Dan Brown’s Latest Thriller Tackles Transhumanism

Inferno: Robert Langdon is back with a globe-trotting thriller in which the symbologist has to decode clues left in a map of Dante’s masterpiece by a recently-deceased evil genius before one-third of the world perishes. Oops, we are about to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that the master of transmuting highbrow trivia, European travel guides and clunky prose into dollars has framed transhumanism as the most dangerous threat to the future of mankind.

Brown says that transhumanism is a movement to change the destiny of humanity through genetic engineering. InInferno, the villain is obsessed with over-population and creates a virus which will make one-third of the world’s population infertile, thus reducing the population dramatically in a single generation. From an interview in Time, it appears that Brown himself believes that the world is seriously over-populated and that extreme measures are needed to curb population growth.

The publisher describes Inferno as “one hell of a read”. Perhaps that is true in more senses than one.

 

This article originally published at BioEdge.

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Michael Cook likes bad puns, bushwalking and black coffee. He did a BA at Harvard University in the US where it was good for networking, but moved to Sydney where it wasn’t. He also did a PhD on an obscure corner of Australian literature. He has worked as a book editor and magazine editor and has published articles in magazines and newspapers in the US, the UK and Australia.

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