Chilling ‘What if?’: ‘Inheritance’ by Genevieve Gannon

If you could reduce or eliminate the chance that your unborn child might suffer or die from a genetic illness or rampant variants of a virus that has already swept through the world, would you do it? What if you could ensure that your future son or daughter was born with gifts such as enhanced lung capacity, stronger bones, or a beautiful singing voice?

These are questions at the heart of Australian author Genevieve Gannon’s novel Inheritance. It’s strapline: The perfect child is now possible, makes pretty clear the kind of future world its characters inhabit.

Though, it’s not that far into the future. The novel opens in 2027, which at the time of its publication was just three short years away.

Emily and her husband Dougal are deciding whether to use a new gene editing service alongside more traditional IVF to help conceive a child. Now legal, the service offers to help the couple avoid some of the health-related pitfalls in their own families. But how far should they go in designing a baby?

There is a second, interwoven narrative set decades later, in a world where gene modification is no longer regarded as benign or desirable.

Adelaide is a political staffer in the office of a Parliamentarian whom she admires and respects, someone who is against the discriminatory rules that have been introduced in recent years, that put ‘modified’ people into a second-class of citizens.

But Adelaide has a secret that she is determined not to expose, one that involves a plan she and her husband have put into action, but that results in the clock ticking…will the result be disaster or joy for the couple?

Inheritance reads a bit like a thriller, with a tight timeline, conflicting political and social divisions, and adventures that require all the courage that Emily and Adelaide can muster.

As I read this story, though, I was mindful of how applicable its themes are today: particularly technology that develops faster than any social and administrative systems and laws that should guide it. A glaring example the world faces right now is, of course, AI. How do humans manage this powerful tool to best serve everyone, not just the few who seek to gain money or power from its use?

It’s also a reflection on the demands and complications of modern life and relationships; if we forgive those who make mistakes and under what circumstances; if we forgive ourselves for our own mistakes.

Inheritance is a gripping read that, despite its near-future setting, grapples with perplexing and troubling issues that seem all-too-real in today’s world.

It was published in 2024 by Pantera Press.