Invasive Procedures (2007)
Invasive Procedures is a 2007 fiction book written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.
George Galen was once a celebrated pioneer of gene therapy. He is also dangerously insane. Galen has built a virus that rewrites human DNA, not to cure disease but to remake people: stronger, quicker to heal, and bent to his will. Frank Hartman, a virologist inside the government's secret bio-hazard agency, has found the one way to neutralize it, which makes him the single obstacle between Galen and a plan to improve the entire human race. Aaron Johnston and Orson Scott Card turn that standoff into a tense medical thriller about the ethics of rewriting what a person is.
Quick answers
What is Invasive Procedures about?
George Galen was once a celebrated pioneer of gene therapy. He is also dangerously insane. Galen has built a virus that rewrites human DNA, not to cure disease but to remake people: stronger, quicker to heal, and bent to his will. Frank Hartman, a virologist inside the government's secret bio-hazard agency, has found the one way to neutralize it, which makes him the single obstacle between Galen and a plan to improve the entire human race. Aaron Johnston and Orson Scott Card turn that standoff into a tense medical thriller about the ethics of rewriting what a person is.
When was Invasive Procedures published?
Invasive Procedures was published in 2007.
Who made Invasive Procedures?
Invasive Procedures was written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.
Similar books
A few thoughts on Invasive Procedures
Fans of body-horror bioethics should try David Cronenberg's The Fly, where a scientist's genetic tampering slowly rewrites his own flesh. BioShock runs a hidden lab whose gene-editing plasmids remake people into weapons with the ethics stripped out. For the rogue-agency outbreak and the scramble to contain it, Resident Evil scratches the same nerve.
Mad scientists trying to engineer a better human being
George Galen wants to remake humanity through a virus, stronger and quicker to heal. These stories share his ambition without his madness fully tamed. The Island of Dr. Moreau vivisects animals into people, BioShock's Rapture splices citizens with ADAM, Man Plus rebuilds an astronaut's body for Mars, Beyond This Horizon breeds a genetically engineered utopia, and Partials leaves survivors born from an engineered plague.
Bioterror thrillers where a lone scientist has to stop the outbreak
Frank Hartman is the one person standing between Galen's virus and a captive human race. These technothrillers run the same clock. Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor, The Cassandra Compact and The Paris Option all send a single virologist racing a weaponized outbreak, while Wild Cards and its Ace in the Hole chapter track a virus that reshapes whoever survives it.
Movies and games about a virus that transforms the body into something else
Galen's virus rewrites the body itself, not merely the health of it. These movies and games chase the same body horror: Resident Evil unleashes a corporate bioweapon on a mansion, Annihilation lets contamination rewrite living cells from the inside, The Omega Man strands a survivor among a plague's mutated victims, The Fly rebuilds a man cell by cell, and DNA breeds a genetic monster.
Stories about the ethics of engineering the next stage of humanity
Invasive Procedures asks what happens when someone tries to improve the entire human race by force. These stories ask the same question with less madness behind it. The Imperfects follows genetic experiment survivors learning to live with changes, Generosity imagines a gene for happiness, Imago tracks a body remade by alien biology, Upgrade rewrites a mind gene by gene, and Remaking Eden charts how close science sits to his ambitions.