Genetics in fiction

During the 20th century it developed to create new sciences and technologies including molecular biology, DNA sequencing, cloning, and genetic engineering.

[2] Eugenics, the production of better human beings by selective breeding, was named and advocated by Charles Darwin's cousin, the scientist Francis Galton, in 1883.

[9] Cloning, the production of genetically identical organisms from some chosen starting point, was shown to be practicable in a mammal with the creation of Dolly the sheep from an ordinary body cell in 1996 at the Roslin Institute.

[13] Examples include The Island of Dr. Moreau with its horrible manipulations; Aldous Huxley's 1932 Brave New World with a breeding programme; and John Taine's 1951 Seeds of Life, using radiation to create supermen.

X-men powers include telepathy, telekinesis, healing, strength, flight, time travel, and the ability to emit blasts of energy.

Marvel's god-like Celestials are later (1999) said to have visited Earth long ago and to have modified human DNA to enable mutant powers.

[15] James Blish's 1952 novel Titan's Daughter (in Kendell Foster Crossen's Future Tense collection) featured stimulated polyploidy (giving organisms multiple sets of genetic material, something that can create new species in a single step), based on spontaneous polyploidy in flowering plants, to create humans with more than normal height, strength, and lifespans.

In his 1990 novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton imagined the recovery of the complete genome of a dinosaur from fossil remains, followed by its use to recreate living animals of an extinct species.

[11] Cloning is a recurring theme in science fiction films like Jurassic Park (1993), Alien Resurrection (1997), The 6th Day (2000), Resident Evil (2002), Star Wars: Episode II (2002) and The Island (2005).

[21] Films such as The Matrix and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones have featured human foetuses being cultured on an industrial scale in enormous tanks.

[11][24] In 1982, Frank Herbert's novel The White Plague described the deliberate use of genetic engineering to create a pathogen which specifically killed women.

[25] Eugenics plays a central role in films such as Andrew Niccol's 1997 Gattaca, the title alluding to the letters G, A, T, C for guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA.