Category:Ancestor
From Siglerpedia
Ancestor is a thriller / horror podcast novel by American author Scott Sigler. Originally released as a podcast audio book, it was later published in 2007 by Dragon Moon Press. This is the second book by Scott Sigler that was initially distributed through a podcast and then released in print form, the first being his 2000 novel EarthCore.
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Ancestor can be interpreted as a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering married with the obsession to succeed involving both personal and business related motivations.
[edit] Plot summary
Alert: Spoilers follow
The novel begins as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) razes the Greenland test operations of Novozyme, a biotech corporation testing animal tissue, specifically from pigs, to replace failing human organs. The total destruction of the operations is necessary due to an outbreak of virus that jumped from the test pigs to the inhabiting humans – an outbreak which humans have never experienced and therefore have no immunity to.
Due to the severe nature of the outbreak, CIA Director Longworth instructs his operative, Sydney Champman to shut down the operations of the remaining corporations involved in similar research – Mondanto, Genetron and Genada – in order to stem the possibility of further outbreaks. Chapman is instructed to start with Genada Corporation as the CIA has an under cover operative on hand an also because a former CIA agent, P.J. Colding, is manning Genada's on-site security and is considered a “traitor” to the CIA.
Sydney Chapman makes the call to his under cover agent at Genada, Dr. Teyshawn P. Anderson, and Teyshawn proceeds with the destruction of the Baffin Island project. However, Magnus Paglione, head of security at Genada and brother to CEO Danté, is tipped off to the fate of the Novozyme operation and they decide to move the Baffin Island operations to Black Manitou Island in Lake Michigan by using a contracted C-5 modified to carry an operational lab. By the time Magnus arrives Teyshawn has destroyed all communications, transportation and genetic test data except for the back up data Dr. Liu Jiandan (Jian) has stored on her personal computer drive.
While Teyshawn sabotages the site, Jian achieves a breakthrough in the immune response test that significantly increases the viability of the genome pieced together by what was affectionately refer to as, “The God Machine”. This machine allows Jian to create DNA one nucledotide at a time allowing for custom built DNA and chromosomes. The success of the genome to the immune response test allows the scientists to proceed with growing the Ancestors. Jian succeeds in saving the breakthrough from Teyshawn's rampage and Magnus arrives with the C-5 mobile lab in order to extricate the team to the Genada Black Manitou Island facility. As the team makes their escape, Magnus “handles” Teyshawn and the arriving Chapman in only the way Magnus can.
Aboard the C-5 mobile lab, the scientists are hard at work with the “God Machine”, a powerful computer that assists with the process of creating custom DNA, while Colding gets familiar with Sara Purinam, the hard as nails but feminine Captain of the mobile lab. Hours later, the mobile lab lands at Black Manitou Island in Lake Michigan – the scientists continue their work with the implantation of the engineered eggs into the cows and Sara and Colding get familiar with the island as well as the facility caretaker, Clayton Detweiler.
As the Ancestors grow, Jian begins to fear the exponential growth rate of the animals and the odd behaviors of both the fetuses and the cows serving as their surrogate mothers. To further complicate the matter, Jian believes her fears are being supported by her premonitions – so much so that she suggests to Rhumkorrf that they should alert the CIA. In time, the other two scientists begin realizing Jian's fears may be well founded, particularly when Dr. Overgard realizes the cows are becoming sick due to not receiving enough nutrition to support the rapid growth rate of the growing Ancestors. But Rhumkorrf is blinded by his ambitions and ego and refuses to come to terms with that which he knows – the animals they are growing are not the animals they intended to grow. They are much more dangerous.
At this point in the story, Jian is going mad with the growth and aggressiveness of the Ancestors – she programmed for the animals to be herbivores that were no more than 200 pounds but they showed clear signs of being predators with the potential to grow much larger than anticipated. Furthermore, Danté Paglione is intent on ensuring the success of the project and send Magnus Paglione to “oversee” operations. Meanwhile, Sara and Colding are falling hard for each other.
Shortly after Magnus arrives, Jian mentally breaks down and hacks into the company telecommunications system to alert the CIA that their experiments are out of control. As soon as Magnus gets wind of this breach, he makes his way to Jian and unceremoniously eliminates her. Feeling that the project is spiraling out of control, Magnus consults his knife for a solution. Magnus decides the whole operation has to be put to an end and the cleanest way to do that is to load the cows, now heavy with the eminent birth of the Ancestors, the scientists and the company flight crew aboard the C-5 mobile lab and conveniently create an “accidental” crash using explosives. But Sara stumbles on the explosives and makes a crash landing just ass the Ancestors are literally bursting into the world.
And a particularly bloody and gruesome hunt ensues with the Ancestors tracking and killing the humans and animals alike one by one. Unfortunately, Magnus is trying to hunt the survivors from the C-5 crash as well, placing Sara, Dr. Overgard, Dr. Rhumkorrf , Clayton and Colding in danger. Clayton and Colding do their best to save the remaining C-5 crew but they themselves are in danger of running into the predators.
In the end, the Ancestors succeed in eradicating the island of human life by picking them off one by one and eating them, leaving only a handful of survivors who, thanks to Clayton, escape and live to tell the tale.
[edit] Character List
[edit] Genada Corporation Executives
- Danté Paglione: CEO of the Privately owned bio tech company Genada
- Bobby Valentine: Danté Paglione’s private pilot
- Magnus Paglione: Head of Security; brother of Dante
[edit] Scientists
- Dr. Claus Rhumkorrf: Head Geneticist
- Dr. Liu Jiandan (Jian): Bioinformatics scientist and genome specialist
- Dr. Claudette Overgard: Geneticist specializing in extinct animals
- Dr. Teyshawn P. Anderson: Assistant scientist and Ph.D candidate from the Massechusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (see also Paul Stillwell)
[edit] Genada Corporation Security
- P.J. Colding: Head of Genada on site security; former CIA agent
- Andy Crosthwaite: On site security guard; also known as “Andy the Asshole”
- Gunther Jones: On site security guard
- Brady Giovani: On site security guard
[edit] Genada C-5 Mobile Lab Flight Crew
- Sara Purinam: Captain & Pilot of the C-5 airplane contracted by Genada
- Alonzo Barella: Co-Pilot
- Harold Miller: C-5 Crewmember; one half of “The Twins”
- Andre “Cappy” Capistrano: C-5 Crewmember; other half of “The Twins”
[edit] Black Manitou Locals
- Clayton Detweiler: Manager of the Black Manitou Island facility
- Chris Detweiler: Clayton’s son
- Sven Ballantine: Farmer
- Rory Sherwood: Farmer and owner of Pastie the dog
- Violet Sherwood: Rory’s wife
[edit] Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Agents
- Longworth: Director of the CIA
- Sydney Chapman: CIA operative specializing in investigating transgenic companies; direct report to Longworth / Coldings former CIA partner
- Paul Stillwell: Deep cover CIA operative stationed within the Baffin Island Genada operation under the name of Teyshawn P. Anderson
[edit] Miscelleanous
[edit] Portrayal of Science
[edit] Xenotransplantation
The basis of the plot for Ancestor is the ongoing research to find the ultimate solution for growing animal organs with the intention of replacing failing human organs and supplementing the organ transplant shortage. The process of interspecies tissue transplantation is known as xenotransplantation. Specifically, xenotransplantation is the transplantation of cells, tissues, or organs occurring between species. In contrast, allotransplantation is the transplantation of cells, tissues, and organs between members of the same species.
A great deal of scientific research is currently devoted to xenotransplantation driven by the worldwide shortage of organs available for transplantation.
[edit] Rejection
Immune rejection remains the biggest challenge for xenotransplantation. The problem exists even for human to human transplants (known as allotransplantation), but is more serious for transplants between different species. Nearly all mammalian cells have markers which enable the immune system to recognize them as being foreign. The more different the genetic code between the donor organ and recipient, the greater the difference between a "self" marker and a "foreign" marker. Some companies are currently developing transgenic animals such as pigs that produce human markers to try and lessen the chance of rejection.
[edit] Xenosis
As the opening scene in Ancestor suggests, a secondary challenge of xenotransplantation is the potential for infectious disease to spread from the donor animal to the transplant recipient, effectively jumping species. This process is called xenosis or zoonosis. One example is porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs), which are viruses within pigs that pigs are immune to, but can infect humans. The two major risks with xenosis are:
- Infection in to the transplant recipient
- An infected transplant recipient initiating an epidemic in the human population
As alluded to earlier, the risks of xenosis are effectively portrayed in the opening scene of the novel as Genada's competitor Novozyme is being razed in order to contain a deadly infection that jumped from the pig population being used for xenotransplantation to the human population.
In the novel, Genada tries to circumvent the risks of xenosis by genetically recreating an animal similar to the Thrinaxodon. The Thrinaxodon is a mammal that lived two hundred million years ago and is believed to give rise to all subsequent mammalian creatures including humans. Genada postulates that by using the original mammalian Ancestor genome, they can eliminate the possibilities of a virus because they can engineer them out of the genome.
[edit] Release Chronology
Similar to the author’s first book, EarthCore, the book release of Ancestor followed a non-traditional path to print publication. The following timeline deteails the distribution lifecycle of the novel that culminated with the April 2007 print release.
| Year | Media Type | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 2005 | Serialized Podcast Audio book | mp3 audio file | Distributed through Podshows.com |
| 2006 | Serialized Broadcast | Sirius Satellite Radio™ | First audio book to be broadcast on satellite radio |
| August 2006 | Serialized Podcast Audio book | mp3 audio file | Distributed through Podiobooks.com |
| March 2007 | e-Book | Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) | 272 pages; Dragon Moon Press (ISBN: 978-1-896944-75-2) |
| April 2007 | Paperback Edition | 288 pages; Dragon Moon Press (ISBN: 978-1-896944-73-9) |
[edit] Buy and Listen
Buy at Amazon.com
Subscribe at Podiobooks.com
[edit] See Also
Articles in category "Ancestor"
There are 9 articles in this category.
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Media in category "Ancestor"
There are 11 files in this category.
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