The best books about cloning

This is a whole different take on human cloning. Never Let Me Go depicts a world in which people are cloned to create organ donors for the sick, necessarily limiting the lifespan of the clones. It is the story of the passions, relationships, and emotions of the clones and their attempts to delay their fate. As with any book by Kazuo Ishiguro, this is beautifully written, and an insightful study of human nature.

In Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes, a crew of clones opens their eyes aboard the spaceship Dormire headed away from Earth to find their previous versions floating around dead. Not just dead, but murdered. There’s nowhere to go and each and every one of them could be the killer. That’s a premise that could have gone in a dark direction but Lafferty keeps it light, much of the story propelled by lively dialogue as the clones go about keeping the spaceship on course while zeroing in on the killer in their midst. Weighty questions about the ethics of cloning alternate with jokes, secrets are unpeeled in flashbacks, and twists and surprises abound in this entertaining space whodunit.   

Shapiro’s title is a bait-and-switch. She immediately makes clear in big block letters: "WE CAN’T CLONE A MAMMOTH!" It’s impossible. So what is she doing? Well, we can genetically rejigger Asian elephants to resemble woolly mammoths, and that could be useful. Erzats mammoths might help restore the Siberian tundra, and bioengineered, cold-adapted elephants could expand their range north, which would help them survive climate change. Shapiro has little patience for romantic visions of restoring extinct species, but she makes a compelling—and reassuring—case for how we can use bioengineering to save endangered species while they still exist.

Resurrecting Sunshine takes my fascination with the afterlife and combines it with my love of contemporary sci-fi. Sunshine was Adam’s best friend, girlfriend and bandmate until the day she swam out too far into the ocean. Now she’s gone. Or she was, until advanced underground cloning and memory-implantation techniques revive her. As Adam’s memories are retrieved and donated to a resurrected Sunshine, the question is…will she be the same girl as the one that lives in his memory? I love the questions this story raises about death and the complications that might arise as our science evolves. When should we stay and when should we leave when we have a choice?

“They can bring her back. But can they save her?”

In this tale, the world is in post-apocalyptic decline, and human fertility has collapsed to zero. A family set up a cloning facility, hoping to overcome the odds and produce a fertile population. The clones, once mature, have other ideas. They take over the facility and marginalise the non-clones. Only rarely is a fertile clone produced, and they are kept as ‘breeders’. As the story progresses, the desire of a naturally born individual for self-determination, and conflicting values between individual and clone, lead to a tension that cannot go unresolved. The storytelling cleverly slips between omniscient in the scenes with the clones, and third person in the scenes with the individual characters.

I adored this fast-paced near-future dystopian book by debut author Tal M. Klein. Prepare to be thrown into an innovative world where teleportation is the primary means of travel, and people don't think twice before taking advantage of this convenience. Though, as we soon find out, maybe they should. 

There are so many fun tidbits in this novel such as nanotechnology and genetically engineered mosquitoes that help clean the air. You'll also find plenty of nostalgic references for fans of books such as Ready Player One. Prepare for engaging characters, unique worldbuilding, thought-provoking philosophical questions, and plenty of twists to keep you guessing.

This series is set 6 million years in the future. In a universe entirely peopled by humanity and various iterations of human evolutions. Only one of which seems to be immune to the inevitable failure of their society that plagues literally every other outpost of humanity in existence. This world is rich, layered, and complex. It makes you wonder about what it means to be human and makes you fear. It definitely makes you fear. Shatterlings, man just typing the word makes me clench my teeth. I enjoyed this book and loved the rich world and vastness of the thought put into the creation of a universe that is empty but full at the same time. If you’ve made it this far down my list and have liked the others so far this is definitely in your lane.

Gailey gives us a narrator whose traumatic childhood seems to have blinded her to the fact that her work—she’s the world’s foremost expert in creating and murdering sentient clones—is an abomination. It turns out to be a good thing that she’s got a moral blind spot the size of Montana, though, because as the plot progresses she finds herself devoting her skills to the task of covering up the murder of her ex-husband, who has died at the hands of his mistress, who happens to be the narrator’s own illegally produced clone. In the hands of a less-skilled writer this could have descended into farce, but Gailey turns it into a moving exploration of the ways in which we find support and kinship in the unlikeliest of places.