Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age by Everett Hamner

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 269 Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age Everett Hamner The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017. xii + 264 pp. $27.95 paperback. $94.95 hardcover. In openly rebuffing a strict binary between the secular and the religious/ metaphysical, postsecularism rejects both militant atheistic science (such as the scientism of Richard Dawkins) and religious fundamentalism (for example, Young Earth Creationism). In this, his first monograph, Everett Hamner successfully draws upon his interdisciplinary teaching and research as he utilizes a postsecular lens to investigate the myriad and complex intersections between literature, science, religion, and popular culture in the realm of genetics. In particular, he employs a combination of historical and theoretical approaches (in addition to meticulous close readings of a variety of visual media and written texts) to highlight how genetic fiction engages in “reshaping twenty-first-century conceptions of the self, the body, and various identity categories” (5). Indeed, the term “soul” that is prominently displayed in the book’s title rarely appears within its pages, an endnote explaining that Hamner was “consciously using self and soul almost interchangeably” as a way to blur “the lines between the secular self… and the religious soul” (226). Throughout the work Hamner defines, explicates, and traces a “successive ” rather than “cumulative” evolution through three subgenres of genetic fiction: fantasy, realism, and metafiction (10). Using a variety of representative works from all three genres, he explores two overarching questions: how humanity might “best use its rapidly growing knowledge of the genome” without “sacrificing our ethics,” and “what constitutes free will as knowledge of biological inheritance accelerates” (185). Hamner prepares the reader to ponder these weighty issues throughout a thoughtful introduction that could easily serve as a stand-alone essay in a course on science and science fiction. In a refreshingly honest summary of the state of science communication , Hamner leaves aside issues of media representations and focuses attention on the role scientists themselves play in propagating sensationalized “metaphysical rhetoric” in order to interest the public and potential funders in their research (3). As he insightfully notes, the danger is that “a prominent scientist’s hyperbole is more likely to be mistaken for a literal claim about reality” (3). In preparation for his detailed examination of the three subgenres of genetic fiction, Hamner provides elementary examples, such as the genetic fantasy of the X-Men franchise. The author’s deep appreciation for the works of Richard Powers is on display from these early Religion & Literature 270 pages, with the short story “Genie” (2012) offered as an exemplar of genetic metafiction. It is in this example that we also glimpse a minor drawback in Hamner’s somewhat myopic selection of works, as this short story has much in common with a work that Hamner ignores, the Ridley Scott film Prometheus released the same year. The classic science fiction film Gattaca (1997) begins Hamner’s foundational first chapter as an illustration of the very human fear of predetermination , an ancient dread that is potentially resurrected by science rather than religion in the wake of the Human Genome Project. Hamner patiently explains that connections between genes and medical conditions, gene expression, and environmental factors are not as simple as science fiction would suggest (with single-gene disorders being the vast minority). He warns that common misconceptions lead to the two unfortunate extreme positions, a fatalistically deterministic “astrological genomics” (37) and the likewise unhelpful “genetic dismissivism” in which genetic influence is ignored . He argues that while the latter may be related to biblical literalism or anti-vaccine fears, it could also be caused by simple ignorance of the basic science (40). Hamner then devotes the following chapters to investigating genetic fantasy, genetic realism, and genetic metafiction in turn. While chapter two predictably focuses on genetic fantasy featuring the “Carbon-Copy Clone Catastrophe masterplot” (92), Hamner seizes this opportunity to give the tired trope a fresh perspective by concentrating on how feminist authors (including Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler) have successfully exploited the genre to explore issues of culturally defined privilege (e.g. race, gender, sexual preference, and class). Deterministic fears play a key role in early twenty-first-century genetic realist literature, for example...