Mammoths walk the earth again, thanks to a billionaire’s de-extinction project. He sequesters these prehistoric zombies in a remote valley in Colorado and charges other billionaires $10M a pop or so to come gawk at them. All well, then, nothing to see here, move it along, and you and I couldn’t afford it anyway.
But. If you can bring back the mammoths…okay, I’ll stop there so as not to spoil. By far and away the best part of this book is the afterword, where Preston informs us that bringing back the mammoth is at most five years away and names the guy at Harvard who is doing so. What could go wrong?
Quite a lot, actually. We are living in an age where science fiction is turning into science fact right before our eyes, and we are in no way prepared for the results. Good read.
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I agree. The Mammoths and other living things died out/evolved for a reason. Ick.
Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, which is I think Doug’s point. The Harvard guy is probably financed by somebody like Elon Musk, a man notorious for carefully thinking things through (sarcasm). This book only scratches the surface of the consequences.
My brain constantly computes consequences, whether I like it or not. I’ve borrowed this book in KU and lord knows what I will think of when I read it. As you said “scratches the surface”.
Here’s the company doing the work and their backers https://colossal.com/mammoth/
If we want to “save the elephant”
then we need to address the causes of their decline, not the symptoms.