To take the last bit first:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I also wondered about the inability of the clones to reproduce; animals that are cloned don't have any such limitation, so was he just ignoring science because he didn't know better, or did he want to convey something to the reader?
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Early science-fiction about cloning may have presented it as simple copying - lots of little Hitlers running around or whatever - but since then examples abound of cloning being just part of larger genetic engineering project. One obvious example is the book by Michael Crichton,
Jurassic Park, later made in the movie by the same name; in this (in case you haven't seen it) they not only manipulated genes of the creatures they were creating, they also attempted to make certain the animals could never breed.
In
Never Let Me Go we don't know whether the sterilisation was genetic or some other mechanism. We must presume it was deliberate on the part of the society, and the author, so the relevant question is not how, but why?
I think there are probably multiple answers, the main ones already touched on: that you don't want clones breeding with non-clones; that you want clones to have only one driving purpose; that breeding can be detrimental to our bodies. I'd also add that the (non-clone) human body is awash with chemicals related to breeding and these chemicals make us emotionally and physically unstable. Remove or reduce such fluctuations and you help to stabilise the person.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
What point was the author making about sex? It struck me as odd that the teenagers learned about sex and its importance to non-clones, implying that they might someday be interacting with non-clones; and that they engaged in a lot of it casually. What was the relevance?
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If both sexes of clones are sterile we might wonder whether their sexual activity has the same driving force as non-clones (it would depend on how it was implemented). The use of casual sex, and the emphasis that sex in the outside world was so different and important, may have been something else that sets the clones apart and makes them different from outsiders - and perhaps another reason for outsiders to look at clones with disgust.