cloning-technology
The chapter details the advanced cloning laboratories where human and animal embryos are cultivated in tanks, highlighting the scientific efforts to preserve life through cloning.
3 chapters across 1 book
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976)Kate Wilhelm
In Chapter 5, Celia begins working in the laboratory, where she and David explore the extensive cloning facilities used to sustain human and animal life amid a post-crisis world. The community faces external threats from marauders, leading to defensive measures including the destruction of a dam to protect their valley. Throughout, the chapter reveals the emotional and physical toll on the characters as they grapple with survival, loss, and the ethical implications of cloning and their precarious existence.
In Chapter 27, Andrew leads a council meeting discussing the perfected cloning process that overcomes the fifth-generation decline, but at the cost of creating a caste system between intellectual clones and expendable workers. The chapter also explores the emotional and physical toll on fertile women used as hosts for implanted clones, highlighting the loss of individuality and creativity in successive generations. Mark reflects on the community's complacency and the fragility of their societal structure, questioning whether preserving the current order is sustainable or ethical.
In this chapter, a brush fire and a subsequent landslide disrupt the valley's power supply, threatening the cloning laboratory's operation. Suspicion falls on Mark, a young man with a mysterious and alien intelligence, who is planning an expedition to salvage materials from a naval base at Norfolk. Despite distrust and accusations, Mark leads a group of youths into the forest to establish a new settlement, while covertly preparing to administer sleeping pills to the breeders, suggesting a secretive and possibly subversive agenda.