In celebration of the fact that it is literally true that Barbara Streisand has cloned her dog more than once, here is a definitive list of the best ever books ever about cloning.
1. Spares, by Michael Marshall Smith
What if you had enough money to get your child cloned, just in cause they needed a new arm or leg or stem cells in the future?
And what would happen if these ‘spares’ were kept on a farm, uneducated and mistreated?
And what would happen if someone let them escape?
Michael Marshall Smith’s stunning/scary/hilarious Spares covers it all.
2. The Boys From Bazil, by Ira Levin
Ira Levin imagines Dr Josef Mengele’s nightmarish plot to restore the Third Reich. Alive and hiding in South America, thirty years after the end of the Second World War, Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a sinister project – the creation of the Fourth Reich. With clones, obviously.
3. The Double, by Jose Saramago
The life of a lonely teacher is torn apart when he supposedly sees his own double, a b-list actor on an old VHS rental. A mystery which unfolds to become a deadly thriller about identity and secrecy, The Double was adapted as Enemy by Denis Villanueva (Blade Runner 2049)
4. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world.
5. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Mitchell’s acclaimed novel covers a lot of ground, but one of the more interesting threads is the exploits of Somni-451, one of millions of engineered clones raised from “wombtanks”, and destined to serve from birth.
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