Designer Genes

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Brian Stableford. Designer Genes

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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY BRIAN STABLEFORD

“Of the biological inventions of the past, four were made before the dawn of history. I refer to the domestication of animals, the domestication of plants, the domestication of fungi for the production of alcohol, and to a fourth invention, which I believe was of more ultimate and far-reaching importance than any of these, since it altered the path of sexual selection… In our own day, two more have been made, namely bactericide and the artificial control of contraception.

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“Shut up!” he said to Steven, in a low but fierce tone. “This is serious. If we aren’t out of here soon.…”

At a centimeter a minute, he knew, they would have four hours. Four hours, looked at dispassionately, was a long time, but Rick already knew that it was the highest possible figure. The faster the rate of flow was increasing, the quicker that four hours would become three, and then two…and all the while, it was also being eroded by actual elapsed time. Rick looked about him at the cellar, whose narrow passages and dim lighting had always made him feel slightly claustrophobic. His mental arithmetic wasn’t up to calculating the actual cubic capacity of the room, but the looming root-processes and the thick central trunk of the house had never seemed more massive.

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