Lee Michael Ash's "A Darling Situation" (short story, humor, free)

A woman conceives a baby through a new genetic engineering process, with many all-new genes. After birth, the freak everyone was expecting turns out to be a normal adorable baby, & extremely well behaves one.

But there are freak genes in this lovely baby, as they begin manifesting a year down the line...

Fact sheet.

First published: Cosmos, 18 April 2013.
Download full text from publisher's website.
Rating: B.

Dominica Phetteplace's "The Cult of Whale Worship" (short story, genetic engg, free): Engineering a bug to help conserves whales

A Japaneses genetics researcher gangs up with two whale conservationists to design a very unusual parasite...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, October/November 2011.
Download full text from publisher's site. [via SF Signal]
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2011" list.

Felicity Shoulders' "Conditional Love" (short story, genetic engineering, free)

This one is for readers who like emotional stories.

It's set in a hospital that cares for abandoned children. Abandoned by their parents because of their physical deformities. Physical deformities introduced in the first place by parents themselves, by genetic modifications of the unborn to create "perfect" kids - an illegal process that sometimes has horrific side effects.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, January 2010.
Download full text/audio from author's site.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Nebula Award 2010 in short story category.

Giri Vijayakumar's "Genome" (flash fiction, humor, free): Capitalism at work to contain mosquito breeding!

There is a very funny Hindi movie lampooning Indira Gandhi's administration of mid 1970s, I think directed or produced by I S Johar; I cannot recollect the title (it's set in an imaginary country called Jana Gana Mana Pradesh!) It has a very funny episode involving incentives for rat-catchers. This story is in similar vein.

One very obvious criticism: does author seriously imagine Rs 1 & Rs 50 will mean much in the year 2052? But that's minor point in an otherwise good story.

Story summary.

Mayor of Madras city in the year 2052 has decided to up his chances for reelection by solving a major problem of the city: getting rid of mosquitoes! A perfect plan using great technology. What he hasn't accounted for is human nature...

Fact sheet.

First published: Storywheel, 19 October 2010.
Download full text from author's site.
Rating: A.

Erika Cule's "Birthday Surprises" (flash fiction, genetics, free)

Elizabeth received a cool 16th birthday gift from her grandmother - her genome analysis that predicts her future susceptibility to diseases & sundry other things. But fate holds nasty surprises yet beyond the best of genome reading...

Fact sheet.

First published: The Daily Telegraph, sometime in 2008.
Download full text of a reprint in Nature magazine from The Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation.
Rating: B.

Karl Schroeder & Tobias S Buckell's "Mitigation" (short story, environment): When a robbery did some good too!

"Svalbard seed vault", a library of world's plant seeds intended as defense against rapidly diminishing biodiversity, is the ultimate gold mine for folks kept out of genetic engineering business by gene patent hoarders.

A group of armed terrorists, backed by a national government, is planning on seizing the Svalbard Vault - either to threaten the governments to loosen patent controls, or to sequence rare seeds themselves. A mafia group is in knowledge of this terror plan, but is barely ahead.

Chauncie St Christie is the mafia's man - to get inside the vault, sequence a list of rare seeds (destroying seeds in the process), then transmit the resulting data wirelessly in return for good money. Things get complicated, of course, because he needs the green activist River Balleny's help entering the vault & because terrorists reach a bit before mafia planned for.

But all ends well... including for humanity, though not for terrorists.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 14" (2009).

Fact sheet.

First published: Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward Two" (2008).
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of the year 2008" list.
Related: Green fiction.

Quotes from Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" (novel)

While the book has enough differences in detail from movie to be a worthy subject of an article, including several scenes whose variants will appear only in the movie's sequels, I have not been able to finish the article. So I thought may be I could just do the easier job of collecting quotes from the book!

Quotes below are the ones that caught my attention when reading the story, & are generally (but not always) in the same sequence as they appear in the book. Use information contained in wise-sounding ones with caution: several of these are likely to considered debatable by many, even when they sound authoritative. Emphasis is nearly always mine.

