Author Topic: EP127: Results  (Read 37548 times)

Gaijin51

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Reply #25 on: October 15, 2007, 10:30:29 PM
It was a thought provoking story. Maybe a bit too didactic in tone.
Like Gattaca, it seems that most people see our genetic-engineered future as bleak.
Whatever happens, I bet there will always be plenty who choose to have kids the old-fashioned way.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be open to new possibilities as well.
Think what all the new Einsteins and Galileos and Mozarts will contribute to society.
I would be interested in hearing another story that is more sympathetic to a transhumanist perspective.



swdragoon

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Reply #26 on: October 16, 2007, 03:35:57 AM
So my wifes family has a history of a honorable genetic disease (Spinal muscle atrophic). So before we had children we decided that we would have genetic testing to see if we were carriers of this disease. We were not and now have 2 ½ happy and healthy children. My question is dose having this test make us evil?

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lowky

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Reply #27 on: October 16, 2007, 04:01:31 AM
So my wifes family has a history of a honorable genetic disease (Spinal muscle atrophic). So before we had children we decided that we would have genetic testing to see if we were carriers of this disease. We were not and now have 2 ½ happy and healthy children. My question is dose having this test make us evil?

Why would it make you evil to want to make sure you didn't bring a life into this world that would know great pain and suffering?
If anything I would think it makes you more responsible. 


swdragoon

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Reply #28 on: October 16, 2007, 04:17:35 AM
so how difrent is the person in this story


needles to say this story is close to home

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Gaijin51

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Reply #29 on: October 16, 2007, 06:19:11 AM
so how difrent is the person in this story


needles to say this story is close to home

No, of course you are not evil. Few people would object to genetic testing for a disease especially before you get pregnant. I would do the same thing.

The person in the story differs because a normal healthy child was not good enough. He wanted some sort of ubermensch. Also you didn't mention what you would have done if the test said you had the gene, but this guy decided to dump his girlfriend as soon as he found out that their child wasn't especially likely to be an ubermensch.

However, the author didn't try to make this guy into anything more than a 1-dimensional cold-hearted jerk. There is no attempt to make a more sympathetic character espouse this viewpoint.

Maybe the future will combine the elements of last week's podcast with this week's: We choose our mates based on algorithms that analyze benetic compatibility, but our companions and life partners will be robots, not people. Because robots are more perfectable and customizable than people. Real spouses yell, nag, cheat, are lazy, drink too much, are sometimes abusive, etc. Robots could solve these shortcomings.



Gaijin51

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Reply #30 on: October 16, 2007, 07:44:15 AM
One other thing to add to the discussion about IQ. 100 is average by definition so 120 could never be average. They have to recalibrate it every so often because for some reason people seem to be getting smarter on average. But I didn't think that's what the author intended. In other words, the potential child actually had a good chance to have a higher-than-average IQ, but just not as high as they were hoping for. Even probably slightly above average was not good enough.

BTW, as far as government policy, I think people should be allowed to have "designer babies" if they want. I don't see how it hurts anyone else. People are always free to have babies the old fashioned way, and probably most or at least many people will even if these techniques become available and affordable. For religious or philisophical reasons or for other reasons. I don't believe people will suddenly see "normal people" as burdens on society to be discriminated against. The problem with Eugenics was the part about forcing reproductive choices on others such as forced sterilization. Unless there is a resource problem where overpopulation would be harmful to society, I think people should be free to reproduce as they wish according to their own philosophy. The only time I think you could make a legitimate case for preventing people from reproducing as they wish, is if they can't provide for their kids (the kids will become someone else's problem, or die) or there is overpopulation (in which case they can still have kids, just not more than 1 or 2).



Czhorat

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Reply #31 on: October 16, 2007, 10:47:26 AM
so how difrent is the person in this story

I think we'd all agree that there's a world of difference between making choices against serious genetic defects and choosing for some kind of perfect "designer baby".

It's funny, I listen to a story and I think it's okay, or just enjoy the ability to listen to it even if I'm not particularly thrilled by it, and then I read the comment threads here and find myself liking it less because of what other people have said about it. Sometimes there are things I just don't notice for whatever reason, and then someone brings it up and I have to think about it and realize that it really does cripple the story in a way -- like the comments from Loz and bolddeceiver about the gender stereotypes.

The more I look at the story, the less the gender stereotypes bother me. Part of it is that, on reflection, the female isn't the perfect model of behaviour herself. Remember that she wanted the test. It feels to me as if, no matter what she says, she didn't really want results - just confirmation that she and her potential child are special in some way. The man was at least more honest with himself about what he wanted (and more realistic as well. It seems unlikely that a couple obviously living paycheck to paycheck would be able to save up for fancy in utero enhancements while they're still of childrearing age).

