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The Alpha Genesis Option
For more than 400 years, the star cruiser Janus has been a virtual Utopia. Life goes on and on and on for the Quingenti, five hundred souls who fled Earth when the Global Assembly refused to legalize human cloning as the way to achieve immortality.
Third-generation clone Kai-Lee Fox creates the first crack in Utopia's foundation when she quietly questions, then rejects, the system. Before long, a handful of others join her silent rebellion, but at least one of them decides to take it public.
When Dr. Ke-Ling Yan, the Colony's lead geneticist and a member of the ruling Council, announces his intention to move for the abolition of cloning, the mild-mannered Quingenti reveal their dark side. How far will they go to contain the rebellion? As far as the Alpha Genesis Option. The AG microchip, implanted in every colonist's brain at birth, is the excruciatingly painful fail-safe designed to erase minds and prepare them for reprogramming.
As life aboard the Janus degenerates into an interstellar witch hunt, Kai-Lee and her friends know the countdown has begun. But where do you run when you're on a space ship millions of miles from nowhere, and the hounds are closing in?
This book was previously published under the title Why Live?
Third-generation clone Kai-Lee Fox creates the first crack in Utopia's foundation when she quietly questions, then rejects, the system. Before long, a handful of others join her silent rebellion, but at least one of them decides to take it public.
When Dr. Ke-Ling Yan, the Colony's lead geneticist and a member of the ruling Council, announces his intention to move for the abolition of cloning, the mild-mannered Quingenti reveal their dark side. How far will they go to contain the rebellion? As far as the Alpha Genesis Option. The AG microchip, implanted in every colonist's brain at birth, is the excruciatingly painful fail-safe designed to erase minds and prepare them for reprogramming.
As life aboard the Janus degenerates into an interstellar witch hunt, Kai-Lee and her friends know the countdown has begun. But where do you run when you're on a space ship millions of miles from nowhere, and the hounds are closing in?
This book was previously published under the title Why Live?
250 pages, Paperback
First published December 21, 2012
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Disanto
7 books329 followersKathy’s publishing career dates back to 1997, when she published a two-book romance series with Bantam’s Loveswept line. The first book in the series, For Love or Money, won a 1997 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.
In 2012, Kathy published two thrillers. Amanda’s Eyes, the first book in a series featuring crime reporter A.J. Gregson, is a paranormal thriller that has garnered a 4.4★ average on Amazon and was a semi-finalist in Kindle Book Review’s 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. Her second thriller, Why Live?, is dystopian science fiction.
In 2015, Kathy published sweet remixes of her two Loveswept romances. For Love or Money and Hunter’s Shadow are books one and two of what will be the Golden State Hearts Trilogy. The third book in the series, tentatively titled Not Far Enough, is slated for 2016.
The sequel to Amanda’s Eyes is also slated for 2016.
As a communications specialist with a major university and freelance writer, Kathy has written more than three hundred features and blog posts for print and the web. Now retired and writing full-time, she enjoys live performances by her sons, Leo and Nick (both professional musicians); meditation; yoga; reading; puttering around her ninety-plus-year-old American foursquare house; and brisk walks with her rescue dogs, Molly and Lucy.
In 2012, Kathy published two thrillers. Amanda’s Eyes, the first book in a series featuring crime reporter A.J. Gregson, is a paranormal thriller that has garnered a 4.4★ average on Amazon and was a semi-finalist in Kindle Book Review’s 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. Her second thriller, Why Live?, is dystopian science fiction.
In 2015, Kathy published sweet remixes of her two Loveswept romances. For Love or Money and Hunter’s Shadow are books one and two of what will be the Golden State Hearts Trilogy. The third book in the series, tentatively titled Not Far Enough, is slated for 2016.
The sequel to Amanda’s Eyes is also slated for 2016.
As a communications specialist with a major university and freelance writer, Kathy has written more than three hundred features and blog posts for print and the web. Now retired and writing full-time, she enjoys live performances by her sons, Leo and Nick (both professional musicians); meditation; yoga; reading; puttering around her ninety-plus-year-old American foursquare house; and brisk walks with her rescue dogs, Molly and Lucy.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 23, 2022
Horrible title. Good book, dystopian, philosophical.
February 21, 2013
Kai-Lee is an historian who we meet when she is depressed after a profound realisation about the meaning of life. In a universe that is an endless cycle, where everything is recycled, "ideas, trends, fashions, political movements, and of course mistakes", people themselves are not; making history not only about every single person who ever lived, but dependent on each life lived.
So each life, no matter how ordinary and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, can have a profound effect on human history. The thought of this has deeply affected her and has far-reaching and extremely disturbing consequences. But why does it affect her so deeply?
