EP258: Raising Jenny

[Darwinist]

I hate the idea of parents holding their kids back based on the fact that they are so fricken needy. It to me a while to realize that my mom was not prepared for my move to college. She said she was happy to get rid of me but she continually calls me checking up on me like I am still 16. but like my biology teacher said, "Parents will always treat you like you are 16" Plus three is the whole twist on Jenny being a clone of her grandmother basically. Very bizarre!!!

I loved the story, kind of bummed me out but really made me think about kids and expectations.  An Mur's comments also really hit home as did this post.  Sometimes I check in too much with my son who is in college and I can relate to the biology teacher's comment, even though every time I see my son he seems to have become more mature and independent.  Gotta quit texting him so much. 

[Sandikal]

With the exception of the cloning, this story wasn't very sci-fi.  However, I found it to be a very poignant reflection on what it means to be a parent and letting your child become his or her own person.

[OsamaBinLondon]

Gd grf, wht brng str, nd wth s mch nsght s pckt f crps. hv fnll jnd th "Wh ws ths str n scp Pd" frtrnt. Jst stck cln n thr nd t's Sc-f rght? dn't thnk s. n xplsn ds nt n ctn mv mk. Ths s n f ths 'ss' strs tht th thr hd t 'gt t f hr sstm' prbbl d t chldhd trm f sm knd, bt lrgl hlds nthng f ntrst fr nn ls. Jst n vrl lnght sllw ccmltn f wrds wstd n n P psd. ptrnsng Pts jst st bck nd wx dtc bt hw gd str s bcs 'r n th clck. Grw sm brss ns nd gnrt n pnn f r wn. Gv n hnst pnn th w dd bfr th P chn bcm ttchd t r ft. 'kng hplss

D-D-D-DISEMVOWELED!  Haha.  Hey Osama, quit the trolling, learn to be nicer, etc etc.  Insulting everyone isn't the way to get your point across.

[ElectricPaladin]

Gd grf, wht brng str, nd wth s mch nsght s pckt f crps. hv fnll jnd th "Wh ws ths str n scp Pd" frtrnt. Jst stck cln n thr nd t's Sc-f rght? dn't thnk s. n xplsn ds nt n ctn mv mk. Ths s n f ths 'ss' strs tht th thr hd t 'gt t f hr sstm' prbbl d t chldhd trm f sm knd, bt lrgl hlds nthng f ntrst fr nn ls. Jst n vrl lnght sllw ccmltn f wrds wstd n n P psd. ptrnsng Pts jst st bck nd wx dtc bt hw gd str s bcs 'r n th clck. Grw sm brss ns nd gnrt n pnn f r wn. Gv n hnst pnn th w dd bfr th P chn bcm ttchd t r ft. 'kng hplss

So, now that I've reported this jerk to the moderators, can anyone tell me where to find the button I press so I never have to read his posts ever again?

[Scattercat]

Gd grf, wht brng str, nd wth s mch nsght s pckt f crps. hv fnll jnd th "Wh ws ths str n scp Pd" frtrnt. Jst stck cln n thr nd t's Sc-f rght? dn't thnk s. n xplsn ds nt n ctn mv mk. Ths s n f ths 'ss' strs tht th thr hd t 'gt t f hr sstm' prbbl d t chldhd trm f sm knd, bt lrgl hlds nthng f ntrst fr nn ls. Jst n vrl lnght sllw ccmltn f wrds wstd n n P psd. ptrnsng Pts jst st bck nd wx dtc bt hw gd str s bcs 'r n th clck. Grw sm brss ns nd gnrt n pnn f r wn. Gv n hnst pnn th w dd bfr th P chn bcm ttchd t r ft. 'kng hplss

"Clique."

(Also "crisps," "lengthy," and "shallow."  And "patronizing," unless you're actually British.)

This charming fellow's been around that block before, ElectricPaladin; he is apparently ill-suited to the climate of the forums.

[Bdoomed]

*takes a bow*

[ElectricPaladin]

*takes a bow*

*Applause Applause*

[Bill]

I wasn't bothered by the lack of more science fiction elements. It reminded me of EP213: A Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands in that it took a sliver of a speculative element and explored our humanity's response to that development. Simner did a good job skirting melodrama while exploring the issue raised. I was worried early on that the story was going to take a turn into some form of re-awaking consciousness, but was happy it stayed on the tack it did. The fact the narrator could continue to work out her issues with her mother through her relationship with her daughter and her ability to readily accept the biological inevitabilities of her daughter being a clone but desire to resist the less tangible  physiological ramifications compelling.

[Jabari Woods]

I will have to check out a Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands. It sounds like it would be interesting. As far as science fiction elements I thought it was a good piece of science fiction. But I am no where near qualified to say whether it was good science fiction or not. For some reason the robot reminded me of Bender off from Futurama haha.

[Unblinking]

But I am no where near qualified to say whether it was good science fiction or not. 

