In the not-too-distant-at-all future (2030) an American academic, Talissa Adam, is looking to fund her graduate work. She signs up with the well-resourced Parn Institute to be a surrogate mother in London, a city on its uppers thanks to “one bloody disaster after another”, according to her new landlady.
Lukas Parn, who “made a dozen fortunes from wave power and biotech ... almost before his voice had broken” and who’s a possible caricature of certain individuals in our world, “had become interested in genomics”. Before you can say “Michael Crichton” he has persuaded Dr Malik Wood, a man of thwarted ambition, jealous of a rival who has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to perform a “simple switch”.
Parn’s grossly unethical plan is to replace the donor semen with a sample from a different place altogether. A boy is born, named Seth after Adam and Eve’s third son in the Bible but Adam’s seventh son if we take into account Lilith, his other wife according to Hebrew apocrypha. While he grows up different, he’s not really that different (darker eyebrows, an aversion to dairy, more intuitive) in the grand scheme of things.
Faulks uses Seth’s plight to illustrate humanity at its very best. His parents, especially the father who’s not really his father, teacher Alaric Pedersen, show him love when the truth inevitably comes out and also that of his surrogate mother, Talissa, although their relationship does venture into some unexpected areas.
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He’s also used to paint us at our very worst. There’s the arrogance that sets the story rolling in the first place and the fact that no matter where Seth goes, and he visits some remote locales including a scene that might owe Mary Shelley a few bob, he’s hounded by those curious and fearful of something other.
The men and women in the white coats make some convincing arguments for the possible scientific benefits of their Moreau-styled meddling, not least in tackling dementia, but the Oppenheimer-like quandary remains; just because we can do something doesn’t necessarily mean we should. And what is it to be human anyway? Does it come down to the code in our genes or is there more to it? Like all the best speculative fiction, The Seventh Son asks the big questions and the consistently great Faulks wraps a moving and fascinating narrative around them.
