Once human cloning begins -- and people are manufactured expressly to maintain the welfare state -- then the totalitarians' wildest dreams will be fulfilled. And it will be done in the name of "saving" civilization. I rant.
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Nice choices. Brave New World, or a return to the 14th century.
about 1960, I got to see Aldous Huxley in person at the University of Texas. He was old, blind and feeble, and said nothing much, but there he was, in the flesh. Afterwards I read "Brave New World" for the first time (paperback, for $0.95), and wrote it off as fantasy. Wrong. Little did I know that has the kin of Julian Huxley he knew that what he described was simple extrapolation of what was known in the 1930s. Like all real sci-fi, his novel was a simple extrapolation of the present. I can see the Japanese inventing an artificial womb and bringing clones to full term, maybe within my lifetime (and of course I am not young.). But the effect on society, he seems to have caught, if my memory serves me correctly. Guess I'll have to re-read it.