TruBlood and the All-American Vampire

Imagine that you are a vampire, dependent on human blood for nourishment. What would happen if an artificial replacement were available? That's the premise of HBO's new series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire mysteries:

Thanks to a Japanese scientist's invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures "coming out of the coffin." Religious leaders and government officials around the world have chosen their sides, but in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.

You can find out more about TruBlood, the "synthetic blood nourishment beverage" at TruBeverage.com, including which type is right for you. Apparently my beverage of choice would be Type A, a light and delicate brew "painstakingly imagined inducing an overall calmness." Yum!

Unfortunately the site doesn't reveal any secrets about TruBlood, other than that it contains "varied cellular content than actual blood", which isn't even grammatical. Fortunately, investigative site BloodCopy had a scientific analysis performed to determine its composition. It turns out to be a complex mixture of components that is consistent with actual blood.

True to the advertising, varied cell types were detectable once I had completed my staining protocol. All of the normally occurring formed elements were present excluding platelets. In addition, there were a few white blood cells that I couldn't easily identify leading me to think that these cells may be the product of incomplete blood formation from a lab grown tissue culture process. In experiments performed with laboratory tissue cultures, directed blood cell formation is frequently unable to produce the large cells called Megakaryocytes that break apart to form platelets. It may be that vampire healing mechanisms are so different from ours that clotting agents aren't required, allowing some easier to produce cell type that would fulfill the same nutritional niche to be substituted in place of the platelets.

The report concludes that "none of the contents of these samples comes directly from human or animal subjects", and suggests that the components are actually cultured cells and hormones and other substances secreted from genetically modified bacteria. Basically, it's blood that's been reconstituted from its component parts, rather than drained from an animal. I wonder if it will turn out to be real human blood, harvested from imprisoned blood donors (TruBlood is people!), or maybe I've just watched too much sci-fi horror.

Anyway, it's the added hormones that differentiate between the different flavors of TruBlood. The Type A formula that was recommended for me has high levels of melatonin and arginine, making me sleep better and improving my circulation, I suppose. Download the analysis (pdf)*

The in-depth report "Vampires in America" (below) has more. Watch it to learn more about TruBlood, vampire biology, sex, and organized anti-vampire organizations.

In Focus: Shedding The Light on Vampires in America (HBO)
by HBOclips

There is also a TrueBlood comic that gives the background for the series.
TrueBlood premieres on HBO on September 7.

* If you actually look at the report there is an odd figure that looks like a 3D representation of hemoglobin, with the protein subunits labeled "bacteria", "cow blood", "female vascular organ", and "HBOC" (hemoglobin based oxygen carrier). It doesn't make any sense at all. I suppose the artist saw those words in the report and thought "Ooh, sciency!"

(video via io9)
Tags:TruBlood, TrueBlood, vampires, synthetic blood

Is Cordwainer Smith's Future Today?

Science Fiction writer Cordwainer Smith (1913-1966) set his stories thousands of years in the future, when the Instrumentality of Mankind rules Earth and humans have servants - the Underpeople - created by genetically modifying animals. Wikipedia has a few more of the elements of Smith's future universe:

• the planet Norstrilia (Old North Australia), a semi-arid planet where an immortality drug called stroon is harvested from gigantic, virus-infected sheep each weighing more than 100 tons. Norstrilians are nominally the richest people in the galaxy and defend their immensely valuable stroon with sophisticated weapons [...]. However, extremely high taxes ensure that everyone on the planet lives a frugal, rural life, like the farmers of old Australia, to keep the Norstrilians tough.
• the punishment world of Shayol [...], where criminals are punished by the regrowth and harvesting of their organs for transplanting
• planoforming spacecraft, which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats to defend against the attacks of malevolent entities in space, who are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats, in "The Game of Rat and Dragon".
• the Underpeople, animals modified genetically into human form and intelligence to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the underpeople and grant them civil rights. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality.
• Habermans and their supervisors, Scanners, who are essential for space travel, but at the cost of having their sensory nerves cut to block the "pain of space", and who perceive only by vision and various life-support implants. A technological breakthrough removes the need for the treatment, but resistance among the Scanners to their perceived loss of status ensues, forming the basis of the story "Scanners Live in Vain".

The result is a richly imagined future shaped in part by advanced bioengineering technology. You can read number of Smith's short stories for free online:

• "Scanners Live in Vain" (as noted above, Scanners have their sensory nerves cut to to be able to survive the "pain of space")
• "Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons" (about the defense of Norstrilia)
  
• "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (a story of the dog girl D'joan)
• plus several others
  

The Cordwainer Smith Blog (maintained by his daughter Rosana Hart) is asking for tips on science news items that look like part of Smith's future:

Many things which Cordwainer Smith wrote about are happening now– animal cloning, for one So I have started a category of this blog called “It’s Happening Now,” and when you come across news items that remind you of something in a CS story, do come by and post a comment on this post with links if it was something online you found. Please comment on what bit of what story it reminds you of!

There's already one example up: use of rat brain cells to guide a robot which echos the laminated mouse brain computer in Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two". I'm trying to think of some good examples of my own.

Tags:Cordwainer Smith, biotechnology, genetic engineering

Where are the Brown Elves?

Author NK Jemisin has a column at Fantasy Magazine that asks "Why AREN’T there brown elves?" She points out that it would make sense for elves that are biological (as opposed to purely magical) to have some variation in skin tone:

Anyway, let’s just say we’re dealing with a separate species which evolved on an Earthlike world independently of/isolated from humankind. There’s no logical reason why such elves should come solely in the colors we see in 99% of fantasy, which are either really pale white or really dark black (e.g., the drow/trow). Neither extreme makes sense, except in a fairly small environmental niche — and the niches used often are nonsensical too, like Forgotten Realms’ take on the drow; they’re an underground species. Nearly every underground species on our planet lacks melanin because there’s no need for UV protection; so why are these drow black?

