Chris points out a new article on Prospect.org which talks about the social impact of Clones, and comparisons to Lord of the Rings in several aspects:

In his recent American Prospect Online article, "Attack of the Metaphors," Matthew Nisbet lucidly explains why even though it shouldn't, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones will inevitably come to shape this nation's ongoing political debate about cloning. George Lucas's take on this technology, Nisbet argues, resonates with themes from Brave New World, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and other influential texts concerned with misuses of science, from The Island of Dr. Moreau to Jurassic Park. Besides Star Wars itself, perhaps the most recent work in this genre is Spider Man, yet another tale of hubris, science run amok, and unwise manipulations of nature -- specifically, the genetic engineering of spiders -- by human beings. There are any number of reasons, plot not the least of them, that modern science fiction and fantasy take up these motifs with such frequency. But here -- as the U.S. Senate's cloning debate fortuitously coincides with another Senate cloning debate contained within Attack of the Clones -- Idea Log would like to draw attention to one oft-neglected factor. When it comes to the relationship between the fantasy and sci-fi genres and worries about technology, there's a huge elephant in the room. So huge, in fact, that it's some half a million words long. The novel in question, in case you hadn't guessed, is J.R.R. Tolkien's 1954-55 fantasy romance The Lord of the Rings (LOTR).

Tolkien's impact on both science fiction and fantasy is immense. It's probably no exaggeration to say that the fantasy genre as we know it today, which encompasses hundreds of English language novels published each year -- many of them "Tolclones" -- wouldn't exist without him. As Jane Chance, a Tolkienist and English professor at Rice University, once put it to this writer, "He's not only the grandfather of 'Dungeons & Dragons,' but of the entire sci-fi fantasy genre as a popular phenomenon." Indeed, the greatest Tolclone of them all may be Harry Potter. The parallels between Rowling's "Wormtail" and Tolkien's "Wormtongue" -- or between her soulless, black-clad "Dementors" and Tolkien's "Ringwraiths" -- are only the most obvious ways that her books draw on LOTR.

Star Wars, too, contains countless echoes of The Lord of the Rings. Both texts, for example, feature the creation, through biotechnological (or magical) means, of a sinister army of dangerous warriors. In Lucas's story these are the clones, the brainchild of the devious Palpatine; in Tolkien's they are the fighting Uruk-Hai, spawned by the traitor, Saruman.

And Tolkien wasn't using this manipulation-of-nature theme merely to advance a plot. A kind of twentieth century William Blake, Tolkien despised and distrusted technology in most, if not all, of its forms. He gave up driving and refused to own a television, or use a washing machine. In a letter, he expressed his disgust with the modern world as follows: "There is only one bright spot ... and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations ... But it won't do any good, if it is not universal." It's no defamation to say that Tolkien was a full-fledged Luddite. And given his foundational influence on sci-fi and fantasy, as Attack of the Clones hits theaters it may be only fitting to bestow upon him a more grandiose title: Lord of the Luddites.