1. On modern genetic engineering research, part 1: "much of the research is thoughtless or frivolous. Efforts to engineer paler trout for better visibility in the stream, square trees for easier lumbering, and injectable scent cells so you'll always smell of your favorite perfume may seem like a joke, but they are not."
2. On modern genetic engineering research, part 2: "Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of contaminating industry ties, and whenever debate arose about technological matters, disinterested scientists were available to discuss the issues at the highest levels.
   
   But that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial affiliations. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit."
   
   "nearly every scientist in genetics research is also engaged in the commerce of biotechnology. There are no detached observers. Everybody has a stake."
3. Definition of a "cold blooded" animal: "Snakes are cold blooded. They're reptiles. They can't control their body temperature. It's ninety degrees on that sand. If a snake came out, it'd be cooked."
   
   "reptiles, cold blooded creatures drawing the heat they needed for life from the environment. A mammal could metabolize food to produce bodily warmth, but a reptile could not."
   
4. "Studies of predator/prey populations in the game parks of Africa and India suggested that, roughly speaking, there was one predatory carnivore for every four hundred herbivores."
5. "Carnivores could eat as much as 25 percent of their body weight in a single meal, and it made them sleepy afterward."
6. "when a new male took over a lion pride, the first thing he did was kill all the cubs. The reason was apparently genetic: the male had evolved to disseminate his genes as widely as possible, and by killing the cubs he brought all the females into heat, so that he could impregnate them. It also prevented the females from wasting their time nurturing the offspring of another male."
7. "Who ever got a major computer system up and running on schedule? Nobody I know."
8. "In the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, 'What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?' These companies weren't interested in pharmaceuticals or health; they were interested in entertain­ment, sports, leisure activities, cosmetics, and pets. The perceived demand for 'consumer biologicals' in the 1990s was high."
9. "If InGen can make full-size dinosaurs, they can also make pygmy dinosaurs as household pets. What child won't want a little dinosaur as a pet? A little patented animal for their very own. InGen will sell millions of them. And InGen will engineer them so that these pet dinosaurs can only eat InGen pet food."
10. "Bioengineered DNA was, weight for weight, the most valuable material in the world. A single microscopic bacterium, too small to see with the naked eye, but containing the genes for a heart attack enzyme, streptokinase, or for 'ice-minus,' which prevented frost damage to crops, might be worth five billion dollars to the right buyer."
11. "posture: lizards and reptiles were bent-legged sprawlers, hugging the ground for warmth. Lizards didn't have the energy to stand on their hind legs for more than a few seconds. But the dinosaurs stood on straight legs, and many walked erect on their hind legs. Among living animals, erect posture occurred only in warm blooded mammals and birds. Thus dinosaur posture suggested warm bloodedness."
12. "People were so naive about plants... They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction and defense."
    
    "People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; & they interacted continuously with animals - discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others, and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds."
    
13. "once the computer has analyzed the DNA, how do you know what animal it encodes?"
    
    "The first is phylogenetic mapping. DNA evolves over time, like everything else in an organism - hands or feet or any other physical attribute. So we can take an unknown piece of DNA and determine roughly, by computer, where it fits in the evolutionary sequence. It's time-consuming, but it can be done."
    
    "And the other way?"
    
    Wu shrugged. "Just grow it and find out what it is. ... That's what we usually do."
    
14. On why the animals released in the park are all female rather than all male: "From a bioengineering standpoint, females are easier to breed. You probably know that all vertebrate embryos are inherently female. We all start life as females. It takes some kind of added effect - such as a hormone at the right moment during development - to transform the growing embryo into a male. But, left to its own devices, the embryo will naturally become female."
15. "Every zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it."
16. On animal odor that humans think as foul: "Most herbivores did not have a strong smell. Nor did their droppings. It was reserved for the meat eaters to develop a real stink."
17. "A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day."
18. "we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is."
19. "Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another - like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way."
20. "Most people didn't know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem - the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and - bang! - no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer."
21. "If you were going to start a bioengineering company, Henry, what would you do? Would you make products to help mankind, to fight illness and disease? Dear me, no. That's a terrible idea. A very poor use of new technology...
    