Elves are usually written as intelligent, adaptable beings. There’s no reason for them to be confined to a single geographic location once they develop seafaring skills or whatever. So theoretically they could spread as far and wide as humans have, and theoretically they’d have to cope with the same environmental changes. They wouldn’t necessarily cope in the same way (e.g., humans develop deeper chests at higher altitudes; maybe high-altitude elves would develop “air-enriching” magic) but I would expect to see some regional variation among them, unless they had magical teleportation devices and could bop around the globe to keep the gene pool uniform.

While I think it could be argued that some stories take place in a limited geographical area, making it not completely unreasonable that there would be a certain uniformity of appearance in the locals, many stories are much broader in scope. And it seems to me that it's just good world building to consider the evolution of your aliens, whether they are elves that coexist with humans or are natives of a distant planet.

Read her entire column for discussion of some of the elves in fiction that do show some variation.

Tags:elves, evolution, biology

Cycler

There’s a land mine exploding outward from my stomach and lower spine. I’m not supposed to wake up in the middle of things. All of this is supposed to happen while I sleep. I shove my hand beneath the sheets, praying, hoping the transformation is nearly complete, but when I reach lower, there it is–limp, smooth and insistent.

Jack.

He’s supposed to fade in the night and I’m supposed to wake up fully constructed. Instead, I have his thing to contend with and a deep ache that, now that I think of it, is not exploding outward but sucking inward like a vortex.

“I am all girl.”
~ Cycler, by Lauren McLaughlin

Lauren McLaughlin's new young adult novel Cycler is a teen comedy with a twist. Jill McTeague appears to be an ordinary high school student, but four days out of every month her body goes through a change: she turns into Jack, a biological boy. McLaughlin recently discussed her book's exploration of gender as part of The Big Idea series at Whatever.

What I hope to accomplish with Cycler, other than telling a sexy, thrilling and hilarious story, is to poke holes into everyone’s conception of gender, including my own. I want to destabilize the notion of gender as a stable category. Because it isn’t stable. Whatever feels right to you now will seem quaint and ridiculous to your great grandchildren. And that is exactly as it should be.

Cycler sounds like an interesting story. Read an excerpt.

My own favorite time-of-the-month tale is Suzy McKee Charnas' Hugo Award winning short story "Boobs", which captures some of the misery of puberty and adds the fantasy of being able to powerfully fight back against teasers and tormentors.

Tags:Lauren McLaughlin, Cycler

Highbrow Horror: The Fly The Opera

I imagine there are some closeted science fiction fans out there who are embarrassed to be seen holding a novel with a lurid cover or telling their coworkers about attending a horror film festival. If you are in the Los Angeles area, you can now have your B-movie-style entertainment and still tell your friends you spent Saturday night at the theater. All you have to do is buy tickets to The Fly The Opera, which will run at the LA Opera September 7-27.

This is a major production, with music composed by Howard Shore, who scored Lord of the Rings, libretto by David Henry Hwang, who won a Tony for his play M. Butterfly, conducted by Plácido Domingo, and directed by David Cronenberg, director of the 1986 movie version of The Fly. The opera retains the classic horror story of the original movie: a scientist decides to test a teleportation device on himself, but a fly is inadvertently trapped in the machine with him. The result is a monster created from the fusion of man and fly.

The opera premiered at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in July, to mixed reviews:

Eric Dahan of Libération said Mr. Shore had “perhaps overestimated his ability to write a lyric work,” while Christian Merlin wrote in Le Figaro that the production “confirmed that cinema and theater, above all opera, are two very different arts.”

In Le Monde, while praising the soloists, Renaud Machart described Mr. Shore’s score as that of “a moderately gifted pupil of Arnold Schoenberg.” He also lamented, somewhat oddly, that the movie’s gory close-ups of decomposing flesh could not be reproduced on stage.

Even if it doesn't live up to the best of theater or cinema, this "engrossing exploration of the physical and psychological transformation" would make for an interesting night at the opera.

Watch the show's podcast to learn more about the sound and look of the program.

Tags:The Fly, opera

Well, That Explains It

There's a post up at EUREKA unscripted that talks about where they get their nifty science ideas.

Well, first of all, we have our science advisor Kevin Grazier to help us out. Whenever we come up with another “out there” idea, we’ll ask Kevin to come up with actual science to help justify the concept. After a lot of hair pulling, the brilliant Kevin actually comes up with a way to make our silliness a practical, working sci-fi reality. Kevin also does a “fact check” of each script draft to make sure that we’re not violating too many laws of physics each week…

But Kevin’s not always around… and yes, we’re industrious little busy bodies. Which means, we do a lot of reading. And by “a lot” we mean… A LOT.

Yes, we’ll read any science book, magazine, or periodical we can get our hands on. For example, Supervising Producer Curtis Kheel is currently reading “Physics of the Impossible” by Michio Kaku as research for an upcoming episode. And Staff Writer Eric Wallace was recently seen digesting “Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries” by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

So, they have NASA planetary physicist Kevin Grazier as an advisor, and read popular science books about astronomy and physics. That may just help explain why the biology on Eureka is so bad. Of course I'm biased, but I think that the life sciences can generate just as many entertaining plot lines as physics can, and those stories deserve the same kind of scientific input that's given to robots and time travel.

(Yes, the post also says that they read Discover and other popular science magazines, but clearly their interest and focus is on physics.)

Tags:science fiction, biology, Eureka

Jurassic Park: Helpful or Harmful?

