ISBN ? (US pbk)

"For this story, Knight envisioned a society in the year 2064 consisting of inhabitants of cities with a hypertrophied electromechanical technology, surrounded by rural territory with an equally hypertrophied biotechnology. In what I believe to be the first published description of 'gene splicing', Knight describes the creation of a genetically engineered microorganism. He also describes a whole menagerie of genetically engineered animals, as well as a telephone system in which the 'wire' is grown as a vine with nerve fibers running through it, and the 'switch' is a specialized organism to which the vines connect.

"The story seems to have been lost among the myriads of science fiction stories published in the '50s, but I think it's worth bringing to public attention this very creative speculation of where 'biotechnology' might lead. I recently pointed this out in a presentation I gave to the Technology Law Society of Temple University Law School in Philadelphia. (The April 11, 1997 presentation is on my firm's Web Site at http://www.elman.com/elman/)

"I would also be curious to learn if anyone else has come across an earlier description of 'gene splicing' in science fiction. When it was published, Natural State was about contemporaneous with Watson and Crick's elucidation of the double helix structure of DNA." --Gerry J.Elman (in a personal e-mail dated Saturday 14 June 1997).