The Unselfish Gene of the novel is a nod to Richard Dawkins' 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene". Among the concepts developed in Dawkins' book is a theory of how natural selection may favor self-sacrifice and other forms of altruism. The themes of altruism and small gene sets play an important role in plot and character development in The Unselfish Gene. The Unselfish Gene is what might be termed "semi-hard" science fiction. The technology described in the book is well within the limits of early 21st century technology. Some of it, such as "The Anita", an atomic-bomb powered heavy lifter space ship, was actually
Gene-centered view of evolution organisms containing the same allele (kin altruism and green-beard effects), or even its own propagation relative to the other genes within the same organism (selfish genes and intragenomic conflict). The gene-centered perspective can be traced to the philosopher Henri Bergson who wrote, in his book, ‘Creative Evolution’ (1907): ‘Life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism. It is as if the organism itself were only an excrescence, a bud caused to sprout by the former endeavouring to continue itself in a new germ’. The gene-centered view of evolution is a model