Reinhold Ziegler Perfekt Geklont When the Clones Came Verlag Carl Überreuter GmbH, Autumn 2005, 252 pp. ISBN 3-8000-5153-2 Here is a doom-laden book with an optimistic ending that hearteningly defies the odds. Its theme is what happens when scientists overstep the mark and the public are stampeded into wanting the impossible by the ravings of an irresponsible press. We are two hundred years on from the present and our old world has become a wasteland. Dirt and rubble are everywhere, human beings have disappeared, and the dwarfish clones who have taken their place rummage like jackals in dead people’s homes. These creatures mature at the age of seven and each is bred from a ‘preclone’ instead of a parent. Mysteriously, however, some slip through the net. These ‘different ones’ even have feelings, thought processes and gender and, once detected, are promptly incarcerated in a ‘Separation House’, in which thy will remain till they die. Such is the fate intended for Aurun, the heroine of this story, but she is to be the lucky one. Helped and instructed by the wise and ancient clone Gertran Ewinewi, she learns what makes her and her fellow inmates different, and what joys this difference can bring. She also discovers the existence of an underground network tackling the situation. She joins them, her escape is planned , and the book takes off on a sweep of tremendous adventures as she and her companion, another young clone called Mexan, joined in due course by an enormous, friendly dog, set out to discover what really happened all those years ago. Their journey takes them from the rusty remnants of the New York underground system to corpse-filled houses and streets where a war must have been fought, and lands them finally in the laboratory of the demented scientist through whom the whole catastrophe began. Think Philip Pullman meets Aldous Huxley, add a touch of Philip K. Dick and a nod towards Ursula le Guin for spirited female characterisation, and you have just part of this exciting, satirically motivated mix. A spot-on subject and a fascinating teenage read.