Herasaga

Hera or Empathy

A Work of Utopian Fiction

by

William Leiss

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

Ever since Plato, philosophers have been imagining future utopian societies. In more recent times many of these fantasies have been about the doings of scientists, because modern science fascinates us with the prospect of changing every aspect of our lives. Hera is one of twelve sisters genetically modified by their neuroscientist parents to have superior mental faculties. During their teenage years the sisters were forced to flee for their lives from the remote Indonesian village where they had been born. Later, Hera challenges her father’s right to have engineered his children, using the Biblical story of creation against him. But one day she discovers that the sisters’ genes contain modifications that their parents didn’t intend.

Extract:

“My objective is to draw a line in the sand between religion and science—in order to protect both. The coming of molecular biology and the science of DNA is the signal for a final rupture between science and monotheistic religion. Each is now a constant danger for the other; in each other’s presence they compose an explosive mixture, like the gases hydrogen and oxygen. Both can only survive and endure on the same planet if they carefully avoid one another. This is the meaning of the appearance on earth of our kind and its fate, which we have accepted: To enable this mutual avoidance strategy to succeed.”