Octavia Butler’sXenogenesis trilogy and Nancy Kress’sBeggars in Spain are both excellent works of science fiction and I recommend them both to lovers of the genre.
Both works explore the idea of genetically improving humanity in some way to create offspring that will have some major advantages over their parents, and both authors seem to imply that a large percentage of parents or would-be parents strongly reject the idea of their children becoming so different. In ‘Xenogenesis’, many humans become resisters, opting to have no children at all instead of having children who are part alien. In ‘Beggars in Spain’, many parents come to strongly envy and resent their Sleepless children for their inteligence and eternal youth. In both works, many humans who are not their parents have a near rabid hatred of these different, ‘superior’ children.
Everyone always says that they want their children to be better off than they are, but is it true? At what point might it stop being true? Would most people feel resentful and threatened by children who were clearly more inteligent at an early age? Or is it the more noticible, obvious differences that are the problem(not sleeping, alien features)? Or a combination of the two?
Also, in both works, the genetically improved children cease to identify themselves as human. Is this the real heart of the problem, that they aren’t? Or is it the rejection by their parents/parent species that isolates them?
I’m not familiar with these works, but if the protest takes the form of not having children, doesn’t this mean the problem will solve itself in one generation? Regardless of the pro- and anti-positions, eventually the current homo sapiens will die off and be replaced by homo futuris, at which point the controversy becomes moot. And if the futuris doesn’t want to call itself “human”… so what? We could arbitrarily decide that every child born after January 1, 2007 is of a new species and aside from upsetting all the biologists, what difference would it make?
Well, how about an X-Men analogy? It is sometimes proposed that mutants are the next step in human evolution, and they have abilities that give them an edge over non-mutant humans. Are they hated by so many people because they are different? Because there is a perceived inequality and unfairness? Or because they are superior and they make people feel inferior simply by existing?
My overall questions are about whether parents and/or humanity would willingly allow themselves to be far exceeded by their own children? Say a mutation popped up that caused maybe 5-10% of children to be super inteligent. I mean so much so that they make their parents look like blithering idiots by comparison by the time these kids are six. Or say they could levitate. Something that is clearly advantageous to this child, or would be as an adult. Now say there was a simple, safe medical procedure you could get that would ensure your child was instead perfectly normal, or maybe just a little brighter than you. Do you think many people would allow their children to be born much brighter or better than them, or do parents actually want children that are not especially better than they are?