The other thing about the story that strikes me upon reflection is how the apparently lower middle class couple identifies with the wealthy people who can afford perfect babies rather than the poor who can't. It seems to be a very American trait that we choose to identify ourselves with the rich and successful regardless of our own situation. Not to get into politics, but it's one explanatation for why it's so easy to get popular support for things like capital gains tax cuts or cuts on inheritance taxes for very large estates and hard to get support for universal health care. People would rather see themselves as the ones with the million dollar estate rather than the ones who can't afford a doctor. My point isn't that estate taxes are good or universal health care is bad, but it's an interesting case of how we see ourselves. I think this story did a nice job of that.

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ajames

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Reply #32 on: October 16, 2007, 11:04:55 AM
It's funny, I listen to a story and I think it's okay, or just enjoy the ability to listen to it even if I'm not particularly thrilled by it, and then I read the comment threads here and find myself liking it less because of what other people have said about it.

That's interesting, as I usually appreciate stories even more after reading the discussion boards.  In this story, for example, Czhorat's earlier post about the irony of the results giving the narrator a real answer about her present relationship more than the not-yet-conceived offspring raised my appreciation for the story a bit.   

On the other hand, if a fault someone finds didn't bother me while I listened to the story, it usually doesn't bother me afterwards.  Did the characters in this story fit stereotypes in some ways?  Maybe they did, but they felt like real characters to me nonetheless.



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Reply #33 on: October 16, 2007, 12:01:56 PM
The other thing about the story that strikes me upon reflection is how the apparently lower middle class couple identifies with the wealthy people who can afford perfect babies rather than the poor who can't. It seems to be a very American trait that we choose to identify ourselves with the rich and successful regardless of our own situation.

A present day parallell would be how people are willing to go bankrupt getting a car/suv that's from a luxery company and has all of this crap they don't need.  Eventhough, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Mercedes and a Hyundai if you didn't let them look at the outside and took off all of the emblems.

People look at me like I have stuff growing out of my ears when I say that we have no intention of getting a new car.  Our car is in great shape and runs well, but it's a '91.  Everyone looks at my wife's job and asks us when we're buying the 5 series.  (It doesn't help that we live in Berlin.)  They think the car is more important than the house we are saving for.  (That isn't helped by the fact that we want a place in the city.)



eytanz

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Reply #34 on: October 16, 2007, 12:36:18 PM
I'm in the "meh" crowd. The story went down such a predictable path and really didn't add much that is new to the topic, but then again, it wasn't really bad either.



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Reply #35 on: October 16, 2007, 12:44:39 PM
(Hey, Nash... nice Billy Joel lyric at the end there...  :) )

I didn't really have a problem with the theme of story, mostly because this IS the future.  IIRC it's already started in some countries where girl babies are less prized than boy babies, so efforts are made to not have girl babies.  Jess's impression of the unmodified/unplanned kids in the park doesn't surprise me either; I don't see it being far off when we look at kids in certain parts of town or who look a certain way and wonder why their parents didn't do something.

This was published in 2000, so it's already slightly dated, but really just in the way that we're seven years closer to it.  If this had been a newer story, I'd've asked if Rusch had been watching "Idiocracy" (at least the first part, which is scarily accurate in its depiction of two types of parents -- the ones that plan and the ones that don't).

Despite all the good points it made, the story was full of cliches in the characters:

* small-town parents who don't understand why big-town daughter wants to do x
* small-town girl struggling to make it in the big city, working in a theater, wanting to be an actress
* boyfriend who's a cook
* they never see each other
* girl wants to disregard the test results, boy wants to follow them, implied statement that boy is wrong and girl is right (not saying that's my opinion or not, but that's the implied feeling I got from that exchange)

I've read a lot of Rusch's Star Trek books (all of which are written with her husband, Dean Wesley Smith), and this feels about the same.  But now I can say with certainty that she is the better writer of the duo -- anyone who's read "A Hard Rain" (Smith's solo ST novel) I'm guessing feels the same way.

As for the reading... the word I would use is "halting".  I feel like the reading was either overproduced (in that the reader recorded it in chunks) or the reader wasn't sure what she was looking at.

