Ninth Day of Creation - Softcover

Crane, Leonard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0967571294 ISBN 13: 9780967571294

Publisher: Connection Books, 2000

Synopsis

This convincingly rendered science thriller which explores what happens when cutting-edge genetic technology collides with a good old-fashioned ecological catastrophe offers "a gripping tale with all the complexity of a Tom Clancy novel" ("Publishers Weekly").

About this title

From the Publisher:

Six hundred million years. That's how long it took nature to piece together the human genome. And now, after barely a decade spent pulling it apart base by base, it emerges in gene-sequenced form as the basis of an insanely-complicated instruction manual for making a human being. This event has been celebrated the world over as a milestone for biology, a turning point in our history as a species long obsessed with understanding its origins and inner-workings. But is this the beginning of a wondrous period of medical enlightenment, or could we have inadvertently opened a door to a darker age?

Leonard Crane seems to favor the latter possibility. Indeed, while the media currently bubbles with enthusiasm for tomorrow's tamed-gene utopia, Crane has delivered up a tale of genetically-engineered malfeasance so chillingly authentic as to give pause to the idea that we might ever expect to be able to control our genetic destiny. The implications drawn from Ninth Day Of Creation are disturbing, to say the least. "Looking at our technical know-how today," says Crane, "I would say we are at a cusp. We've advanced just far enough for genomic science to look extremely enticing in the short term. But we haven't the expertise yet to be able to either make out, or rule out, the possibility of some very dangerous developments in the years ahead." If scientist-turned-author Crane is right, then the threat to humankind arising from our zeal to rewire the circuitry of nature looms just as large as it did 70 years ago--when, seeking to harness the energy of the atom, we turned another corner, and unwittingly unbottled the ever-present genie of nuclear self-conflagration.20

How convincing is Crane? Well, not only does he manage to provide us with a unique glimpse of science in crisis mode, but after reviewing the narrative of a sea battle between an American aircraft carrier task force and a Chinese submarine, the reader for the first literary agency to see the book declared: "Pure C.S. Forester. When I got out of my chair, I had to wait for my land legs to come back... His science writing on naval matters leaves Clancy in the dust."

From the Author:

For most of my life the pursuit of science has preoccupied me. But for reasons that eluded me until recently, novels for which it provided the central theme seemed to be a rarity on bookstore shelves. Now I know why. Extrapolating science forward to create a thought-provoking yet believable, and at the same time entertaining, story is tricky business. Writing this book taxed me like no other science-related project I've worked on.

To get an idea of what was involved, take a look at the molecular stereoviews shown on page 123. Hopefully, the obsessive attention to detail demonstrated on my part will be regarded as a good thing! For those unfamiliar with stereo imaging, relax your eyes until the left and right images overlap comfortably (the trick is to look "through" the images). The 3-D nature of the structure should then become apparent. In the book, the discovery of a hypothetical protein provides an important story element, and I felt the best way to bring this protein to life in the reader's mind was to place it before their eyes. Of course, since this protein didn't actually exist, a question quickly arose: What was it going to look like? I knew from the story requirements that it needed to share some of the characteristics of human gamma interferon. At least in the structural sense. In the end I was able to find another human protein that fit the bill. But to show it to the reader I had to spend a good deal of time fiddling with molecular graphics programs. All this for a single image that in the end had to be reproduced in black and white, and at relatively low resolution.

But that's the price you pay to bring (I hope) realism to the page. I worked just as hard to create anti-submarine warfare scenarios of a kind that I knew no one else had tackled. I was sure of this because I had to dig deep into technical journals to piece together the physics of low-frequency sonar transmission. So if the U.S. Navy comes a knockin' at my door, just tell them I already left the building!

About this edition

• Publisher: Connection Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0967571294
• ISBN 13: 9780967571294
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672