Why Live? is set in a future where genetic engineering has stopped the aging process and disease has been wiped out. People now live for 120 years – the natural human lifespan which cannot be broken. But this is not enough for everybody – some believe this 120 year span can be broken, and, while they work out how to do it, want to clone themselves indefinitely, thereby living forever. Kai-Lee is one of 400 people (the Alphas) who set off across space on a 600 year journey to a new planet where they can live by their own rules.
The Alphas are an idealised bunch – in their own way. There are a number of criteria to meet to have been included on the passenger list, eg: no living relatives so no family ties to cut, and no monogamous relationships to prevent messy breakups.
Kathy DiSanto asks many interesting questions in this book about society, but also about cloning. Eg: "genetic sameness never seemed to equal absolute sameness", cloning is one thing, but we are more than our genes – we are also our family, our friends and our experiences.
Kai-Lee decides to research the whole process, looking at what they are doing with new insight. Cloned babies are "grown" in mechanical wombs, then fostered to "synthetic organisms" -robots designed to nurture each child in such a way as to shape their behaviour and character to match the original. The births are timed so that the child reaches 18 at the same time as the "parent" reaches 120 and dies, and the new adult takes their place. It's clear that the idea behind the process was to make each colonist effectively immortal, but in practice, Kai-Lee discovers that she and the rest of the colonists have been carefully crafted; their personalities carefully controlled – and brain-washed. All spontaneity, individuality, self-expression and even evolution has been destroyed.
She is no longer happy with this way of life and society, feeling herself and everyone else to be "meaningless and historically irrelevant". She finds this state of being very lonely and confides in her friend, Eran – not realising that she has started a new movement, The Awakening. An awakening that the council will go to great and extreme lengths to prevent. As The Awakening gathers pace, it becomes a battle for survival in an increasingly Orwellian society. Will Kai-Lee and the others obtain their dream of living as individuals with the freedom to make their own choices?
Why Live? is well-written, interesting and surprising (in a good way). Kathy DiSanto asks some serious philosophical questions about the possibilities of genetic manipulation and cloning and the consequences thereof, as well as the meaning of life, and I found myself asking myself many more questions because of the ideas expressed here.
The title of the book is extremely apt, why live when your whole life is mapped out and controlled? Why live when you will not be remembered? Why live when you are nothing but a replacement for an individual who lived hundreds of years ago?
Uplifting and profound, I am happy to recommend Why Live? to anyone who enjoys good thought-provoking science-fiction.
So each life, no matter how ordinary and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, can have a profound effect on human history. The thought of this has deeply affected her and has far-reaching and extremely disturbing consequences. But why does it affect her so deeply?
Why Live? is set in a future where genetic engineering has stopped the aging process and disease has been wiped out. People now live for 120 years – the natural human lifespan which cannot be broken. But this is not enough for everybody – some believe this 120 year span can be broken, and, while they work out how to do it, want to clone themselves indefinitely, thereby living forever. Kai-Lee is one of 400 people (the Alphas) who set off across space on a 600 year journey to a new planet where they can live by their own rules.
The Alphas are an idealised bunch – in their own way. There are a number of criteria to meet to have been included on the passenger list, eg: no living relatives so no family ties to cut, and no monogamous relationships to prevent messy breakups.
Kathy DiSanto asks many interesting questions in this book about society, but also about cloning. Eg: "genetic sameness never seemed to equal absolute sameness", cloning is one thing, but we are more than our genes – we are also our family, our friends and our experiences.
Kai-Lee decides to research the whole process, looking at what they are doing with new insight. Cloned babies are "grown" in mechanical wombs, then fostered to "synthetic organisms" -robots designed to nurture each child in such a way as to shape their behaviour and character to match the original. The births are timed so that the child reaches 18 at the same time as the "parent" reaches 120 and dies, and the new adult takes their place. It's clear that the idea behind the process was to make each colonist effectively immortal, but in practice, Kai-Lee discovers that she and the rest of the colonists have been carefully crafted; their personalities carefully controlled – and brain-washed. All spontaneity, individuality, self-expression and even evolution has been destroyed.
She is no longer happy with this way of life and society, feeling herself and everyone else to be "meaningless and historically irrelevant". She finds this state of being very lonely and confides in her friend, Eran – not realising that she has started a new movement, The Awakening. An awakening that the council will go to great and extreme lengths to prevent. As The Awakening gathers pace, it becomes a battle for survival in an increasingly Orwellian society. Will Kai-Lee and the others obtain their dream of living as individuals with the freedom to make their own choices?
Why Live? is well-written, interesting and surprising (in a good way). Kathy DiSanto asks some serious philosophical questions about the possibilities of genetic manipulation and cloning and the consequences thereof, as well as the meaning of life, and I found myself asking myself many more questions because of the ideas expressed here.
The title of the book is extremely apt, why live when your whole life is mapped out and controlled? Why live when you will not be remembered? Why live when you are nothing but a replacement for an individual who lived hundreds of years ago?
Uplifting and profound, I am happy to recommend Why Live? to anyone who enjoys good thought-provoking science-fiction.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews