Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Science fiction

I've seen this book compared to "1984" and "Brave New World." Do you think the book is successful in its portrayal of a dystopia that clones individuals to be organ factories? Does it seem horrifying, or does it seem too unlikely to be taken seriously?
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5 comments:

kc said...

I'm ashamed to say I've never read "Brave New World." But I've read "1984." And this is no "1984." I read "1984" expecting not to like it very much because sci-fi/dystopia stuff is just not my cup of tea, but I found it very beautiful. The writing is lyrical and deeply poignant and renders the plight of the characters extremely gripping and real.

With Ishiguro's book I felt like I was reading the diary of a person who just wasn't all that interesting. I know it was intentional, the tone he chose for his narrator, but I think it sucked all the horror and emotion out of the story. Additionally, we didn't have enough information about how this cloning/organ system worked, or even what the characters looked like and felt. Everything just seemed very vague and bland.

12:33 PM, September 09, 2009
Erin said...

I never finished reading "1984." I did read "Brave New World," and I really liked it despite also thinking the dystopia stuff wasn't really my thing. I think it also conveyed really well the horrors of existence and made you think about the connections to our current world and the social and political changes that could lead to a world like that. "Never Let Me Go" didn't do that for me. I wasn't especially disturbed by the cloning thing. Like you said, it seemed vague and bland. And the characters didn't struggle against the system much. I mean, Kathy and Tommy went to see Madam, but when they heard the bad news, they just accepted it without argument. Why didn't they try to leave the country? Why didn't they stage a donor revolt? There was just no drama in this story.

7:58 PM, September 10, 2009
kc said...

And how did the donor system work, precisely? These kids were cloned, but were all their donations going to the "possibles"? It's really rare for a person to need an organ transplant, when you think about it, so where were all these organs going? Were they harvesting their body parts for some other purpose?

And why didn't they give more than three or four donations? I mean, they could have donated bone marrow, skin, a kidney, part of their liver, a lung, their eyes (who cares if they're blind?!), blood, hair, all their limbs. Seriously. They weren't using them very efficiently, were they?

And you ask why didn't they revolt. Indeed. What would have happened if they just took up smoking and drinking heavily? Why not ruin their organs if they were just going to be cut out of them in their youth anyway? Was there some bureaucracy watching to make sure they stayed healthy?

9:22 PM, September 11, 2009
kc said...

I WANT SOME ANSWERS!

Sheesh.

9:24 PM, September 11, 2009
Erin said...

Yeah, that's the thing, it seemed like they were fairly unsupervised. But they just quietly went along with whatever they were told. How boring.

I wondered about the organ donations, too. I wondered if they were taking more than one organ at a time, like a kidney and piece of liver in the same surgery. But then again, it also seemed like the author didn't fully think it through.

I wondered, too, about the possibles needing all these organs, but the organs must have been going to the population as a whole. Which makes me wonder why they needed to be clones at all. Why didn't they just use all the embryos in storage at fertility clinics? Surely the science would be easier and less expensive. There are too many distracting gaps in logic for this to be a scary version of the future.

10:21 PM, September 11, 2009

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