Clones, Assembly-line Capitalism, and Wage-Slaves
Beyond its flair for the fantastic, science fiction (SF) almost always offers the allegorical. In SF, humankind literally masters cloning and produces not quite human slaves, facilitating some sort of truce between the long history of human conquering human to enslave and the contemporary illusion that eradicating institutional slavery absolves us of culpability in the de facto wage-slavery of assembly-line capitalism.
David Mitchell's often tedious but always masterful Cloud Atlas builds through a menagerie of genres and modes of discourse to a powerful ending that highlights a motif central to the novel, of human (and clone) bondage:
David Mitchell's often tedious but always masterful Cloud Atlas builds through a menagerie of genres and modes of discourse to a powerful ending that highlights a motif central to the novel, of human (and clone) bondage:
"Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believehumanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history's Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our
