
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The Orion Property by
Kate Saundby - reviewed by Dr Bob Rich
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Not
that 'The Orion Property' is heavy reading, far from it. It is thankfully
free of preaching and long tracts of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. Instead,
it is a lighthearted romp through a world which is an intriguing mix of
medieval social organization, 19th Century customs, futuristic science and
magic.