There's a bit of discussion going on at Laelaps on whether the three Jurassic Park movies (and a rumored 4th installment) are good or bad for science:

. . . I thought I would open up a thread on whether you think the Jurassic Park films have helped or hindered how people understand paleontology (both as a discipline and as the body of knowledge the discipline produces). Speaking for myself, I saw the first film when I was only 10, and it was simultaneously one of the most spectacular and frightening films I had ever seen. It really rekindled my interest in dinosaurs, and it helped me better imagine what all those bones would look like clothed in flesh and bone. I know others might have different impressions, though, so have at it in the comments.

The consensus seems to be that it's had a positive effect, if only for stimulating excitement about dinosaurs.

I also wanted an excuse to show this clip from the first Jurassic Park movie, which came out in 1993. That was right smack in the middle of my grad school years, and I remember being particularly entertained by the realistic-looking molecular biology lab equipment.

Do people still purify plasmid DNA using cesium chloride gradients stained with ethidium bromide? Even back in those days it seemed like purification column kits were gaining popularity. That's why a fictional lab based on today's cutting edge techniques will almost certainly start to look quaint 10 or 20 years from now.

Tags:Jurassic Park, paleontology

Plenty of Time if A Ship With an Infinite Improbability Drive Happened to Be Passing By

Eureka's Biosphere and Evolution GobbletyGook

After watching tonight's episode of Eureka* I realized that I had planned to post about the episode "What About Bob?", which was one of the show's few biology-based episodes. The premise of the episode was pretty straightforward: one of the scientists - Bob - living in the enormous sealed biosphere under Global Dynamics has vanished, and Sheriff Carter has to enter the sealed ecosystem to figure out what happened to him.

In an interview with Monsters and Critics at the end of July, Eureka writer and producer Jaime Paglia notes that there was a personal inspiration for the biosphere plot line:

I think you might remember the Biosphere 2 project that was out there in Arizona and he was - my dad's a scientist, a medical doctor. And he was one of the primary consultants on that. So we have an episode that's about what does a biosphere in Eureka look like and what happens if some you have a missing persons case inside of the closed biosphere.

Biosphere 2 was originally built to research and develop closed ecosystem technology for long term space exploration. The enclosed sealed structure had far more varied flora and fauna than the surrounding Arizona desert:

Inside was a rainforest, an 850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, a 450 square meter mangrove wetlands, a 1900 square meter savannah grassland, a 1400 square meter fog desert, a 2500 square meter agricultural system, a human habitat with living quarters and office, and a below-ground level technical facility. Heating and cooling water circulated through independent piping systems, and electrical power was supplied from a natural gas energy center through airtight penetrations.

The system apparently suffered from unexpected fluctuations in carbon dioxide and oxygen levels during its first (and only complete) mission. There apparently was much personal conflict within the project, exacerbated by low oxygen levels and a calorie restricted diet.

I thought that the biosphere element of "What About Bob?" was pretty nifty. Sure, it's implausible that such a structure could be created underground (and that they would allow someone from outside to enter, even with a very thorough scrubbing) but it's well within the norms of the fantasy science of the show. And they got the interpersonal conflict bit right. The problem I had with the episode was with explanation of what happened to poor Bob.

You see, Bob was working on a genetic engineering project that unfortunately went wrong and ended up turning him into a sort of snake man. At EUREKA unscripted the writers explain their inspiration:

And just how did we settle on our snake man? One of our main inspirations for a story involving human mutagenics was David Cronenberg’s brilliant movie, THE FLY. Of course, we also love comic books and comic book movies, so The Lizard, one of SPIDER-MAN’s grooviest villains, also inspired us.

So Bob's a monster-of-the-week. Unlike The Lizard, he didn't ingest a serum developed from reptile DNA to stimulate limb regrowth, and unlike the scientist in The Fly, he didn't accidentally become melded with a fly in a tragic teleporter accident. Instead, he's turning into a snake as an unexpected side effect of "mutagenic wavelengths" of light that alter the biosystem's water supply.

That wouldn't have bugged me (much) if they hadn't turned to awful Star Trek science for the "technical" explanation. I'm thinking specifically of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Genesis", where, by a very unlikely series of events, a disease emerges that activates "dormant genes" and "latent introns". The result is that the crew of the Enterprise "de-evolves" into other animals: Lieutenant Barclay becomes a spider, Worf turns into a reptile, and Captain Picard into a lemur. The whole thing makes no sense at all from a biological perspective. Humans don't have a bunch of "reptile" genes that became "dormant" during evolution. Instead, many evolutionary changes are likely due to differences in gene expression during embryonic development (see "What is Evo-Devo?" and "Regulating Evolution: How Gene Switches Make Life"). While babies are occasionally born with atavistic anatomical characteristics, such as tails, that doesn't mean they have turned into monkeys.

But let's say genes could be activated in a pattern more reminiscent of our ancestral forms. Doing so in an adult wouldn't change a human into another animal - although it might cause a tumor. And even if it were possible to "de-evolve", humans wouldn't turn into spiders or snakes, because those animals are not our ancestors. Basically, the idea of "de-evolution into other animals" is really bad biology - and that's unfortunately the explanation for Bob's reptilian condition. As mathematician and all-around-science-guy Nathan Stark explains, it's "evolution in reverse" caused by the activation of his "dormant reptile DNA" that caused his change into a snake-man. I would have liked it better if Bob had been hit with a super form of Ichthiosis vulgaris, as suggested by Allison Blake, or maybe a mutated bioengineered retrovirus. At least those would have been a bit plausible.**

Watch the Eureka episode "What About Bob?" at Hulu.com.

* Note to Eureka's producers: tonight's episode had way too much advertising of Degree super-duper antiperspirant for men. When the ads came up - again - during the second commercial break, we almost changed the channel. And next week I'll probably tape it so I can fast-forward through the ads. It's not like I can miss the product placement during the show, anyway.

** The physics on Eureka is probably just as terrible as the biology, but I just don't care about that as much.

Image: "Bob" in a non-menancing moment, from EUREKA unscripted.

Tags:science fiction, Eureka, evolution

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: August 16 Edition

Here are some biology in science fiction bits from the past couple of weeks.

Written Word

The Philadelphia Inquirer talks to Dorothy Hearst about her new fantasy novel Promise of the Wolves:

Hearst is no scientist; she's a fiction writer. But her debut fantasy novel, Promise of the Wolves, draws on research that suggests humans and canines (first wolves, then dogs) have a long, shared history.

"The book is based quite a bit on the theory of co-evolution," Hearst said, "which is the idea that wolves and later dogs are what made us the dominant species on the planet - that we evolved because of them, and they evolved because of us."

Like much of science these days, that theory is contentious. But it's been widely reported and discussed in the last couple of years, with some researchers asserting that humans grew stronger by taming wolves, then hunting with them. In turn, wolves began to look less like themselves and more like dogs as selective breeding for certain characteristics also gave rise to changes in the animals' appearance. In short, Hearst said: "We made dogs and dogs made us. Some of the genetic [research] is fairly controversial, but there is some evidence that wolves and humans have been together for 150,000 years - and other evidence that suggests it could have happened before we were even fully human."

The Guardian profiled John Wyndham, author of Day of the Triffids.

Although Wyndham was writing at the height of the cold war, his anticipation of the rise of genetic engineering means that the story remains just as relevant - and terrifying - today. Wyndham was also redefining the science fiction genre. Up until the late 1940s, sci-fi was almost exclusively set in space and involved what Wyndham himself described as "the adventures of galactic gangsters". By choosing instead to write about situations that were rational extensions of the present day, Wyndham pioneered a form of sci-fi that he labelled "logical fantasy" but which is widely known now as "speculative fiction".

I'm not sure I agree with their definition of speculative fiction, which I think of as including space opera as well as mundane science fiction, high fantasy and lots in between.

Television

Paul Levinson's The Genesis Virus has been turned into a TV series pilot.

Primeval debuted on BBC-America last Saturday night in the US. I enjoyed it. So did Annalee Newitz at io9.

Movies

At SFGate Peter Hartlaub lists his "favorite science movies of all time" - and by "science movies" he means science fiction, comedy or drama that features science themes.

The "classic" B-movie The Wasp Woman is now available as a DVD download from EZTakes.com.

Janice Starlin, purveyor of her own line of cosmetics, finds herself nearing middle-age (in a time when 38 was the new 94). A stranger with an accent and an unnatural love of wasps enters her life and promises her the elixir that will prolong her youth forever - until the wasp becomes the wasped.

io9 reports on the so-bad-its-funny movie based on the novel The Possibility of an Island and made by its author Michel Houellebecq, which is "a sci-fi movie about cloning, weird religious sects and human life after the apocalypse" that apparently includes a slapstick bikini contest.

Weird and Cool Bioscience

At Wired Science Brendan Keim reports on "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies", a report compiled for the Department of Defense which evaluates the military potential of "brain science", including mind reading, various forms of cognitive enhancement, mind control and brain-machine interfaces.

Greg Laden reports on recent experiments in which a "blog of rat brain cells" was used to steer a robot that navigates via sonar.

There is the strange story of Bernann McKinney who spent tens of thousands of dollars having her pitbull Booger cloned by Korean scientists. In a very bizarre twist, McKinney may actually be a fugitive from justice in the UK.

Kwabena Boahen gives a TED talk about "Making a computer that works like the brain"

Weird Universe points out a breakthrough in organ transplants from animals to humans: a new chemical treatment process that strips the organ down to its scaffolding, and allows the transplant patient's own cells to fill in the holes.

Parasitic Plants Steal RNA, Spy on Their Hosts

There are viral parasites that attack other viruses "hijacking its genetic machinery and making copies of its victim's DNA".

The Knight Science Journalism Tracker takes a look at a US News & World Report article about human evolution and genetic engineering.

Wired reports on "galactic panspermia", which suggests that space might be teeming with microbial life.

Metafilter discusses Mike the Headless Chicken, who lived for 18 months after having most of it's head chopped off.

Neurophilosophy takes a look at kuru, the human prion disease that spread by ritual cannibalism.

Tags:science fiction, biology

A Scientist on Science Fiction

At Big Think Dr. Shelly Ann des Etages, a senior principal scientist at pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, talks about science fiction, scientific possibilities, and what the Doctor would do on her episode of Dr. Who.

des Etages also plugs Writer's Block, which "exists to support the growth and advancement of aspiring and published, youth and adult, African-American writers of all genres and to promote African-American literature, authors, and literary events."

(via Tobias Buckell)

Tags:science fiction, Dr. Who, Science in science fiction

A Field Guide to Surreal Botany

The world of surreal botany has long remained hidden – since the 18th Century, this field of study was often derided even by trailblazing naturalists such as Carolus Linnaeus and Joseph Banks.
[ . . . snip . . .]
The publishers of this book believe that the time for remaining ignorant of surreal botany has come to an end. Personal safety alone would justify the information on some of these specimens coming to light, and readers will surely apreciate learning of the plants whose threats are lesser, or that are disappearing as the plants them-selves become more rare. this book may be read and appreciated by gardening enthusiasts, paranormal investigtors, and conspiracy theorists alike.
~ From the Introduction to The Field Guide to Surreal Botany

While most of the science I blog about here is often on the cutting edge of biology - cloning, genetic engineering, synthetic biology - I also have a love for old-fashioned natural history illustration. While modern nature illustrations meld the artistic with the scientific, such drawings from the 16th century and earlier are often based on the artist's imagination rather than actual observations of plants and animals. But what if such fantastic flora actually existed? A Field Guide to Surreal Botany would be the catalog of those plants.

