Cloned Lives

The same gifts, but different paths chosen: You might say this is the premise of *Cloned Lives,* in a nutshell. When a gifted and multi-talented scientist is chosen to be the first human to be cloned, to become the "father" to a small group of artificially-birthed newborns who will grow up being physically and genetically identical to himself, the story quickly shows the resulting furor over this controversial act, with this scientist, Paul Swenson, and his "kids" at its focus. Essentially the story focuses on the lives of the children as they grow up, and the different paths and lives they take -- in a way showing us just what, in a parallel universe maybe, the path Paul Swenson himself might have taken if he'd explored his other natural talents and interests and become not a famous astrophysicist, but a novelist, or a biologist, or an artist, or even a conventional family man. In this way, Paul Swenson's "kids" (which in fact they really are, just more directly) show us just what one person may be capable if they have enough lifetime and energy in which to explore all their interests and inborn talents to their fullest. In a series of chapters that each focus exclusively on one of the young but maturing clones, whether it's Edward, James, Michael, Kira or Albert, we get to see their flaws and talents, how they each have reacted to the circumstances of their birth in different ways, not always good ways either. Pamela Sargent has written an engaging, thought-provoking but mature-level novel, with interesting, vibrant characters who seem as real as you or me. I recommend this novel for anyone who might like to get a sense of what growing up as a clone under the world spotlight might be like, as well as for the interesting turns our characters' lives take. Also, finally, for the curious way that our characters' personalities all, in a way, seem to reflect different aspects of their parent-projenitor, Paul Swenson. Other science-fiction novels have touched on the subject of cloned people and shown how it affected them, of course, but probably not to the very high degree here -- which is probably another reason to seriously consider adding *Cloned Lives* to your bookshelf. (Another novel I recall that did so is Juanita Coulson's sci-fi novel *Legacy of Earth*, which I recommend highly too, it's a great, galaxy-spanning adventure). Final comments: *Cloned Lives* is a very timely novel these days of course (if you've been following the news lately, that is), with all the recent controversy over animal cloning and now proposed human cloning that is getting a lot of ethical scrutiny by the world's politicians, even though this novel first appeared in its first complete paperback form back in 1976 -- the story of *Cloned Lives* is as relevant today as it was then. It touches on both the downside and major questionable aspect of the cloning process (the fact that the technology isn't perfect, that the process means possible loss of one or more embryos if