In
my novel-in-preparation The Invasion(which is arguably more fantasy than science fiction, but this element is treated as scientific rather than fantastical), the story begins in a genetic-engineering lab working to develop werewolves.
In one story I have read that included the similar idea of a werewolf created by genetic engineering, "werewolf" was more evocative than accurate; the character was a super-soldier with preternatural strength and speed, and with nails and teeth designed to be weapons (claws and fangs), but she had no ability to transform into any other shape.
In my story, however, while the Villain
uses the Werewolf Genome to create super-soldiers for his own purposes, the scientists thought of mere metabolic enhancements and superficial alterations as unworthy of them, because other scientists had already published results of such experiments. Instead, they wanted to replicate the transformational aspects of the legend, and build in as many of the other details as they could for style points.
The explanation I came up with
(which may well be doubletalk up there with "less observed properties of solar radiation" in *Out of the Silent Planet*) was that a werewolf of this sort was a "binucleic man," with human and wolf nuclei in every cell, as well as a smaller supervisory-nucleus containing the necessary genetic material to control switching which one is dominant, and with some mechanism to put that under conscious control. While they had hoped to find a way to make moonlight trigger the transformation, they failed to find any way for the body to reliably distinguish moonlight from sunlight, starlight, and artifical light.
Because of the scientists' vision of faithful recreation of the legend, these werewolves are significantly faster and stronger than normal human beings in their unshifted form, but are violently allergic to any compound containing silver, and strongly (if not quite so strongly) allergic to any concentration of salt except their own tears and sweat. The scientists, being products of their time, thought of the legends' descriptions of an inability to enter consecrated ground or bear the touch of relics to be mere superstition and so did not even attempt to build those in. These werewolves are also somewhat more susceptible to damage from radiation.
When the villain steals their work, he at first does not take a careful enough look before he producing "specimens" to notice these weaknesses, and is not enough of a geneticist to correct them in any case.
What do you think? And is anyone else using werewolves in a science-fiction context?