The guide is a compilation of 48 entries from different authors, all beautifully illustrated with watercolors by fantasy artist Janet Chui. The entries range from the somewhat silly - Couch Kelp Siturfatarscea velvetorleva monthlypaymentis (Stainresistaceae), for example - to the utterly fantastic. In the latter category I would place the Twilight Luon-Siber (Russica spectrata)* which has violet, grey and lavender blossoms:

Each flower has an "abyss probability" center, appearing black or colorless, where the forces of probability are most pronounced and neither stamen nor pistil are present due to inability to settle into a fixed physical shape. In the fading last moment of corporealis, the abyss probability black void momentarily glimmers with brilliant gold pinpoints of light as the light energy finally escapes, reaching visible light velocity.

There are also Dream Melons that "play a vital role in the ecology of mirages in Arabian deserts", Bone Garden that "looks like a small human ribcage", and Time Cactus that reproduces by forming a narrow wormhole anchored at one end at the time of germination and the other anchored in the present.

As to be expected with an anthology, I find some of the entries more compelling than others. However, overall it's an enjoyable book both to read and look at.

The Field Guide to Surreal Botany was edited by Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg, and published by Two Cranes Press. You can order a copy through the official web site.

This post is part of Blog About Surreal Botany Day

* Contributed by Vera Nazarian, whose short story "The Story of Love" was on the 2007 Nebula final ballot.

(via Post-Weird Thoughts)

Tags:Field Guide to Surreal Botany

Seeds of Change

I think that one of the things that science fiction can do well is provide fresh and thought-provoking insight into current social and political issues. Seeds of Change is a new anthology edited by John Joseph Adams that focuses on those sorts of stories:

Gathering stories by nine of today’s most incisive minds, Seeds of Change confronts the pivotal issues facing our society today: racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. Many serve as a call to action. How will you change with the future?

Authors include Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLoed, K.D. Wentworth, Jeremiah Tolbert, Mark Budz, Ted Kosmatka, Blake Charlton, Jay Lake and Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. The selections I've read (freely available on the Seeds of Change web site) are thought provoking without sacrificing the entertainment value of the story.

Several of the stories have biological themes:

• "N-Words" by Ted Kosmatka is a story about racism. What makes it SF is that the race in question are newly resurrected Neanderthals.
• Read an excerpt of "N-Words"
• Read Kosmatka's afterword, in which he discusses science and race and some of the biology relevant to his story
• "Endosymbiont" by Blake Charlton (who is a medical student) was inspired by his father's struggle with cancer. Charlton commented: "As the national debate about health care reform continues to gather steam, I hope ‘Endosymbiont’ makes people think about what it’s like to struggle with disease, about what exactly defines a human-being neurologically, and about what we—as individuals and as a society—might do to alleviate the burden of disease."
• Read an excerpt of "Endosymbiont"
• Read the interview with Charlton about the origins of "Endosymbiont"
• Further reading related to the story
• In "Arties Aren't Stupid" by Jeremiah Tolbert street artists work with cells rather than pain.
• Read "Arties Aren't Stupid"

And, of course there is a trailer:

Download the free stories and excerpts in PDF, HTML or Mobipocket format.
Purchase Seeds of Change at Amazon.com (affiliate lnk)

"I Have Seen the Future and It's All in the Genes"

The winner of the 2008 Science Writer Award (sponsored by The Daily Telegraph, Bayer, and The Royal Society) in the 20-28 year old category was Imperial College biochemistry graduate Erika Cule, for her near future tale of genetic sequencing.

Read her winning entry: "I have seen the future and it's all in the genes"

In an interview with the Imperial College news department, she says that she was trying to write something that would be interesting to those who don't do much reading about science.

I wanted to write an essay which was accessible and I was really pleased when friends of mine, who never normally read anything scientific, said they had read it and enjoyed it. Big influences on me include Craig Ventor’s biography and Nature Futures, the science-fiction writing forum.

She herself is involved in research that sounds pretty science fictional:

I am currently a member of Imperial College’s iGEM team, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which attracts teams from around the world to spend the summer working in the field of synthetic biology to design a functional biological machine.

Our team is engineering the bacterium Bacillus subtilis into a biological printer that will synthesise three dimensional objects.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear more about the Imperial College team after the iGEM Jamboree in November.

Read more about Imperial College's "Bioprinter subtilis".

Tags:science fiction, genomics, science writing

The Science of Star Wars: Clones, The Force and a Galaxy of Humanoids

Scientific American has a series of articles in this month's issue that focus on the science of the Star Wars universe, presumably as part of the lead up to the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars . SciAm interviewed Jeanne Cavelos, author of The Science of Star Wars: An Astrophysicist's Independent Examination of Space Travel, Aliens, Planets, and Robots as Portrayed in the Star Wars Films and Books*, to get an update on how the science in the series has fared since her book was originally published in 1999.

Not surprisingly, she talks about cloning, of which she has an optimistic view:

We have cloned many different animals at this point—cats, dogs, sheep—and there is very little holding us back from cloning humans except ethics and law. It's entirely conceivable that we will see humans cloned for medical or reproductive purposes in the coming decades. The link between genes and behavior has also become much better understood in recent years, and like the Imperial armies in Star Wars, human clones could probably be genetically altered to be obedient and programmable. One area of Star Wars cloning technology that is not very realistic according to today's science is the limited amount of time the clones have to grow and learn. Nevertheless, cloning technology is something in Star Wars that we will be seeing more of soon.

