The Red Queen

In the distant future, a genetic weapon is engineered to destroy every male on earth. Millions are slaughtered. Only one man survives, and he’s forced into hiding, hunted relentlessly by female warriors. If only they knew his life was crucial for the survival of the human race…

Thus begins Dirk Draulans’s “The Red Queen”, an intriguing blend of hard science and compelling storytelling that explores the dangerous future of genetic engineering. Readers of Aldous Huxley and Isaac Asimov will find much to ponder in this fascinating novel, partly because the fictional technology it describes will actually be available before the end of the twentieth century.

Spawned from a controversial study that originated at Oxford University, the “Red Queen” hypothesis takes its name from a notorious figure in Lewis Carroll’s Alice “Through the Looking Glass”: a chess piece that has to run hard to stay in place. According to this model, sexual reproduction provides a continuous mixing of genetic material, enabling hosts to keep parasites at a genetic distance. Draulans uses this theory as his starting point and creates a chilling Orwellian fantasy—a world where traditional families are obsolete, where sex is unheard of, and where no man is safe.