The song was pretty good -- sort of lounge-rock meets Fiona Apple's piano riffs -- but their producer might want to back off the piano a bit, as the vocals in the first two verses got lost in places.  She sang it a lot better than I expected, given the reading; the voice also sounded completely different (in a good way).  (Are we allowed to review the songs?  :) )

Anyway, not one of my favorites, but I'm not unhappy that I listened to it.

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Chodon

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Reply #36 on: October 16, 2007, 01:09:51 PM
This story is so close to reality it is almost fiction.  I like the point the story was trying to make, and I think it addressed the issues accurately.  What parents nowadays would NOT get an ultrasound during pregnancy?  This was unheard of 25 years ago, but now it's considered standard prenatal care.  In another 25 years will genetic therapy be condidered the new standard?  I think the answer is probably yes.

Will those who can't afford prenatal genetic therapy be at a disadvantage?  No more than parents who can't afford an ultrasound nowadays. 

One thing I got out of the story that I haven't seen addressed is how ALL the kids in the park seemed to have some kind of defect.  It made me wonder if something happened that made compatible mates less likely and the number of birth defects increase.  The alternative is that they are more apparent now that kids are so easily "fixed".

Overall, good story.  It made me think, which is what I'm looking for when I come to EP.

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Loz

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Reply #37 on: October 16, 2007, 02:36:08 PM
FSVO 'defect'. Wasn't it more that the kids in the park didn't match up to Jollie or Pitt-esque standards of beauty? The children and their parents all seemed happy, from what I remember. Both the woman and partner were only concerned about their potential children as things or for what they said about them as parents, not as individuals themselves, though admittedly this would be difficult to do when they are only potential children and not real.



Russell Nash

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Reply #38 on: October 16, 2007, 03:06:45 PM
The song was pretty good -- sort of lounge-rock meets Fiona Apple's piano riffs -- but their producer might want to back off the piano a bit, as the vocals in the first two verses got lost in places.  She sang it a lot better than I expected, given the reading; the voice also sounded completely different (in a good way).  (Are we allowed to review the songs?  :) )

I didn't get to listen to the song as carefully as you did, because I was in a subway station at the time.  I really liked it.  It had a very bluesy feel.  I was kind of thinking: Blues with Fiona Apple Piano and Save Ferris(1st album) vocals and backing.

(Hey, Nash... nice Billy Joel lyric at the end there...  :) )

I'm collecting comments on that sig.  Most had never heard it before, so I've been sending out the MP3.  Maybe I can get him a few more sales that way.

It was in direct answer to comments about things being B&W.

Here's the lyrics, since I'll probably change my sig again soon:

Shades of grey wherever I go
 The more I find out, the less that I know
 Black and white is how it should be
 But shades of grey are the colors I see



swdragoon

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Reply #39 on: October 16, 2007, 03:26:58 PM
so if a seris genetic disorder is ok. ware do we draw that line. i  know what i care about most of those numbers were avalible when we did our testing. but we chose just a hand full of disorders. and had any of them been probable we would have adopted.

i know that the story had frivolis reasons to get said testing. but wernt thay just being responsable from  thear view point.

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gedion_ki

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Reply #40 on: October 16, 2007, 04:03:07 PM
It seems to be a very American trait that we choose to identify ourselves with the rich and successful regardless of our own situation.

I agree, Americans often seem to confuse their economic success as much greater then it really is and work very hard to project more then they have. I saw a report somewhere claiming that over half of all graduating Collage Seniors believed they would be rich in the future... that's the American delusion.

People look at me like I have stuff growing out of my ears when I say that we have no intention of getting a new car. 

You know I get that look too when I say that buying a new car is a waste of money. I always say, why buy a new one, the one I have works fine?  I use to be a serial car buyer, but now I have dreams of driving my current car until the wheels fall of twice or more.



Listener

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Reply #41 on: October 16, 2007, 04:17:37 PM

You know I get that look too when I say that buying a new car is a waste of money. I always say, why buy a new one, the one I have works fine?  I use to be a serial car buyer, but now I have dreams of driving my current car until the wheels fall of twice or more.

I'll probably do that with my NEXT car.  My current one is fine, but it's a 48-mile round trip to work through heavy traffic and a hybrid would save me a ton of money, I think.

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DeGem

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Reply #42 on: October 16, 2007, 06:57:01 PM
Here is some food for thought.

1) would you send your kids to school for an education if not required by law.
2) would you buy your kids a computer and internet connection. so that they would not be at a disadvantage to other kids in their class
3) would you buy your child a pair of Nike shoes, so that they they don't stick out.
4) would you argue with the teacher because you felt your child gave the right answer on the test, but the teacher marked it wrong.  to get that extra half mark?