    Yet, you'll remember ... the original genetic engineering companies, like Genentech and Cetus, were all started to make pharmaceuticals. New drugs for mankind. Noble, noble purpose. Unfortunately, drugs face all kinds of barriers. FDA testing alone takes five to eight years - if you're lucky. Even worse, there are forces at work in the marketplace. Suppose you make a miracle drug for cancer or heart disease - as Genentech did. Suppose you now want to charge a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars a dose. You might imagine that is your privilege. After all, you invented the drug, you paid to develop and test it; you should be able to charge whatever you wish. But do you really think that the government will let you do that? No, Henry, they will not. Sick people aren't going to pay a thousand dollars a dose for needed medication - they won't be grateful, they'll be outraged. Blue Cross isn't going to pay it. They'll scream highway robbery. So something will happen. Your patent application will be denied. Your permits will be delayed. Something will force you to see reason - and to sell your drug at a lower cost. From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.
    ...
    Now think how different it is when you're making entertainment, Nobody needs entertainment. That's not a matter for government intervention. If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me? After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol
    ...
    original purpose behind pointing my company in this direction in the first place was to have freedom from government intervention".
22. Explanation of why frog DNA ended up in some engineered dinosaurs that were now breeding in the wild: "DNA was an incredibly ancient substance. Human beings, walking around in the streets of the modern world, bouncing their pink new babies, hardly stopped to think that the substance at the center of it all - the substance that began the dance of life - was a chemical almost as old as the earth itself. The DNA molecule was so old that its evolution had essentially finished more than two billion years ago. There had been little new since that time. Just a few recent combinations of the old genes - and not much of that.
    
    When you compared the DNA of man and the DNA of a lowly bacterium, you found that only about 10 percent of the strands were different. This innate conservatism of DNA emboldened Wu to use whatever DNA he wished."
23. "Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same... they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen."
24. "Inexperienced people imagined horrific proofs of an animal attack - torn limbs left behind in the tent, trails of dripping blood leading away into the bush, bloodstained clothing not far from the campsite. But the truth was, there was usually nothing at all, particularly if the victim was small, an infant or a young child. The person just seemed to disappear, as if he had walked out into the bush and never come back. A predator could kill a child just by shaking it, snapping the neck. Usually there wasn't any blood.
    
    And most of the time you never found any other remains of the victims. Sometimes a button from a shirt, or a sliver of rubber from a shoe. But most of the time, nothing.
    
    Predators took children - they preferred children - and they left nothing behind."
25. "Most of the big carnivores don't have strong jaws. The real power is in the neck musculature. The jaws just hold on, while they use the neck to twist and rip."
26. "Body temperature changes constantly... It changes cyclically over twenty-four hours, lowest in the morning, highest in the afternoon. It changes with mood, with disease, with exercise, with outside temperature, with food. It continuously fluctuates up and down. Tiny jiggles on a graph. Because, at any moment, some forces are pushing temperature up, and other forces are pulling it down. It is inherently unstable. And every other aspect of living systems is like that, too...
    
    what he saw as defects were actually necessities. Look: when I was working on missiles, we dealt with something called 'resonant yaw.' Resonant yaw meant that, even though a missile was only slightly unstable off the pad, it was hopeless. It was inevitably going to go out of control, and it couldn't be brought back. That's a feature of mechanical systems. A little wobble can get worse until the whole system collapses. But those same little wobbles are essential to a living system. They mean the system is healthy and responsive."
27. "Studies of frogs had shown that amphibians only saw moving things, like insects. If something didn't move, they literally didn't see it."
28. "you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape."
29. "Particle accelerators sear the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.
    
    The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific."
30. "The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics . . . Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?
    ...
    Because there haven't been any advances... Not really. Thirty thousand years ago, when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago."
    
    "You want to turn back the clock?"
    
    "No... I want people to wake up. We've had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it's good for, and what it's not good for."
31. "You create new life forms, about which you know nothing at all. Your Dr Wu does not even know the names of the things he is creating. He cannot be bothered with such details as what the thing is called, let alone what it is. You create many of them in a very short time, you never learn anything about them, yet you expect them to do your bidding, because you made them and you therefore think you own them; you forget that they are alive, they have an intelligence of their own, and they may not do your bidding, and you forget how little you know about them, how incompetent you are to do the things that you so frivolously call simple...
    
