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1 results

  • Chapter 9 - Clones and Other Sorrows

  • from Part IV - Genome Time
  • Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book:
    Literature, Science, and Public Policy
    Published online:
    03 August 2023
    Print publication:
    17 August 2023, pp 182-197
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  • Summary

    Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a biodystopia in which clones are raised to supply organs for donation to strangers, takes the form of a poignant bildungsroman. The novel is representative of recent fiction that uses the conceit of cloning to challenge readers to think about what makes us human. In the manner of canonical realist fiction, Ishiguro’s story provokes ethical reflection and deep emotion in its readers, a stark contrast with the more than 150 science fiction films featuring clones, which typically exploit clones as a source of horror, violent action, or laughter. If, as we saw in Chapters 6 through 8, the imaginative world building of science fiction can inform public policy through its challenging thought experiments, realist genres invite sympathetic identification and attention to the moral complexities of policy decisions. Never Let Me Go helps one understand the influences that shape organ transplant policies, which can ask a patient to choose between the time one has to live and the life one wants to live in time.