Herasaga

Like priests, scientists are liable to be misled by the purity of their motives into downplaying the risks inherent in their creations.

Tout comme des prêtres, les scientifiques peuvent être trompés par la pureté de leurs intentions et minimiser les risques inhérents de leurs créations.

Hera and her sisters are now sealed off from the rest of the world in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. Hera is still tormented by her parents’ decision to genetically modify the brains of their twelve daughters—and by her own agreement to allow a similar procedure to be used on a much larger group of human embryos.

In a series of dialogues with a molecular biologist recruited for their private university, Hera and Gaia debate the changing relationship between science and society from the time of Lavoisier in the eighteenth century to the terrible legacy of atomic physics in the twentieth. Two dialogues between Hera and Jacob Hofer, a Hutterite minister, deal with the issue of nihilism in religion and science.

Meanwhile, the group of engineered embryos has become one thousand young people just turning eighteen, and their gender politics are threatening to ruin Hera’s new beginning for human society.

Part One: Ratboy’s Tale

Part Two: Jackrabbit Spring

Part Three: Mammalian Mothers

Part Four: The Childhood of Humankind

Pp. xxvii, 287 $22.95

ISBN 978-0-7766-0677-4

Also available from The University of Ottawa Press:

Hera, or Empathy: A Work of Utopian Fiction (Book One of The Herasaga)
ISBN 978-0-9738283-0-6
Pp. xvii, 600
$22.95