    You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. It never fails.
    ...
    Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.
    
    Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it.
    
    But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify - it doesn't matter. Not to you, or to your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.
    
    And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly. You don't even know exactly what you have done, but already you have reported it, patented it, and sold it. And the buyer will have even less discipline than you. The buyer simply purchases the power, like any commodity. The buyer doesn't even conceive that any discipline might be necessary.
    ...
    A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits. And that is why you think that to build a place like this is simple."
32. "But now, ... science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways - air, and water, and land - because of ungovernable science.
    ...
    Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent than atomic power. And it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators, And that will force everyone to ask the same question - What should I do with my power? Which is the very question science says it cannot answer."
33. "All major changes are like death... You can't see to the other side until you are there."
34. "You egomaniacal idiot... You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have... You can't destroy this planet. You can't even come close.
    ...
    Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals - the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving . . . Endless constant and violent change... The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us."
    
    "If there was a radiation accident"?
    
    "Suppose there was... Let's say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere - under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we ... think it wouldn't."
    
    Alfred Bester's short story "Adam and No Eve" is based on this theme.
    
35. "oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells - say, around three billion years ago - it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly - five, ten, eventually twenty one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!
    ...
    My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and air planes and computers and vaccines. . . . It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
    ...
    The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."
36. "ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings."
37. "gray parrot has as much symbolic intelligence as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees can definitely use language. Now researchers are finding that parrots have the emotional development of a three year old child, but their intelligence is unquestioned. Parrots can definitely reason symbolically."
38. "Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism."
    
    

Stephen Baxter's "Sheena 5": When humans seeded an alien race

Pretty much every assumption in this very readable story is way too far fetched. And still, what a fantastic story.

I found key messages of the story are easy to identify with - or may be I am biased:

1. Living on the frontier leads to more competent species.
2. Fast turnaround in a process produces better results.

Download full story text here.

Story summary.
Sometime about a third of the way through twenty-first century, world is a nasty place. Science & technology is pretty much dead. Militaries are strong. Petty conflicts over resources are common.

Dan Ystebo of NASA has managed to sell a rather fantastic & far fetched story to Senator Maura Della for fixing the world's problems. A little asteroid, Reinmuth (code 2018JW), will be moved to earth's orbit, & used for mining things that are anyway in abundant supply on earth! This will be done by building structures on asteroid that will act like rockets to move asteroid to earth orbit - as in many other stories.

But the really far fetched twist is - no humans will go there. A squid will have her mind genetically enhanced to make her smart, & to make her communicate with humans - particularly Dan! She will go in her tiny water habitat that will be part of the ship. No need to bother getting her back safely - since squids' natural life is only 2 years (I haven't verified it from other sources).

Sheena 5 is the squid that will go. Apparently, 5th in the line of engineered squid. Since she can never leave her water habitat, she will control an army of small robots that will actually do the construction job aboard the asteroid.

What no one foresaw was: she got pregnant just before the trip. Since she is smart, she gave birth in space in a way that hid the fact from mission control for too long. Now her craft is on asteroid, the rocket is fitted to asteroid & pushing it towards earth, but she has too many babies in her too small a habitat!

Turns out 4 of her babies are very smart; rest are typical dumb squids. Dumber ones will get eaten by their smarter siblings. But soon, the life support starts getting overstretched.

That is when Sheena 6, one of the smarter kids, makes Dan educate her on how to use local resources & her robots to extend the habitat. Expansion is done, & all is well for the moment.

Dan's lab is taken over by military, people lose interest in Project Bootstrap - the one that would have brought asteroid, Dan moves out. Years pass - less than a decade, I think.

Then, one fine day, someone manning Hubble II telescope decides to have a peek. And all hell breaks loose.

