In a democracy, are there any reasons to fear the horror-scenarios of our biotech-future ?

I am listening three audiobooks by Dean Koontz. The books are called Frankenstein (apparently there’s no copyright on that name), and I bought them based on a recommendation from Mary Meets Dolly. In her blogpost she makes the point that the books are about transhumanism. Of this I am not so sure. The story is about how Frankenstein, still alive and going strong, is making enhanced humans to replace the existing, and in his eyes flawed, human race. Consequently, the story distinguishes itself from transhumanist thinking. Transhumanism is not about replacing anything and it is certainly not about diminishing the value of life. On the contrary, transhumanism is about valuing all life equally, even to the extent that entities harboring artificial intelligence is considered to have equal value to any biological life form. My self-declared transhumanist values gives anyone (and hopefully everyone) the right to enhance their own life as they wish. It is essential that a choice to do such enhancement is a free one. If these choices are forced, we are not talking about transhumanism anymore, we are talking about tyranny.

It struck me that all these scenarios of a future dominated by improved humans are all based on some crazy person dictating their view of “the correct human nature”. I wish someone would write a book on how genetic sorting and human improvements would play out in a modern democratic society with respect for individual rights and freedom of choice. Now that would be interesting to read. It would also give us a literary reference a lot more useful than the horror-scenarios everyone is using today, when discussing genetic engineering and human enhancement.