Ethical Questions about the Clones

Most modern-day readers will have heard – and perhaps participated – in ethical debates about clones and cloning. Some people consider clones to be human beings with all the rights and privileges of any other human, while others consider them to be nothing more than science experiments. The information and ideas about clones were much more rudimentary in the 1970s when this novel was originally written. To fully understand how this theme impacts the novel, the reader must be willing to look at the situation from both time frames.

Jadna clearly considers the clones as scientific tools to be used on her mission without regard for any ethical questions. She sends each to a new version of Earth, knowing they will likely be killed during the mission. Furthermore, each clone is generated with an automatic death time of three hours after animation. That means...