Odds are you said yes to every one of those points.  That makes you normal.  You would do what ever you can to give your child a better chance in life.  it's simply an extension of Darwin's evolutional theory.  We do what ever we can to be better adapted to survive our environment.

so the genetic testing and even GM of children is down the road.  they are small simple steps from where we are now.  Look back through time and you will see the same happened then.  People would sell their children into indentured service just so that they would have a better life and that their off spring would have a better one also.

GM of Food is only a newer way of doing animal husbandry and cross breading of plants.



gedion_ki

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Reply #43 on: October 16, 2007, 07:58:05 PM
I'll probably do that with my NEXT car.  My current one is fine, but it's a 48-mile round trip to work through heavy traffic and a hybrid would save me a ton of money, I think.
Can't fault that logic! I only drive maybe 12 a day so no real good reason to trade out cars either, it does depend on situation. As close as I live to work I tend to ride my bike some days, but being car-less is a real challenge here in the suburban sprawl.



Biscuit

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Reply #44 on: October 17, 2007, 12:41:48 AM
I think the story fails for a number of reasons, but mostly for a tiresomely sentimental attitude towards children and an absurd analogy of a near genius level IQ somehow being sub par. 

Monty Grue's words here pretty much sum up my feelings on the story. Thumbs in the middle for me. The subject matter was on the right track, just treated WAY too simplistically for my tastes.

Disclaimer: I am childless by choice. Disclaimer 2: I believe in population control (by numbers, and diseases/defects/burden to society. Pretty tough claims to make, and they are wholly my own.

I understand the purpose of "discussions" like this in literature and film, but I don't appreciate the black and white view. I would rather people be more informed on subject matter (whether it's the alternatives in a fictional story, or unbiased fact reporting in the media). Unfortunately, most of society has been dumbed down to expect the "quick headline" or "quick dirty fact run down" for sensationalism or entertainments sake.

The one thing that really bothered me about this story (outside the character cliches) was that it didn't explain the societal shift that REQUIRED genetic compatibility between couples wanting offspring. Where was IVF/sperm or egg donation/womb-for-rent, or were they societal no-nos? What about infertile/incompatible couples who had the ability to adopt a genetically "above average" child?

And why was genetics tied to economic status? I believe in "If you can't feed it, don't breed it", but the inference that only poor people are ugly/genetically inferior really annoyed me. While there was some Nature vs Nurture argument on the woman's side, it was almost like it didn't apply to the rest of this soceity - every other below average child in the park WAS going to be a burden on society.

Disclaimer 3: I actually really enjoy KKR. I came to her writing through her Changling series, which totally rocked.

Oh, and I agree that the delivery from the reader was too "halting" - but that's the perfectionist VA/radio person in me speaking.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2007, 12:48:03 AM by Biscuit »



Planish

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Reply #45 on: October 17, 2007, 02:56:25 AM
No, of course you are not evil. Few people would object to genetic testing for a disease especially before you get pregnant. I would do the same thing.

The person in the story differs because a normal healthy child was not good enough. He wanted some sort of ubermensch. Also you didn't mention what you would have done if the test said you had the gene, but this guy decided to dump his girlfriend as soon as he found out that their child wasn't especially likely to be an ubermensch.

However, the author didn't try to make this guy into anything more than a 1-dimensional cold-hearted jerk. There is no attempt to make a more sympathetic character espouse this viewpoint.
That's pretty much what I thought.

There were several hints about the fear of a "merely ordinary" child becoming a "burden on Society", but it wasn't very clear how that would be so. The few children mentioned seemed to be doing okay in spite of being pointed out as examples of these "burdens on Society". If they penalty for being ordinary was made more obvious, then the boyfriend would be a bit more of a sympathetic character.

As it is, the story is more about the tragedy of how he was not the man she thought he was (or hoped he would be).

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Reply #46 on: October 17, 2007, 07:39:44 AM
I'll probably do that with my NEXT car.  My current one is fine, but it's a 48-mile round trip to work through heavy traffic and a hybrid would save me a ton of money, I think.
Can't fault that logic! I only drive maybe 12 a day so no real good reason to trade out cars either, it does depend on situation. As close as I live to work I tend to ride my bike some days, but being car-less is a real challenge here in the suburban sprawl.

With the fear of turning this into a "how much do you drive thread", I say crunch the numbers and do a cost benefit analysis.  Would buying a five year old Civic make more sense? 

We just had our car in for its annual looksy and oil change.  In the last year we have driven it 4,000 km (2,500 miles).  It's our only car. 



