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  • Published 20110906
  • ISBN: 9781921758225
  • Extent: 264 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

A NEW MALE human being entered the universe a year ago, with one-eighth of his genetic material identical to my mother’s and one-eighth identical to my father’s. Those millions of delicate fragments of code, assembled around a hundred years ago, were duplicated perfectly, then duplicated perfectly again and finally copied into a microscopic drop of cell matter, to begin yet another voyage through space and time and consciousness with its own unique human identity. It is a mystery, to me. But tens of thousands of mysteries like that happen every day.

Within a hundred years the billions of molecules that make up this lively, cheerful, noisy creature will disperse and never reassemble again: except for that tiny fraction that may end up in another human’s genetic make-up to travel down the centuries, mixing with other genetic material and incarnating again and again.

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About the author

John Tranter (1943–2023)

John Tranter published more than twenty collections of verse. His collection Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected (UQP, 2006), won a number of major...

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