Science Fiction Magnifying Mirrors: Octavia Butler’s Dawn and the Ethics of Genetic Manipulation

Abstract

[Abstract] In this paper I deal with Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn and the issue of Science Fiction as a mirror of real situations. I analyze Dawn from an ecocritical approach focusing on how human beings are treated by the extraterrestrial community called Oankali. In this reality, human beings become objects in the hands of the Oankali, a society which mirrors human beings’ behaviour in times of colonization. As genetic manipulation is one of the major issues of this novel, I study its ethical consequences using references from real experiments carried out in the first half of the twentieth century. With this paper I want to show how Science Fiction sometimes portrays situations that take place in our world without us being aware of them.