The ten cloned siblings of John Chow in the story "Nine Lives" are less impossible than they seemed in 1969, when the story first appeared in Playboy magazine, under the byline U.K. Le Guin (the only time the author was ever asked to publish under gender-neutral initials). The cloned siblings' mutual understanding is far more a product of their shared upbringing than their shared genetics alone. In one of Le Guin's few actual speculations about scientific matters or human relations which she does not herself understand, this story proposes that cloned siblings raised together would be totally simpatico, by means of ordinary human communication; that is, with no imaginary extrasensory powers necessary.
This speculation is one of the few times Le Guin puts her foot wrong in this volume.
Yes, Mr. Underhill is a.....
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