The son in question here is an only child, both of his parents and of his surrogate mum. Seth is a baby whom New York-based Talissa carries and delivers for London couple, Alaric and Mary. Mary chooses the name Seth, because Seth was the 7th son of Adam, who fathered Seth when Adam was 130 years old according to the Old Testament, as a replacement for Abel who was murdered by Cain. (Adam’s other 4 sons were with Lilith, Adam’s first wife.)
Before the surrogacy, 26 year old Talissa is a post-doc simply trying to secure a year’s funding to join a research institute, and this surrogacy was the only way she could think of which would raise that sum of money quickly. Talissa studied archaeology and anthropology, with an interest in homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis, but although she has an understanding of genomics, she describes herself as a historian.
Homo sapiens code, celebrated as a triumph of scientific ingenuity, had also revealed just how complicated was the miracle of life that it had rendered legible. They had seen into the mind of God, but found that He moved in exceedingly mysterious ways (p6).
The Parn institute, financed by rich Australian cowboy Luke Parn, was overtly researching why the IVF success rate is so low with the failure of the embryo to implant. Talissa signs up to be one of the surrogates in this research. Covertly however, Luke Parn wants Neanderthal sperm (which he has resurrected from old fossils and in the lab) implanted into an egg to create a new species, because he has a theory that homo sapiens are exceptional because they have a mental consciousness and self-awareness which other species do not. The hypothesis here is that only humans get dementia and have delusions, and that this is species unique, a sort of price tag for the homo sapien brain being hard wired to be capable of awareness and consciousness. Talissa of course end up being the surrogate who carries that mixed-species baby.
This novel is set in the future, 2030s, 2040s, 2050s even. As such, there are some ‘predictions’ of changes in our world systems in the novel, such as that Americans will have limitations to long haul flights, there will be federal laws on DNA testing, and that there will be some new political acts and amendments:
The provisions of the Anti-Discrimination and Equality of Populations Treaty (ADEPT), passed by the United Nations in July 2040, had been adopted by member countries to varying degrees. The United States passed a Thirty-Fifth Amendment; the European Union issued binding directives. Then British Parliament, with no constitution to amend and with its application to rejoin the EU having been rejected, continued to dispute the merits of the treaty with itself (p101).
Apparently UK’s response to ADEPT was something like a new welfare points systems, the PICs (Personal Identity Cards):
’They’re a way of trying to make life fairer. It’s like an ID card, except that it records details of where you‘re from, where your parents came from, their income, how long they’ve lived in the country, if they went to college, your own education your birth gender and something about your race.’
‘Race? They can’t still be using that word! It’s unscientific.’
‘The government have a new term for it, but I forget what it is. But you know what I mean’ (p159).
’It’s a system to put right anything that’s been a disadvantage in the past. It was our belated response to ADEPT’ ” […]
‘Third generation in this country gave him half a point. Parents not at college a full point. Nothing for being a boy.’ […]
’You’re what they call a half orphan. You’d get something for that. Five’s the best. If you’re a Fiver, you can walk into anything.’ (p160)
In this brave new world, apparently race will no longer be mentioned, nor ethnicity:
“Is there an ethnic aspect to this?” [this being the selection of surrogates and matching with intended parents].
“We don’t use that term anymore. The fractional differences between the phenotypes of human populations ae insignificant. Differences in hair colour, skin pigmentation, eye shape and what have you. They’re largely the result of genetic drift, and maybe some sexual selection. ‘Historic Habitat Adaptation and Drift’ is the accepted phrase for it now. Known as HAD.” (p42)
The novel stays true to these new social norms. In fact, although we know a little about Alaric and Mary’s ethnicities and ancestries, we don’t know much about Talissa except that she is probably mixed race and that her 4 grandparents come from 3 continents.
It is an interesting premise, that the half Neanderthal, Seth, would demonstrate differences from humans, which could show us what is peculiar to the human species. This novel suggests that Neanderthals may have had more than our 5 senses, for example. The ethics of what Parn (both man and institute) did are of course unambiguously unacceptable. But even aside from this, Talissa’s main concern is how to protect Seth from humans, from being singled out and being differentiated all his life.
Talissa is an interesting character, who is relatively free spirited, independent, and always proving to herself that she is fearless. She works with data in a scientific way, but also embraces the non-scientific. When she tries to remember what she saw one night in a seemingly deserted old house 20 years ago, she gives up trying to rationalise it:
A man, a kind of man: of her species, or probably another. Or an illusion. Perhaps even a delusion, of the kind Felix suffered. She found it impossible to know. And she was aware that each revisit altered the memory a little more. The more she scratched at it, the more she reshaped the outline,
It was ceasing to matter to her, because she was content to embrace uncertainties without always reaching after reason and fact. […] to be contentedly unsure was the mark of a mature mind – because only small intellects are frightened of the unresolved (p196).
Not everything in the novel is convincing, but even the unconvincing parts are interesting. And some are just fun. For example, in 2056, there will apparently be not just autonomous cabs on the streets, but even a hyperloop from Boston to New York, rather like “when someone shoves a little canister into a pneumatic tube and it kind of whooshes away to another part of the building” (p319); there will be a supersonic flight from New York to London taking only a little over 2 hours; there will be an Obama airport; China will have a space escalator, etc. But the novel is realistic in that for most part, even though technology be different, the world in 2050s is not unrecognisably like the world of today.
It is a novel which brings up a lot of interesting questions, of human species, brains, capacities, ethics, knowledge generation, human values. Definitely an intriguing even if imperfect read.
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