And she also has an explanation for all those human-shaped aliens in that far far away galaxy:

It seems that the human species, or whatever its equivalent is in that faraway galaxy, either colonized all these worlds or was genetically "seeded" on many planets. This species became dominant somehow. It's unlikely though that one species could live on so many planets without some kind of respiratory assistance. Each atmosphere is a quirky mixture of ingredients found only on that planet; you wouldn't have the same mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide as we do.

That's a pretty similar idea to the ancient humanoids that seeded our own galaxy in the Star Trek universe. Her ideas about how The Force works are necessarily more speculative, since it's pretty much indistinguishable from magic.

The best chance we have of explaining The Force is through the midi-chlorians, which were introduced in the new trilogy. Lucas explains these midi-chlorians as organisms that live within our cells and allow us to feel The Force. The element that seems scientifically based here is the sensing of someone strong in The Force. You can compare this to creatures living in water that generate small electrical fields. Some fish generate these fields, and these can sense when other fish come into these fields as well as the strength of the field put out by the approaching fish.

Or maybe The Force is similar to magnetism. Birds sense magnetic fields with cells in their beaks and eyes, called cryptochromes. Birds may actually "see" the magnetic field, so you can imagine a similar kind of thing happening in Star Wars. If Darth Vader is standing in the next room, maybe you can see the emissions of The Force like a magnetic aura around him.

Read the whole interview for more on the science of robots, space travel, light sabers, exoplanets and aliens.

You can also read several excerpts from her book, The Science of Star Wars:

• R2-D2 and C-3PO: Do Droids Dream of Electric Sheep? looks at the possibility - and possible necessity - of giving robots emotions and personalities.
• Darth Vader: The Six-Million-Dollar Sith speculates about Anakin Skywalker's lava-induced injuries and the prosthetic parts that allow him to live on as Darth Vader (note that some of the questions raised were answered in Revenge of the Sith)
• Might a Sarlacc Really Take a Thousand Years to Digest its Prey? In case you've forgotten, a sarlacc is a very big radially symmetrical desert creature that creates a teeth-lined pit.
  

Related post: Star Wars and the Midi-Chlorian Menace
Image: Young clones in training from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Tags:Star Wars, biology

Tools For Getting Cutting Edge Information in Biosciences

Here are a couple of new web sites (at least new to me) that can be useful if you are researching topics in the biological sciences:

VADLO is a web search engine for biologists. Particularly useful is the PowerPoint search, which can help you find presentations on the area of research you are interested in. It also has a daily cartoon called "Life in Research". This one, for example, reveals the truth about life on Earth.

NextBio is also a bioscience search engine that aggregates information from a number of different databases, including clinical trials.

Both VADLO and NextBio are designed for scientists who want highly technical information. The search results are likely more detailed than the information a semicasual seeker is looking for.

If what you want is a general overview, Seed Magazines Cribsheets might just be what you are looking for. Here are the bioscience ones currently available:

• Cribsheet #16: Synthetic Biology
• Cribsheet #14: Exoplanets ("...discusses "habitable zones," regions of space around a star where life as we know it can exist, and tracks our progress in the search for other Earth-like planets.")
• Cribsheet #12: Genetics
• Cribsheet #10: Photosynthesis
• Cribsheet #7: Extinction
• Cribsheet #1: Stem Cells
  

Tags:reference, biology

How Aliens Work

At How Stuff Works Craig Freudenrich has put together a primer on "How Aliens Work". He lays out the ground rules for alien physiology:

1. "Alien life would be governed by laws of physics and chemistry."
2. "Alien life would be based on some type of chemistry (eliminating the sci-fi concept of pure-energy beings)." What type of chemistry will be determined by the environment, including the available solvent (such as water or methane), temperature, pressure, available energy sources, and the presence of complex molecules, especially an "informational molecule" like DNA.
3. Aliens larger than microbes would have some equivalent of cells. "We would not expect to find a light-years wide, single-celled organism like that portrayed in the original Star Trek episode "The Immunity Syndrome.""
4. "Organ systems would be adapted to environmental conditions such as temperature, moisture and gravity"
5. "Alien organisms would probably have similar ecological structures to life on Earth."

And the most important take home message?

As you can see, life of any kind is intimately tied to its environment, so the characteristics of the planet would be extremely important in determining the characteristics of the life form.

Read the full article for all the details.

(via The World in the Satin Bag)

Image: Creatures like the gargantuan Space Amoeba from the Star Trek ToS Episode "The Immunity Syndrome" probably don't exist.
Tags:science fiction, biology, aliens

B Movies and Bad Science @ The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

If you are going to be in or near downtown L.A. tomorrow afternoon, you might want to check out the "B Movies and Bad Science" film festival at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Join members from the Museum's history and science staff for a light-hearted exploration of the “science” behind some of Hollywood's creature features. You will discover what makes these creatures and plots implausible in reality, and get to see some of their “real life” counterparts in the Museum's collection. In “Tarantula” (1955), the title's antagonist embarks on a zealous feeding frenzy – but NHM entomologist Brent “the Bug Guy” Karner will calm the audience's nerves.

More details:
Date: Sunday, August 10, 2008
Time: 2:00 PM
Place: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007
Cost: Free

The program, which is being put on by the museum's Entomology Department, continues on continues on August 24.

"In “Them” (1954), giant ants run wild in the Southwest, then move to the L.A. sewer system for a climactic battle royale. Entomology Curator Brian Brown is on hand to talk about ants and other insects."

