Genetics in Science Fiction

As a Genetics student, I often sit in a lecture and think to myself: this would make for a really good science fiction story, and apparently, most of the stories that could have been inspired by the latest paper Nature Reviews Genetics have already been written. Genetics as a discipline is very much a point of view on many other sciences. It’s the perspective of the genes. The following examples are all books based on topics that are regularly studied in different aspects of a genetics degree.
Human Evolution
The question of what would happen, if there
Blast From the Past
Jurassic Park is the best
Epidemiology
Epidemiology (the study of infectious diseases) relies heavily on genetics and when I first read The Girl with All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey, I immediately remembered the lectures I had attended during
Every time there is a new method in genetics, there is a potential for a thriller. Mýrin by Arnaldur Indriðason is a brilliant thriller featuring the Human Genome Project.
Genetics is a very complicated subject, and there are a lot of misconceptions in science fiction about it. Sometimes, authors will make an effort to stick to the current state of research, but there are many controversies in the field and many books don’t display those sufficiently or use disproved interpretations. Genetics in science fiction provides the possibility to create hard science fiction by gambling on a certain interpretation to be true.
Author Bio

Alice de Sampaio Kalkuhl is an author and Genetics student. She was born in Cologne, Germany and lives in Manchester, England now. Her debut novel Energy equals milk times coffee squared was published in 2017 by Champagne Cat. In research, she focuses on phenotypic plasticity.
For more from Alice, check out her website or her latest release, Preach On Havoc.