Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
If Kathy equates cloning to sterility (I'm not sure it was ever that bluntly stated) this is just an example of her experience/knowledge not being a reliable guide to the science of that world. Why should it be?
The author chose to make the clones sterile, but the book never says how sterility (or cloning) is achieved, and it never states cloning=sterility as a fact. (Saying that the clones in this story are sterile is not the same as claiming that one causes the other.) The book gives very little in the way of science fact, and is very unadventurous in the science it uses, so it's almost impossible for it to be wrong. (It may be improbable or unbelievable to you, but that's different.)
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Which still leaves the question, why? Why did the author choose to tell us they are sterile? Why does he have them hear lectures about sex and how they need to be careful about sex with non-clones in the outside world because they take it more seriously than the clones? What is the point he's making with this information? Why is it included?
I subscribe to the
Chekhov's gun principle--if you show a gun on the table, that gun has to be used at some point, or why is it there? My issue with this book is that there's so much that Ishiguro throws on the table and just lets it sit there.