''Sims'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by

F. Paul Wilson Francis Paul Wilson (born May 17, 1946, in Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American medical doctor and author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and other genres of literary fiction. His books include the Repairman Jack n ...

that explores a near-future event where

Humanzees The humanzee (sometimes chuman, manpanzee or chumanzee) is a hypothetical hybrid of chimpanzee and human, thus a form of human–animal hybrid. Serious attempts to create such a hybrid were made by Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov in the 1 ...

(Human-

Chimpanzee The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...

hybrids) are created as a de facto slave race.Wilson, F. Paul, ( 2003). ''Sims''. New York : Tom Doherty Associates, 2003. In the near future, there have been amazing advances in genetics research. Through gene therapy, many deadly diseases have been cured. The SimGen Corporation has created a transgenic species called SIMS, creatures that are part chimpanzee and part human, and are treated as

slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. Suddenly a group of sims working as caddies at a golf course decide they want to unionize. They hire lawyer Patrick Sullivan to represent them, and Sullivan begins to ponder whether or not sims are entitled to equal

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

. During the course of the novel, Patrick meets activist Romy Cadman and a mysterious man called Zero, who are on a crusade to destroy SimGen and stop the creation of sims. While the three of them try to protect the sims, they come close to uncovering a sinister secret within SimGen, a secret the company will stop at nothing to prevent from getting out. The story touches on a possible future for genetics research, including the idea of primate hybrids with human DNA, and asks the question: Where would such creatures stand in human society, and would they be considered animal or human?

Footnotes

2003 American novels 2003 science fiction novels American science fiction novels {{2000s-sf-novel-stub