Gattaca, Gattaca!

A while ago, my erstwhile friend and advisor, Laura, was grilling me about my influences. I mentioned Andrew Niccol, a Kiwi genius responsible for, among other things, the mind-bending The Truman Show.

But, the Andrew Niccol work that really stands out in my mind, the one whose soundtrack and images, whose very moral authority can never leave me, is Gattaca.

Laura was questioning me about my overarching themes. A writer is supposed to have those, you know. What defines your work? The conflict between man and machine? The individual and society? The Yin and the Yang?

After a brief re-watch of Andrew Niccol’s masterpiece tonight, I’ve decided my “theme,” if you want to call it that, is that of the man who rejects society’s plan for him and his. He does whatever he has to survive, and to ensure that his offspring do, too. Nature may plan his demise, but my heroes do not go willingly into that good night. Oblivion is forever, our post-modern hero realizes, and there is no fucking way he is buying that ticket until he knows there is no other option.

Some background here: In Niccol’s film, Vincent is the natural-born offspring of two idealistic parents in the near future. They quickly realize that their love match is a decidedly flawed product, and their next kid must be planned.

Anton, a son deemed worthy of his father’s name, is planned for genetic perfection. He races Vincent, swimming to the edge of endurance, and always wins. Until Vincent decides not to save anything for the trip back. That’s what humans do. Anton loses, and Vincent walks out, determined to steal a future for himself as a “borrowed ladder,” a man infiltrating the ranks of the capable through theft of genetic material from the perfect, yet unfortunate.

Want to know more? See it yourself. It’s well worth it. Niccol’s film is light-years ahead of its time, a sumptuous, sensual, enveloping experience that should leave every thoughtful person questioning our future, and what it means to be human.

That’s my theme, Laura. Right there.

In my most recent novel, The Troika of Osip Teitelbaum, the protagonist finds himself cast in the role of “borrowed ladder” in the Soviet Union of the mid-thirties.

This is, undoubtedly, a far more ruthless dystopia than that of Gattaca. The penalty for exposure as a fake is not lost job opportunities, but a bullet to the back of the head. Secrets whispered between lovers in bed are revealed at a deadly cost, and concealing them requires more than just clever tricks. It requires ruthlessness, the kind that erases people from history.

My protagonist is not Vincent, a starry-eyed would-be astronaut. He is Fyodor Ilyin, AKA Osip Teitelbaum, a ruthless veteran of the Russian Civil War, a man who has switched sides, and religions, to survive. Now, Osip has a daughter to protect, and his dangerous dance takes him into the embrace of such snakes as Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenti Beria, and Josef Stalin himself.

Through it all, Osip dreams of an isolated Arctic lake full of cannibal Arctic Char, relentlessly feeding on each other as they jockey for survival. Sounds inspiring, doesn’t it?

Consider this: In order to get your genes to this point, the people who carried them no doubt had to make many such deals with the devil in order to get the job done. State Security Major Teitelbaum executes and tortures men he admires, plus the people they love, in order to protect that which is truly important to him: His flesh and blood.

That, put very simply, maybe exactly why you are here: Genetic Crimes. Carried out in the name of a mafia whose name is written in four letters: G T A C.

GATTACA. The letters that encode who we are, and what we will be. The letters that designate our only true loyalty. Where’s my theme? That’s my theme, Laura.

Ever watch your child sleep in the dark of night? What wouldn’t you do to protect them? Lie, cheat, fake, steal…kill, even? That’s my overarching theme, I suppose.

Buried deep in my DNA is the clannish allegiance of the Scot. My family is my loyalty. And so, I bet, is yours.

We might get on quite well. But where’s your chromosomes, mate? In a world in which every other sort of loyalty is being tested to the breaking point, perhaps that’s the question to ask.