The ideology around genetics in science fiction

Abstract

That the Human Genome Project is not free of ideological controversy is well seen through the incorporation of its subject matter into the science fiction genre. In 1990, the HGP started and Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, a novel in which a wealthy businessman recovers dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber and creates a zoo where they are exhibited. In this case, the cliché of ideological criticism is repeated according to which the scientist ends up getting his own creation out of hand, as in Frankenstein. The fact that in 1993 Steven Spielberg will take it to the cinema, producing the film that at that time achieved the highest profits in history, only shows that ideological criticism is more profitable literary than the positivist ideological topic. A case similar to that of the strategy video game Civilization: Call to Power, where the Human Genome Project plays the same role as Chichen Itza, the Confucius Academy or Edison's laboratory. Its effects are as follows: the civilization that decodes the genome receives a ten percent birth increase, and also increases the strength of its units.