But you ARE qualified, at least to say whether YOU think it is good science fiction.  I doubt you'll ever get a consensus, even with a panel of "experts" on which stories are good science fiction, but no reader's opinion is less valid than theirs. 

[mbrennan]

My god, I hated Jenny One.  Bad enough to be so needy, but the way she pursued it -- the smiling, happy, "but we're all here; why would you want to leave?" attitude, the passive-aggressive tactic of paying a deposit on the school she KNOWS her daughter doesn't want to go to, all the rest of her controlling behavior -- after the car crash, I was practically snarling at the stereo, because I so badly wanted to punch her in the throat.

Didn't much like Jennifer, either, since the story didn't build enough sympathy in me for what she wanted out of life, and by the end I wasn't too fond of Adrienne since she'd taken precisely one stab at doing what she wanted and then gave up . . . but I did like the story, overall.  I *believed* in the characters, even if I didn't like them.

[CryptoMe]

Sometimes I check in too much with my son who is in college and I can relate to the biology teacher's comment, even though every time I see my son he seems to have become more mature and independent.  Gotta quit texting him so much. 

See, I don't think it's a bad thing to stay in the lives of your adult children, so long as the relationship matures to one of friends, rather than parent-child. As an adult, I now see my parents as friends, and I really enjoy that relationship with them.

Regarding the story, I thought it was okay. But I agree with Mur; I would have liked to see Adriane pick up some of her old dreams.

P.S. This story entertained me through kilometers 22-29 of a marathon last Sunday... one of my long-standing dreams .

[kibitzer]

P.S. This story entertained me through kilometers 22-29 of a marathon last Sunday... one of my long-standing dreams .

Cool -- so how'd you go?

[Wilson Fowlie]

So, first of all - and maybe my vague elitism is showing here - I have a hard time believing in grown people who are stupid enough to believe that a clone will be in any meaningful sense the original. When Jenny One insists "you don't know that" and doctor-daughter admits "no, we don't," I wanted to scream at the radio - in fact, I think I did scream at the radio - "yes we do, you morons, we do!" There is absolutely no reason to believe that a clone will be the same person as the original. Similar in some ways, yes, but actually the original? No.

While I agree with you that there is no evidence for a 'soul' (especially one that could or would transfer between bodies after several months or whatever the time was between Jenny's death and Jennifer's ... birth? 'conception'? development of neurons?) and in fact, there is increasing neurological (and other) evidence against such a thing, it is, technically, correct to say that we do not 100%, categorically know there isn't one.  We can act as though we know there isn't, even be just that close to certainty, but if we are true sceptics, we have to admit the (extremely, immeasurably slim) possibility that science may someday detect such a thing.

Or, as Stephen Jay Gould put it: In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

The fact of a lack of soul is not proven, merely confirmed to such a degree.  So technically, it's true - though misleading, and the doctor in the story should have found a way to express that - to say "we don't know."

Maybe there are people this ignorant in the world, but if there are, I have a hard time connecting to them.

I'm guessing you're not from the U.S., or you would have encountered a myriad of such people by now.  If you are from there, and you haven't encountered them, I'm fascinated to know how you've accomplished it.

I think (but am not certain) that the whole idea of 'souls' is one of the main reasons that religious believers have such difficulty accepting the idea of human cloning.

[Scattercat]

Even if souls exist, why would there be any reason to believe that Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  We may not be able to disprove the existence of a soul, but that doesn't really factor into the question of why grown adults would believe that Jennifer would be Jenny again despite being raised in completely different circumstances two generations later.

[Wilson Fowlie]

Even if souls exist, why would there be any reason to believe that Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  We may not be able to disprove the existence of a soul, but that doesn't really factor into the question of why grown adults would believe that Jennifer would be Jenny again despite being raised in completely different circumstances two generations later.

I can think of much less likely things than that (or at least things I consider less likely), that people believe routinely.  Transubstantiation, just to name one.

Spider Robinson once wrote a different take on the whole transferring-souls idea: an über-rich woman's husband dies and she tries to find his recycled soul by finding out what babies were born at the exact moment of his death.

[Lionman]

I thought the premise of the story made me cringe.  While it may be a noble idea to raise the clone of your mother, I ..just don't think I'd want to do that.  It'd make me question myself too much.

[Scattercat]

Even if souls exist, why would there be any reason to believe that Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  We may not be able to disprove the existence of a soul, but that doesn't really factor into the question of why grown adults would believe that Jennifer would be Jenny again despite being raised in completely different circumstances two generations later.

I can think of much less likely things than that (or at least things I consider less likely), that people believe routinely.  Transubstantiation, just to name one.

Spider Robinson once wrote a different take on the whole transferring-souls idea: an über-rich woman's husband dies and she tries to find his recycled soul by finding out what babies were born at the exact moment of his death.

See, that, at least, has some religious support and a few thousand years of Buddhist tradition going for it.  And it makes sense, presuming a belief in reincarnation and souls, that the soul would have to go somewhere PDQ upon death.