And, of course you should check out the other exhibits at the museum while you are there.

(If you want to look smart before you go, read Michael C. LaBarbera's The Biology of B-Movie Monsters first.)

Tags:science fiction, B movies

Update: Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge

Last month I posted about Mike Resnick's award-winning novella "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge". At the time, Subterranean Press has only placed the first two segments - or "views" - online. Now the entire story, which follows the primates at the Tanzanian gorge, which is sometimes called the "cradle of mankind", from the "tailless monkeys" of 3 million years ago, through the research of the Leakeys and 22nd century tourists on safari for the last remnants of wild fauna to man's abandonment of a toxic and polluted earth. Through it all man is violent and short sighted - and reaching towards the stars.

Read "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge" at Subterranean Press.
Original Post: Mike Resnick: Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge

Tags:Michael Resnick, anthropology

Jurassic Park ruined paleontology?

Tags:Jurassic Park, paleontology

Tropes in Speculative Fiction

Television Tropes & Idioms is a wiki that focuses on common tropes ("story components or elements which have become standardized through decades (or more) of use") in television, movies, novels, and comic books. It's got a great long list of speculative fiction tropes - and the entries don't just describe the trope, some also explain why the trope is wrong. Here are snippets from a few of their biology-related entries:

• The Adam and Eve Plot: only two members of a race remain to repopulate their species. The problem?
  

  This, of course, ignores real population genetics. A certain minimum number of genetically divergent individuals are needed in a gene pool to maintain a healthy genetic diversity. For humans it is somewhere between 150 and 160. You usually won't find this in direct siblings. More casually, this results in the unspoken implication that said newly propagated species does not have a problem with incest.

• Bizarre Alien Biology: while aliens are humanoid on the outside, their totally different f on the inside
• Brain in a Jar: pretty much what it sounds like
• Cloning Blues: it's not easy being a mere copy
• Evilutionary Biologist: "Some evil mad scientists use their twisted intellect solely for personal gain. This particular villain is not so provincial. His genius and his motives go hand in hand, and his concerns are (he thinks) with the welfare of the human species. Simply put, to the Evilutionary Biologist, humanity is stuck in an evolutionary rut, and it's up to him to put us back on the proper path so we can continue to evolve."
• Evolutionary Levels: Yes, there's evolution in SF, but it's usually depicted incorrectly.
  

  One popular misconception seems to be how the entirety of evolution is preprogrammed, past and future. Evolutionary states that don't exist yet are just waiting in human DNA to be triggered by rather simple means, as opposed to the culmination of little changes brought on by passing down genes over hundreds of generations. Likewise, it's easy to "regress" in evolution. A Mad Scientist or a Negative Space Wedgie for example, can hit humans with rays that will turn them into Neanderthals or monkeys, regardless of the fact that humans evolved from neither. (If they made an effort, this could work, because there is a remotely linear progression of common ancestors for species. So close, and yet, so dumb.)

  Not to mention the love of Lamarckian-style evolution that's caused by environmental change, evolution that affects entire populations simultaneously, and future humans with gigantic heads. And that's how you get Mutants with a capital M.
  
• Genetic Engineering is the New Nuke: in the old days superpowers were created by radiation. Today, genetic engineering does the job.
• Genetic Memories: our genes store the memories of our ancestors
• Half Human Hybrids: despite bizarre alien biology, humans interbreed with a variety of other species. See also No Biochemical Barriers.
  
• Soylent Soy: in the future meat is very scarce . . .
  

Be sure to look at their list of "Applied Phlebotinum" and "Hollywood Science" tropes too.

(via The World in the Satin Bag)

Tags:science fiction, biology, tropes

Frankenstein's Dog and Stem Cells

Apparently (fictional) scientist and physician Dana Scully doesn't keep up with the medical literature or know how to use PubMed - at least that's the implication of the new X-Files Movie I Want to Believe. She also isn't too big on medical ethics, either. As the Wired Science blog reports, in the movie Scully is trying to find a treatment for a boy with an "incurable" neurological disease:

When nothing works, she turns to -- i.e., Googles -- stem cells. She gives no details, even to other doctors, and we don't even know whether the cells are adult or embryonic (though given her locale [a Catholic hospital], I'll hazard a guess). A helpful montage of official-looking research documents informs us that it's all "highly experimental."

Over the objections of a lugubrious hospital administrator and, ultimately, they boy's parents, Scully goes ahead with the treatment, which involves injecting the cells -- a pinkish goo in a syringe labeled, "stem cells" -- into the boy's brain. (Who knew that she was a regenerative medicine specialist? Or that doctors can apparently have "highly experimental" stem cell therapies FedExed overnight?)

And it's even weirder. When she's a-Googlin' stem cells one of the results is some old Russian research involving the amputation and reattachment of dogs' heads, which has basically nothing to do with stem cells. And, of course that's a breakthrough for the case she and Mulder are investigating. As Merideth Woerner at io9 puts it:

Seeing these pictures makes her believe that [the crimes she and Mulder are investigating don't involve] a black market operation but a Dr. Frankenstein lab. She pieces this together from google? Isn't she a doctor? Wouldn't she know a little more about stem cell research? How did amputated dog heads pop up in that google search? And why is that where she goes with this discovery, erroneous.

They do finally discover the "Frankenstein lab" where black market body parts are being used to make horrible patched-together monsters. So Scully's random discovery while Googling solved the case! Yeah, doesn't sound too reality based.

Maybe it's not really so bad in the movie, but I don't think I want to spend $10 to find out. I'll probably watch when it comes out on video.