Not only have the squids made their little asteroid wholly habited, they have ships all over Sol! Reinmuth is headed to earth, & humans are afraid. Near end, we will see hints of the doom of humanity - as nuclear attack against Reinmuth fails, & it's entering earth's atmosphere. Sheena 46 appears to be in charge.

Fact sheet.
"Sheena 5", short story, review
First published: Analog, May 2000
Rating: A

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "The Next Tenants": In the wake of WWII, a man has lost hope in future of humanity. And is helping termites become sentient.
   

This story is included in the following anthologies.

1. David Hartwell (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 6".
   

Katherine Maclaine's "All Kinds of Reasons": Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" updated, improved, & shortened

This is a very good story based on the same premise as Robert Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon": ability of a couple to choose the best among all possible babies they can have. Very plausible, & emotionally very distressing; see my opening remarks with "Beyond This Horizon" article about experience of an Indian state with a very simple application of this.

Because of shorter form, I find it a much better read than "Beyond This Horizon" - no space to chase tangents!

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.
A new technology for human baby making has recently become available: grow several embryos from the eggs/semen of a couple in lab. Then feed the genetic data of these embryos into a "prediction software". Software can then graphically simulate the way baby will look like at any stage till the age of 8; feed some more genetic data at birth, & range goes up to 20 years! Of course, apart from this physical display, you also get access to a lot of health & fitness data - but you need a doctor to interpret that; physique graphics are accessible even to couples involved.

Of the say 30 embryos you have growing in lab, doctor can advice on the best ones, but the couple is the ultimate judge. Choose 3 of the best; get them implanted in mother; hope some of them will grow inside mother. In case more than one start growing, you have the option to kill some among them.

Story is of the emotional turmoil of Tony, as he & Rhia go through this process of baby making. Rhia has no qualms about choosing the apparently fittest & best looking babies. Tony goes through extreme emotions w.r.t. Sirena, his private name for a physically deformed child that was not allowed to be born.

Fact sheet.
All Kinds of Reasons, short story, review
First published: Strange Horizons, 3 September 2007
Rating: A
This story made it to my "best of the year" picks for 2007.

See also.

1. All stories about technology assisted human baby making.
2. All stories from Strange Horizons.
3. This story ranked (by quality) among all stories.
   

Stories about technology assisted human baby making

I order the ones reviewed here on the subject by quality - best first. Link on story name takes you to my commentary. Just following story name, in brackets, is my rating. "*" prefix means full story text is available for download - at link labeled "online".

1. * Ellen Klages' "Ringing Up Baby" (A); short story (2006); online: Humor. Choose pretty much any attribute of your child. Including borrowing some genes from other animals!
2. * Katherine Maclaine's "All Kinds of Reasons" (A); short story (2007); online: A couple can choose the best baby among several.
   
3. Robert Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" (B); novel (1942): A couple can choose the best baby among all they are going to have over the lifetime. Those normally born are a lower caste. Villains breed special purpose human babies we would call monsters - like those that can live naturally on Venus!

See also.

1. All stories where genetic engineering is the primary theme, whether applied to humans or other animals.
   

Arthur C. Clarke's "An Ape About the House": A famous painter, to be

This is the story of Dorcas, a genetically engineered chimpanzee designed & trained for household chores & for baby sitting. She is sold by Biological Engineering Corporation; they apparantly are also the patent holders & manufacturers.

Story summary.
Unnamed woman narrator has purchased (or is it rented?) Dorcas, after some fighting at home. Dorcas quickly adjusts well, & is loved by all.

Action happens when the narrator, wife of a spaceman, gets bugged by Christine Swanson, the wife of the Commodore of the Space Service & the first citizen of Port Goddard somewhere in the Pacific.

Christine is a bad painter, but others cannot say so because of her social position. So the narrator, herself an amateur painter, sets out to wreck Christine's forthcoming exhibition.

Narrator will paint, & make Dorcas do a bit of touching, & work will be advertized as of Dorcas! You see, even Dorcas can paint better than Christine! Many paintings are made, some good, & shown privately in social circuit.

Christine ends up cancelling her exhibition, & tries for revenge. The end result is unexpected by all - Dorcas turns out to be a really good painter, & will be eventually famous. But only after relieved by Christine of a human constraint narrator had put on her - to make her fit better in human society. Good ending.

