Science Fiction often paints a bleak future, and many alarm bells in our present state provide impetus for such warning and concern; but if our empathy can survive, hope becomes real, for it creates conditions for more than survival. Empathy creates the path to believe in one another. It is inclusive, not divisive.
Rob Williams' Sins of Variance poses one of these science fiction crossroads in a difficult future of dark choices for the human race. Williams' world is a future where many humans have been genetically tailored to avoid conflict, but in his story he also asks whether such a success, made through genetic neutralization of emotion, is a good thing.
With the next century promising the arrival of true artificial intelligence and a mankind that must evolve with our ability to manipulate man and machine, maybe some of the questions the author poses should be addressed today. If they aren't, quite possibly our species dies in the process as we eat away at hope in a world where only the powerful survive and prosper.