Anyway here's a video (via io9) showing a 1940s-era Russian experiment in keeping a severed dog's head alive. The first part is animated, but then it goes into an actual experiment, so some of you might find it disturbing.


The clip is from a longer film in the Prelinger Archives: Experiments in the Revival of Organisms. Some people have argued that it was actually faked as Communist propaganda. Even if the film itself was staged, the experiments were actually carried out by Sergei Bryukhonenko, who pioneered open heart surgery in the Soviet Union.

Bryukhonenko and his research has made its mark on Russian science fiction. He was the inspiration for "Professor Dowell", a scientist in Alexander Beliaev's 1979 science fiction novel The Head of Professor Dowell, who, like Bryukhonenko, was able to sustain the life of a severed dog's head for several hours. That, in turn, was the basis for the Russian B-movie Professor Dowell's Testament.

There's more about experimental resuscitation and science fiction at WFMU's Beware of the Blog. And, of course Wikipedia has a whole page on head transplants, fact and fiction.

Maybe next time she's looking for medical research information Scully should just skip Google and head to Wikipedia. It's certainly more entertaining than PubMed!

Tags:science fiction, X-files, severed heads, resuscitation

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: August 2 Edition

Here are some of the biology in science fiction-related posts I've been reading the past couple of weeks:

Written Word

Robert J. Sawyer writes about the genesis of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy.

Pod People reviews the new novel by David Louis Edelman, MultiReal:

[. . .] the book is full of Big Ideas, in the best tradition of science fiction. Hundreds of years after the Autonomous Revolt, an attempt by artificial intelligences to take over the world, humans have rebuilt society and use “bio-logics,” programs which run in the human body, to interact with the world. Natch, an entrepreneur and programmer, has helped develop a radical new technology. This technology, called MultiReal, allows users to manipulate virtual computer networks in such a way as to gain vast powers. They can literally think rings around any human opponent.

io9 lists novels picked by writers Jeff Hecht, Steven Popkes, Robert J Sawyer, Ian Randal Strock and Michael A. Burstein that explore why we seem to be alone in the universe (aka the Fermi paradox).

Movies

Bloody Disgusting tells you how you can download sample tracks from the upcoming sci-fi horror musical movie Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Dr. Who writer Steven Moffat was interviewed by Tor and explained that clones don't always turn out to be cool:

“When you first saw Star Wars, and that really exciting moment where they were--when Obi Wan Kenobi said “Aaaaah, the Clone Wars...” and your little child brain went “Whoa, that must be fantastic, there’s millions of clones, all identical, they were grown in vats... there’s new clones, old clones, clones falling from trees--brilliant!” Then they showed us, and it was a bunch of meetings... You can’t ever live up to something like that, can you? Some things are best being myths, and [the time war] has become a new part of the myth”.

Shock Till You Drop reports that there are plans for a prequel to I Am Legend and io9 has a poll asking readers what they think the plot should be. I'm voting for Will Smith as House.

io9 also takes a look at the new X-Files movie, and the surprising need of Dr. Scully to Google stem cell research - and the "Frankenstein" research she uncovers.

Television

James at Science, society, and stuff... writes about Dr. Who and the disappearnce of honey bees.

Cool Science

Damn Interesting takes a look at what really happens when a human is exposed to space.

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy explains why there are no green stars. Yes, it has a bit to do with our biology, namely how we see color.

Scientific American interviewed Ian Wilmut - creator of Dolly the cloned sheep - about reproductive cloning (he thinks it should be banned for use in humans) and embryonic stem cells.

Weird Universe links to news that "brain wave science" is being used to convict murder suspects in India.

At Pharyngula PZ Myers has an interesting post about the sometimes confusing field of epigenetics. And ERV explains why you should eat broccoli (epigenetics!).

Razib an Gene Expression writes about the difficulties in making a perfect baby by genetic engineering.

TEDBlog reports on a new body armor under development that's inspired by the layors of scales on the African fish Polypterus senegalus.

Wired Science reports on a suggestion by NASA scientists that we should create an experimental plant habitat on the moon to examine the effects of low gravity, temperature, pressure and high radiation on their gene expression..

Tags:science fiction, biology

Craig Venter's Not Impressed With Biology in Science Fiction

Craig Venter rides the cutting edge of molecular biology, from his race to sequence the human genome faster, better and cheaper than the official Human Genome Project to leading the scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute who are working to engineer microorganisms to produce alternative fuels, not to mention his efforts in patent the first human-built lifeform, Mycoplasma laboratorium. If anyone would have an understanding of whether the bioscience in science fiction is plausible, he would. And it turns out he's not too impressed.

Carl Zimmer attended Venter's talk this week at the Oxonian Society in New York. He reports:

One questioner asked what was being done to make sure that no one went off and used synthetic biology for evil purposes, and mentioned the sci-fi clunker The Island, in which cloned humans are raised for body parts. Venter mentioned–in passive voice, of course–the offer of islands where he could do his research unpestered. We were all left, of course, with an image of Venter mysteriously at work out in the Carribean–perhaps doing his best impression of Dr. Moreau?

Actually, Venter doesn’t much like science fiction. When people asked about the ethics of cloning, he complained that people bring science fiction plots to the problem, imaginging things like armies of killer clones, destroying everything that came across their zombie-like march. He pointed out that the clones would be no more similar to one another than twins. In fact, he said, the problem isn’t that scientists are too wild in their ambitions. The problem is that they’re boring.

The reality is that there are few "mad scientists" out there. But what about Venter himself? His projects certainly are ambitious. But he's not really "mad" - read Zimmer's article to learn what Venter said about some of the limitations of human genetics and genomics. Also, Venter doesn't appear to be preparing to take over the world . . .

Tags:science fiction, Craig Venter