While gene editing could have benefits for humanity, it’s a pipe dream to think it will only be used beneficially.
But as we’ve learned from, well, so many things, what works badly in real life can often work well in fiction.
In Susan Daitch’s biopunk / futuristic steampunk science fiction novel, The Adjudicator (paperback, Kindle), she presents a world in which — as she explains in the following email interview — eugenics have run amok.
To start, what is The Adjudicator about, and when and where does it take place?
It takes place in an imagined future that has one foot in the world as we know it, where subways, food trucks, sea travel, all function the same way, but as far as DNA tinkering goes, the genii is out of the bottle. With great control comes great responsibility, but that responsibility is subject to prevaricating whims and corporate power struggles.
The book takes place in a city that is sort of like New York City, where I’ve lived for many years, but it’s a megalopolis that’s constructed of many interconnected islands and waterways. Global warming is a ready-made. You don’t have to name it. It’s easily imagined. The period at the end of the sentence, any sentence that imagines a future is high water.
The Adjudicator operates in a universe where everyone is genetically engineered, and no one is born or conceived the old fashioned way. This solves some problems but creates very serious ones at the same time. It’s eugenics run amok, but no one uses that word. It’s the elephant in the room.
I’ve also seen The Adjudicator described in a way that makes me think it’s a switched-at-birth story. But a futuristic one.
The Adjudicator is partly a switched-at-birth story — or rather, before birth — but because only one element of the children, their consciousnesses, may or may not have been interchanged, that’s only a piece of who they are. They look like they were born into the right families, and only one parent suspects something is out of whack.
Where did you get the idea for The Adjudicator? And how different is the finished story from what you originally conceived?
The story is pretty close to what I initially imagined. The idea for The Adjudicator came from a series of talks I went to, “Scientific Controversies,” curated by astrophysicist Janna Levin, at Pioneer Works, an art and technology space in Red Hook. She would moderate a discussion between two scientists, Nobel prize winners and others, about subjects such as the existence of Black Holes, are we alone in the universe, the nature of consciousness, etc. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s discussion about CRISPR, the perils and potential of genetic engineering really fascinated me, I read his book, and began to think about this as a story which led to the world of Pangenica and Zedi Loew.
So, did you want to write a switched-at-birth story and then decided to make it sci-fi, or did you set out to write a sci-fi story and then decide it would work well if some kids got their consciousness switched?
Which came first is a little of a chicken or egg situation, and honestly I’m not 100% sure which did.
The question that interested me was how much of our behavior is due to brain chemistry that we have no control over, and what might be free will? If you look at twin studies, that stuff is really uncanny: twins separated at birth who have trivial but consistent things in common. Mukherjee wrote about mental illnesses and genetics which opened all kinds of possibilities in terms of where behavior comes from, and I wanted to experiment with a situation where Singe suspects her child’s personality and decisions have a source in someone else’s consciousness or personality disorder.
I knew I was going to write science fiction. It could only be a futuristic story because the situation I to work with needed the ethical and practical boundaries of what is currently available to be lifted.
Along with being sci-fi, it also sounds like The Adjudicator might be cyberpunk as well, maybe a mystery, and possibly even dystopian.
My editor, Isaac Peterson, has called it biopunk or futuristic steampunk, but I accept cyberpunk and dystopian, as well. I like all these genres.
For me, genre is about tinkering with boundaries, and genres that extend some limits but establish others. I needed a world where there were some rules in terms of the physical universe, but others could be suspended.
The Adjudicator is your seventh novel, and you also have a short story collection called Storytown. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on The Adjudicator but not on anything else you’ve written?
Yes! The Adjudicator was influenced by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which I read in high school and stayed with me. The Adjudicator is sort of an updating of that story, where people are incubated and finally hatched according to their designated station in life, but in my version the corporation takes on a different role. There are parents and the appearance of citizens making choices.
Unconsciously, the writing was influenced by another writer I read in high school, but not since, Kurt Vonnegut, who never takes his characters too seriously, whose characters, by design, aren’t always the best narrators of their own experiences.
What about non-literary influences? Was The Adjudicator influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, absolutely. These, too, are from an older era when there were limits on what was technically possible, partly because the Internet didn’t yet exist as we now know it, so information was arrived at differently.
Black Mirror, a more contemporary futuristic series, cast an enormous shadow, especially the “Men Against Fire” episode where the mutants are only mutants in the eyes of (some) beholders. You think you can control what you find, but this is an arrogant supposition we all make, and then it turns out the molecules, the electronica, the constantly moving edges of space, all of it is much much bigger, goes unimaginable places, and is far more complicated with far more unknowable consequences than anyone thought.
Science fiction novels are sometimes self-contained stories and sometimes they’re part of larger sagas. What is The Adjudicator?
Initially, The Adjudicator was a stand-alone, but I’ve left it open for Zedi Loew to continue. People often tell me they want more of certain characters like Frances Baum, film restorer in [her 2011 novel] Paper Conspiracies, and forensic sculptor, Iridia Kepler, in [her 2021 novel] Siege Of Comedians, I did bring Frances back in Siege, so Loew can come back, too. Why not? There are similarities between the three of them as navigating voices.
So, what are your plans for this series? Like, will it be an ongoing thing or a set number of books like a trilogy, and why will it be whatever it will be? Also, does it have a name?
I like the idea of threes, of a trilogy. No name as yet.
As far as where it will go, I’d return to the science, to see where genetic engineering is going, what nightmare doors could be opened. Changing people and animals to survive climate change and easy travel to other planets is one possibility, but I like to keep at least one food in a recognizable universe with the limitations of known physics. Nothing should be unlimited. No infinite possibilities. Everyone is still tethered to the everyday. You drink coffee. You breathe air. You wait for a train. No get out of jail free.
Earlier I asked if The Adjudicator was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Adjudicator could work as a movie, a TV show, or a game?
Either a movie or a series but probably the latter.
And if someone wanted to make that movie or show, who would you want them to cast as Zedi and the other main characters?
Since the sky is the limit, I’d suggest the following:
Zedi Loew: Shira Haas [Captain America: Brave New World] or Mikey Madison [Anora]
Otto Crackhour: Adrian Brody [The Pianist]
Dot Loew: Amanda Plummer [Pulp Fiction]
Art Waxman: Cillian Murphy since Waxman is based, in part, on Oppenheimer
Director Altman: Jared Harris [Foundation]
L.J. Morris: Ben Wishaw [Skyfall]
Singe: Kelly MacDonald [No Country For Old Men]
Dinah McCall: January Jones [Mad Men]
Vy Sapper: Kathryn Hunter [Star Wars: Andor]
Chester Louie: Billy Porter [Pose]
Captain Ada: Mary J. Blige [The Umbrella Academy]
Cumari: Dev Patel [Slumdog Millionaire]
movie-goer on Horner’s Island: Tiffany Haddish [Girls Trip]
Kent Senior: Mel Brooks [Space Balls]
Kent Junior: Paul Dano [The Batman]
Beckett look-a-like: Tom Waits [The Fisher King]
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about The Adjudicator?
Please use the QR codes that appear in the book. They lead to music, a Dagwood Bumstead sandwich, maps, all kinds of things.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Adjudicator, which of your other novels would you suggest they check out next?
My previous novel, Siege Of Comedians, is a thriller in three parts about a forensic sculptor and forensic linguistic who are trying to solve a crime(s) at two different points in time. Each has some information, but neither has the whole story.