Fact sheet.
An Ape About the House, short story, review
First published: Dude, May 1962
Rating: B

This story is included in the following collection.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "More Than One Universe"
3. "Tales of Ten Worlds"
4. "Of Time and Stars"
   

See also.

1. Michael Crichton's "Next": One of the stories in this collection (advertised as novel) is of an engineered baby with chimpanzee mother & human father. Eventually adopted by his human father. And his difficulties living in human society.
   

Robert Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon" (novel): A society of supermen

Main thread of the story is plausible enough, if psychologically extremely uncomfortable: a couple can choose to have the best child they can possibly have by carefully selecting a specific egg/sperm pair over their productive life, rather than an average child they normally have by random egg/sperm combination.

While the story treads on much darker things possible with genetics, I find even the apparently sensible thread extremely troublesome. While Heinlein's advocacy is generally limited to sane things like choosing children less immune to diseases, couples will eventually apply their own (obviously) definition of best. Results, even of a simple application like sex selection, can be extremely dangerous - as is currently happening in the Indian state of Punjab - the worst sex ratio in India, & still worsening.

Since such selection & more is going to be possible in days ahead, we might as well begin getting uncomfortable today - for whatever good it will do!

Even apart from the dark subject, this is not quite a normal Heinlein story. His political & economic views are muddled here, & the story keeps going on many irrelevant tangents.

Main thread of the story reads somewhat like Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". I collect the quotes here.

Story summary.
I think the story is set 100 or 200 years in future; I don't remember the dateline - it's provided indirectly. Place is the Capital of a Republic - some future version of some place in the US; and it appears to be part of some larger worldwide political grouping.

Gene selection is common in this society, though you can choose to stay natural. Naturals are the lower caste.

There is a benign government, "Policy Board" at highest level we meet in the story. They maintain the various gene lines; they advise who will mate whom; they choose the best kids; they raise most kids in well run nurseries. Too much wishful thinking, if you ask me.

The economic system has a very substantial communist tilt - something very unlike every Heinlein story I've read to-date.

Hamilton Felix is a man derived from the best genetic stock. His marriage to Longcourt Phyllis is being pushed for by Claude Mordan, a government bureaucrat who will eventually become a good friend. Longcourt is a "fifth cousin" of Hamilton, is also derived from the best stock, & they together have promising gene combinations.

Hamilton is resisting; girl is willing; eventually they will marry & have two kids - Theobald, a boy, & younger Justina. Turns out Theobald is telepathic! But that is a different thread.

This whole arrangement sounded like a very typical Suraj Barajatya film - replace horoscope match with gene compatibility, old friend of the dad that does marriage fixing with government bureaucrat, & minus a lot of color that makes these movies lovable - at least for first viewing.

Then there are villains. Very Hitlerian right-wingers. Want to keep the best genetic stock; breed people to meet government's needs; & kill off the inferiors. There are some ugly scenes, but they don't last long. They are led by McFee Norbert. When the revolution comes, it is quickly crushed.

And that is where the story should have ended. But it continues for half as long again, & this remaining part is very lame. Main thread is about the joys of parenting. A second thread is a governmental project to "enumerate and investigate all of the problems of philosophy", enlarged from originally proposed & simpler "effort to investigate the question of survival after death"! Third thread is the telepathic ability of Theobald.

All through the story, yet another lame thread is also running: life of Hamilton's close friend Monroe-Alpha Clifford (code number 32-847-106 B62!); his divorce with his orthowife Larsen Hazel; his erratic love affair & eventual marriage to Hartnett Marion; & his adventures with revolutionaries.

There is yet another significant thread through the story: a young man named John Smith Darlington was conned (when drunk) in the year 1926 to enter a stasis machine, & he ends up arriving in the time of this story! We see his confusion adjusting to this world. Best part of this thread is a humorous description of the game of US football; see near the end of quotes.

Fact sheet.
Beyond This Horizon, novel, review
First published: Originally published as 2-part serial in Astounding Science Fiction, April/May 1942, under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald
Rating: B

See also.