[Unblinking]

Even if souls exist, why would there be any reason to believe that Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  We may not be able to disprove the existence of a soul, but that doesn't really factor into the question of why grown adults would believe that Jennifer would be Jenny again despite being raised in completely different circumstances two generations later.

Why would there NOT be a reason to believe Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  Just one idea off the top of my head:  maybe souls are genetically imprinted, and so once it's cut loose from one body, it just drifts away, but if another body with the same DNA is created the soul is drawn to it, perhaps even displacing other competing souls.

Note, I don't really think that was the case in this particular story.  But if you decide that souls exist, why would you rule out certain potential traits of souls?  To me that's like saying "I am certain that dragons don't exist.  But if they do, they are purple, and smell of tulips." 

[ElectricPaladin]

Why would there NOT be a reason to believe Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it?  Just one idea off the top of my head:  maybe souls are genetically imprinted, and so once it's cut loose from one body, it just drifts away, but if another body with the same DNA is created the soul is drawn to it, perhaps even displacing other competing souls.

Note, I don't really think that was the case in this particular story.  But if you decide that souls exist, why would you rule out certain potential traits of souls?  To me that's like saying "I am certain that dragons don't exist.  But if they do, they are purple, and smell of tulips." 

Well, because most of the time when people believe something odd, it's based on something. A long-standing religion, or a cultural assumption, or a family tradition. Not something they made up out of the blue. The story didn't do the work to convince us that this ambiguity had become a cultural phenomenon - it almost expected us to have the necessary doubts ourselves.

Consider, by way of comparison, Marie Brennan's Kingspeaker (which recently aired on Podcastle). Kingspeaker showed us a new world, with strange customs, and did the work of establishing this world and it's beliefs brick by brick, until we could believe in the characters and their dilemma. Billion-Dollar View did the same with its world of rock-jockeys and cold equations. Raising Jenny failed at this important world-building point, with regards to cloning-as-transmigration.

[stePH]

Even if souls exist, why would there be any reason to believe that Jenny's soul would come back just because there's a genetically identical body for it? 

Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series is centered on just such a notion.

[netwiz]

Yes it was a good story BUT..... frankly I'm tired of listening to, or reading SF stories that have sod all to do with SF. With SF, for me, the whole point is to set up stories that couldn't just happen in every day life, or that have some special take on things. This story had none of those. Please, Escape Pod editors, give us genuine SF. Don't pick stories just because they happen to be good stories. Pick good SF stories. The cloning thing here was a shallow excuse to give an SF slant to a normal story. If the cloning had been exploited more (such as the 'child' having phantom memories from the 'parent') then perhaps more could be made of it. Let's have more genuine SF please, not a thin veneer of SF as an excuse.

[ElectricPaladin]

Yes it was a good story BUT..... frankly I'm tired of listening to, or reading SF stories that have sod all to do with SF. With SF, for me, the whole point is to set up stories that couldn't just happen in every day life, or that have some special take on things. This story had none of those. Please, Escape Pod editors, give us genuine SF. Don't pick stories just because they happen to be good stories. Pick good SF stories. The cloning thing here was a shallow excuse to give an SF slant to a normal story. If the cloning had been exploited more (such as the 'child' having phantom memories from the 'parent') then perhaps more could be made of it. Let's have more genuine SF please, not a thin veneer of SF as an excuse.

I'd argue that "an SF slant to a normal story" is an entirely valid branch of the Science Fiction tree, just as "normal stories" with fantasy and (more rarely) horror elements are parts of their genres. For some readers, stories focused on characters having emotional issues or dealing with stressors to their relationships against a backdrop of science fiction, fantasy, or horror elements are the ideal.

Case in point, we have...
Dracula, basically the story of a new marriage surviving its first conflict.
Stranger in a Strange Land, the story of a group of friends dealing with social change.
Farmer in the Sky - more Heinlein - is basically a coming-of-age story against a backdrop of an extraterrestrial colony.

I could go on, but I don't feel like it.

For that matter, what exactly do you mean by a "normal" story? A story about people? A story about families? A story about emotions and relationships? A story where the fantastic elements are insufficiently elaborate?

Anyway, it's all well and good to say that you don't like the story, but it's definitely science fiction, part of a proud tradition of science fiction.

[netwiz]

What makes it SF? A few lines at the start and the occasional reference in the story? Take out those lines, and the story remains untouched. It adds nothing. On that argument, I could take absolutely any story whatsoever, add a few lines at the start to say it happens on an alien planet, and lo and behold I've written a SF story. Sorry, there's got to be more to it than that. I'll repeat that I think it's a good story, just not SF. The whole point of Dracula is that the vampire adds a completely different dimension to the story, and much of the dramatic tension in the story derives from the hiden and open menace of the vampire. That's not the case in this story.

[Talia]

"Genuine" sf is subjective. This story was perfectly SF to me.