Loz

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Reply #47 on: October 17, 2007, 08:25:17 AM
Here is some food for thought.

1) would you send your kids to school for an education if not required by law.
2) would you buy your kids a computer and internet connection. so that they would not be at a disadvantage to other kids in their class
3) would you buy your child a pair of Nike shoes, so that they they don't stick out.
4) would you argue with the teacher because you felt your child gave the right answer on the test, but the teacher marked it wrong.  to get that extra half mark?

Odds are you said yes to every one of those points.  That makes you normal.  You would do what ever you can to give your child a better chance in life.  it's simply an extension of Darwin's evolutional theory.  We do what ever we can to be better adapted to survive our environment.

so the genetic testing and even GM of children is down the road.  they are small simple steps from where we are now.  Look back through time and you will see the same happened then.  People would sell their children into indentured service just so that they would have a better life and that their off spring would have a better one also.

GM of Food is only a newer way of doing animal husbandry and cross breading of plants.

Gah, I hate it when I see Darwin's theories being misused in this way! I'm sorry, but those theories relate to species, not individuals or small groups of individuals, over vast periods of time not over a few years in one organisms lifetime. Also how about:

1) would you send your kids to school for an education if not required by law.
2) would you encourage your children to cheat and steal in order to come top in every test?
3) would you buy a gun for your kid so they can threaten the shop owner for that pair of Nikes?
4) would you take whatever steps, legal or illegal, to remove any teacher who saw your child as a dishonest little smear of shit?

I'm concerned by what you consider 'normal'. Admittedly I'm childless, but I'd like to think that if my child came to me asking for Nikes then we'd work something out, they save up their pocket money or get a job (if they're old enough, though I don't see so many paper-boys any more), I was brought up with parents that wouldn't accept that I REALLY NEEDED the new Transformer or whatever, and had to wait for a birthday.

It seems to me that you are conflating social, economic and biological pressures all together in your examples, using evolutionary theory to justify the effects of economic hardship in times when people weren't expecting that 'all men are created equal'.



Chodon

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Reply #48 on: October 17, 2007, 11:27:09 AM
One new question I came up with while thinking about this story: 20 years after this story who is going to be doing all the non-skilled labor?  All the super-children that have grown up and fought their way through college aren't going to be satisfied with a job on the assembly line or mopping floors.  Are there going to be enough "burden on society" children to maintain the society as a whole?  Society doesn't work without a full spectrum of individuals.  That's one of the reasons humanity has been so successful in taking over the planet. 

Will the present day average be the new low?  With the story hinting that an IQ of 120 is the new "standard" (which is kind of at odds with the whole IQ scale,  but whatever) makes me think the answer is yes.

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DDog

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Reply #49 on: October 17, 2007, 02:55:56 PM
Quote from: Chodon
One thing I got out of the story that I haven't seen addressed is how ALL the kids in the park seemed to have some kind of defect.  It made me wonder if something happened that made compatible mates less likely and the number of birth defects increase.  The alternative is that they are more apparent now that kids are so easily "fixed".
But what were the visible defects? Big ears, pimples, eyes not quite straight -- those wouldn't have beeen featured in any sideshow. The woman is making an inference from their appearance to their class, intelligence, and skills. Like treating someone in a wheelchair like they're five years old, just because they're in a wheelchair (I had a friend who once had a guy open a door for her and tell her "There you go, zoom!"), or assuming someone is poor and/or a gang member and/or a crack dealer just because they're black.

Quote from: Chodon
There were several hints about the fear of a "merely ordinary" child becoming a "burden on Society", but it wasn't very clear how that would be so. The few children mentioned seemed to be doing okay in spite of being pointed out as examples of these "burdens on Society". If they penalty for being ordinary was made more obvious, then the boyfriend would be a bit more of a sympathetic character.
I felt like she was just parrotting the prevailing attitude and didn't really have a concrete idea herself why that would be, so we didn't get to hear either. Small Town Girl in Big City has to keep up with the Joneses.


Another note is...Did they take the "child prodigy" test or does everyone get percentages for musical and artistic ability? Can you measure a child's percentage likelihood of being an engineer or a political scientist? Or percentage likelihood of being able to take care of themselves? It seems to me that an overabundance of Mozarts would be the "burden on society"...

I'm also reminded of a very short story I read the other year (I can't remember the author's name so I can't find the story on the internet to link it) called "Normal" which was an interesting take on either genetic modification or a nuclear accident.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2007, 02:57:55 PM by DDog »

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