Bloodlight Chronicles contains an awful lot of sci-fi with not a lot of focus on any one aspect. But Stanton posed an excellent question in the form of Niko, an illegal clone. The basis of the question was whether or not clones would be allowed into heaven (I have to paraphrase for legal reasons and all).
I like this question. Technically a clone is not a god-made being. There is no way for clones to exist except as the very rare identical/paternal twins. But this is more of an instantaneous cloning and has the ability to produce minor variations in genetic material during the process, and the fact that it happens so rarely in nature almost feels like god reaching down to say, "Hah! Look what I can do." That god guy, he's kind of a show-off. I like to imagine him as a combination of Stephen Colbert and Bill Murray in a metaphysical body resembling Billy Gibbons. That's a hell of a lot of ego in one being, omnipotent or no.
In any case, one could argue that god made us in his image, and if god can create intelligent life with a soul, theoretically so can we. This argument doesn't hold up in my opinion. The whole thing that makes god god is the ability to do things we can't...or at least that we shouldn't. I can't say that I'm totally opposed to the idea of cloning humans. If, for instance, a major disease decimated our population, cloning might be a good way to provide additional genetic material. If we somehow lose the ability to reproduce normally as a species, cloning may be the only way to continue the species.
But this doesn't answer the question of whether or not they have souls, and if those souls would be granted access to heaven. I guess it depends on how angry and vengeful your god is. I like to think he's not such a bad guy and grants access to heaven on a case by case basis with brownie points for intent and how you treat your fellow schmucks, regardless of religion, etc. So I like to think that clones would be allowed access to heaven; after all, they didn't choose to have the same genetic material as someone else, but they can choose how to live their lives.
My review can be found on Goodreads.
i like to think that we all just die and that is that. so a clone, along with nonclones, should make the best of their lives because they only gots this one shot. cloning also makes me think of that terrible arnold swartzenwhatsit movie the 6th day (or something) where he kept dying and being recloned, except like basically his consciousness was being reprogrammed into another body. which, woah, that'd be weird right?
ReplyDeleteTerrible twins movie, are you kidding me, he did two of those? (Twins with Danny DeVito.)
ReplyDeleteI think people should make the best of their lives, and ideally everyone else's, regardless of whether or not there is a heaven.
If you liked this book, I think you might like "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. A lot of what you talked about in this post is stuff that "Never Let Me Go" kind of deals with. Plus, it's being made into a movie!
ReplyDeleteP.S. If I ever get around to reviewing "Never Let Me Go," I'll reference your blog post of this book :) If that's ok of course!
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteBy all means, link away. The more readers, the better the discussion.
I liked a lot of the concepts in Bloodlight, but there wasn't a whole lot of follow through unfortunately. Still, it wasn't a terrible first novel for EW Press to publish in the sci-fi genre.