1. All stories about technology assisted human baby making.
2. This story ranked (by quality) among all stories.

Michael Crichton's "Next": Good writing, messy presentation

An anthology of stories built around social & ethical issues concerning genetics. But presented as a novel rather than story collection; that is what makes it a somewhat tedious reading. Some 25 untitled stories running in parallel - 2 pages at a time, & may be 100 characters between them - that merge into 5-6 stories towards the end of the book.

Most of the stories are unremarkable, but there are two exceptions:

1. A horror story based on gene patents.

True fact: There are genes inside your body that are now patented & owned by someone else! Legally, you do not own all of your own body.

Story summary: A dying cancer patient is cured by a competent doctor. What he is not told is that he was actually cured by a rare gene he has that is apparently effective against some cancers.

The wily doctor makes him visit for several years after cure, & keeps collecting his body tissue. Eventually, doctor isolates his cell line & sells it to a pharma company.

Rest is court room drama, kidnapping & chase that is both bizarre & typical Hollywood. And very plausible.

2. A comedy built around a talking parrot that has been injected with some human genes.

I might have rated this book higher if it was presented as a story collection rather than a novel. In the present form, it takes a paragraph or two into every section before you figure out which of the many stories is being continued!

Fact sheet.
Next, novel, review
First published: 2006
Rating: B

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "An Ape About the House" (1962): Story of an engineered chimpanzee that can speak like humans, & is sold as a servant & babysitter - but turns out to be more talented than anyone suspected. Can be read alongside the story in "Next" where an engineered baby has a chimp mother & a human father.
   

Note: This post, originally dated 26 Jan 2006, is moved from my catch-all blog elsewhere - now abandoned.

Ellen Klages' "Ringing Up Baby": Made-to-order baby, gone wrong

This beautiful little piece of chilling humor narrates the experience of a little girl helping her nanny order her baby sister!

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.
Narrator is an unnamed little girl. Looks like her mom is a very busy woman - mom/daughter meet Wednesdays for supper! Nanny has convinced mom to have a second child: "has arranged for a nice lady to plant Mother’s egg and do all the messy parts, then give the baby to us when it’s done."

She sits down with the nanny in front of the computer to order rest of the new baby. They have many choices:

1. Brother or sister: she wants sister "because a brother would be a pest and get into my best things, like Courtney Taylor’s brother Robby, who programmed her mobile phone to ring with a nasty farting sound."
2. Its birthday: Oct, "so her party won’t get in the way of Christmas" or her own birthday.
3. Skin color: "Babies only come in about six colours".
4. Hair & eye color.
5. Intelligence - e.g., stupid, or above average. Better intelligence costs more money.
6. Good at maths?
7. Bioimmunity: Better immunity costs more money.
8. ...

Midway through ordering, nanny gets a phone call, & goes to another room. That is when the little girls selects an interesting option - "bioluminescence" - they can mix some genes of a certain kind of jellyfish! "Once I have my baby sister, I will never need my night-light again. Nanny will be so proud."

This option was apparently on a popup screen; the girl is smart enough to restore screen the way nanny left. Presumably, she will get a bioluminscent sister!

Fact sheet.
Ringing Up Baby, short story, review
First published: Nature magazine, 27 April 2006
Rating: A

See also.

1. All stories about technology assisted human baby making.
2. This story ranked (by quality) among all stories.

Eileen Gunn's "Speak, Geek": Man, version 2.1

This very short story sounds like a satire. It is narrated by a genetically tweaked dog - who is now smart, & works as a coder!

Only the company that employs him, Lazy M, is not into programming computers, but programming genome! "Man 2.1" is their upcoming product - now nearing code freeze. And the narrator accidentally finds something called "Project Felix” that is an undocumented feature of Man 2.1 - an injection of some cat genome so men will become a little more free thinking!

If you are not a computer programmer, some of the language might appear geekish. If you are, this still is not a story I could enjoy.

Full text of this story is available online.

Fact sheet.
Speak, Geek, short story, review
First published: Nature magazine, 24 Aug 2006
Rating: C