Would love any and all critique.
1: SailorSegaSaturn was not alone in taking far too long to realize this was a work of speculative fiction and I mean that as high praise.
2: In consideration of what you said elsewhere about aiming for the kind of softball coverage that major publications have given OpenAI, I think the fearful tone works pretty well, actually. It makes the overall piece feel uncanny and uncomfortable in a way that fits right into the way that this kind of deeply dystopian stuff gets normalized. Reading through this I realized that despite all the talk about inequality and playing God never being meaningfully rebuked by the Evolve people I was actually having a harder and harder time articulating my opposition. I actually appreciated the ending going in the same direction, and thought that the tension in that McLuhan quote was really interesting to explore.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate that! I’m glad this is being read as its intended to.
It took embarrassingly long for me to decide on a quote there. I had a few options that were thematically correct but I also wanted something that would make sense for the character since I don’t have much time to flesh out characters in a story so short.
Meanwhile in related news, https://www.chop.edu/news/worlds-first-patient-treated-personalized-crispr-gene-editing-therapy-childrens-hospital
The writing is far better than what I might produce, so I won’t talk about that. I do have a comment about the themes/politics.
I can totally understand the theme of handicap/neglect as a feeling that the marketing would evoke. What goes mostly unexamined is that these guys know what they are doing when they are “optimizing” fetuses. I agree that the first stages of gene editing would function like expensive new healthcare, and equity of access would be an issue. But once as much money as you’re describing is circulating in the system, it would have to turn into fetishizing arbitrary shit. (You kind of touched on this with the million dollar retina color.)
I would love to read a story about how the creators of this tech don’t understand what good they have created and immediately start circling around their incoherent conceptions of human perfection. I want to read about biohackers getting sued for using Evolve’s proprietary lab techniques to develop inexpensive personal gene therapies. I want to read about self-help groups for rich kids whose parents followed a gene-editing fad and effectively gave them a man-made niche disability.
If we grant gene editing to be transformational for human life, I would want to work out why different people want to use it. On one hand by engineers who want to make available remedies to common suffering. On the other hand capitalists and pundits who have used genetical deficiency to explain away every failure and irritating opinion in their life, god forbid they have to do some actual introspection.
I suppose my suggestion as a partisan hack is: I want my enemies mocked harder.
Thank you for writing this.
I did consider a lot of possibilities of where to go with this. But I decided to go tame and write this as if it were a company profile by a modern media company. I just thought of how the nyt would write about openAI.
I have sooooo many ideas and directions to go into with CRISPR technology that I might actually write more about it.
I’d be looking forward to it!
I thought I was reading writing from a real reporter visiting real weirdos for a bit longer than I’d like to admit; so the tone is def. on point. It started out like something right out of sneerclub.
The blending of eugenics with silicon valley style corporate “ethics” and excess gives an interesting setting; and sprinkling in so many quotes / product names / etc. was nice for worldbuilding and setting the scene.
I was left with lots of unanswered questions (I assume deliberately); this leaves a lot to the imagination including some threads that would be too openly dark for this sort of gilded setting. Or with the setting being so transitional it’s possible that even this company hasn’t thought through of what will happen 10, 20 years in the future as they move fast and break things to chase after the next quarters earnings.
Sorry I suck at giving criticism so this is just all stuff I liked. The following is my best shot at actual criticism:
The ending did confuse me a bit and felt a little out of place: I had to go back and re-read it a second time to get the mood I feel it was trying to invoke. Citrus being mentioned 5 times made me wonder if I was missing a deeper meaning. But on re-reading citrus definitely makes sense as a theme: having both a lovely natural scent from oranges and lemons and a sterile artifical sent from cleaning products or air fresheners.
Similarly I thought I might be missing something with the woman being surprised by headlights at dusk; though looking back natural dusk and sudden artificial headlights does pair well with the transitional setting of the story.
Oh god thank you. Thats every compliment I could’ve hoped for.
Youre reading it exactly as I intended it to be read.
I actually struggled with the ending, I wasn’t sure if I should keep the ending as if was, part of a neutral article or offer a more personal opinion of the journalist. I do think I muddled it a little in terms of mood. I’m trying go evoke awe and fear but my personal biases made fear the dominant emotion of the piece.
You’re correct about citrus. That was the intent.
Similarly correct about the headlights. I actually feared it was a bit too on the nose.
PS. Youre the perfect reader for me lmao.
Also oh god is this company is probably patenting their genes so what happens when people have babies do they have to pay a licensing fee?
I actually considered writing about this! Since similar issues arise in agriculture.
My first idea was that they make the kids infertile from birth and they have to have it unlocked again.
But I decided not to write about it as at this point I was writing about a new company.
The title + thumbnail makes it look like you went to the olympic village while it was at its maximum output for bangin’. Which is funny. Will read later
Haha. I actually thought the image I put first would be the thumbnail but it wasnt. Thats actually a mistake lmao.
