ARTHUR C. CLARKE Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo January 1974-January 1975
ADDITIONAL NOTE
Several expert readers have accused me of grave error by assuming that
Malcolm would pass on the Makenzie defect to his clones. Though I was well aware of this problem (and tried to avoid it by being carefully unspecific)
I did not go into the matter as seriously as I should have done. I am still hoping that some ingenious geneticist will be able to contrive a solution; unfortunately, I doubt if I will be able to understand it.
Meanwhile, for those biologists who refuse to be placated, I can only fall back upon what is known in the trade as Bradbury’s Defense, viz:
One dreadful boy ran up to me and said:
“That book of yours, The Martian Chronicles?”
“Yes,” I said.
“On page 92, where you have the moons of Mars rising in the East?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Nah,” he said.
So I hit him
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Colombo, June 1976
Mars and the Mind ol Men (Harper & Row 1973.)