Science & SF Tidbits: Oct. 31: Happy Halloween!

A few more spooky biology links for Halloween:

• Plants are Cool, Too! Halloween Special (YouTube)

Even plants can be scary - especially when they live on the flesh of innocent bugs. Biology professor Chris Martine gives a tour of some of the less animal friendly plants out there. Feed me Seymour!

• Bad Moon Rising: The Science of Werewolves >> Cocktail Party Physics

Hypertrichosis or excessive hair growth, plus a psychiatric condition known as lycanthropa, may have inspired werewolf folk tales.  I wonder how many disturbed or very hairy people were persecuted for their conditions.

• 13 Horrifying Ways to Die (Arthropod Edition) >> Compound Eye

Some fantastic photos of the terrible ways insects die, from being hunted by packs of determined ants to zombie fungus infecting your brain. Not a nice way to go amongst them.

Image: 1648 portrait of Petrus Gonsalvus, the first documented case of hypertrichosis. Three of his children also had this condition. (Public Domain)

If Trees Could Talk: No Lorax Necessary

I have a new post up at Science in My Fiction about talking trees.

Read "No Lorax Necessary"

Image: “A Criminal Lead By Three Watchmen”, an illustration from Baron Ludvig Holberg’s 1741 novel Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground, involving a visit to the Planet Nazar, which is inhabited by walking and talking trees

More Pandoran Biology

Now that Avatar has won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture and there is buzz that it could take top honors at the Oscars, I figured a round up of links about Pandoran biology would be timely:

• Darren Naish has written up the Tet Zoo Guide to the Creatures of Avatar

A lot of thought and time obviously went into the design of Pandora's ecosystem and creatures. In part, I'd say that this was a success: a lot of people (even many not that interested in the natural world) have been very much taken in by the movie's xenobiology - if only this inspired them to become interested in, and passionate about, the biology and ecology of the real world.

 Read his spoilery speculations on the biology of Avatar's creatures.

• io9 interviewed some of the designers who worked on Avatar

Read how the movie's Bio-Lab was inspired by a visit to biotech company AmGen, why the plant life was green instead of cyan, and how human "drivers" might control their avatars from a distance.

• Production designer Rick Carter explained the inspiration for Pandora's bioluminescent wildlife.

Cameron's inspiration for that, Carter believes, came from his deep-sea diving experiences. "The whole idea of (that) bioluminescent world at night is something he'd actually witnessed when he was down at the bottom of the ocean during his 'Titanic' time," Carter says. "That bioluminescence is almost like a nervous system of the planet, and that's what's at stake in the movie, as you start to get past the initial foray into the Na'vi culture and seeing the drama start to emerge between the military-industrial complex that wants to exploit the world."

• At The Intersection Sheril Kirshenbaum shares what she enjoyed about the movie's science

Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of a research scientist was uncharacteristically good. Instead of the typical caricature we see in Hollywood, she wasn’t socially inept (i.e. typical Rick Moranis roles) or out to destroy everything (i.e. Dr. Evil). Instead, Grace conveyed the natural curiosity about the world that I observe so often in colleagues. Also noteworthy, she was funded by a program with corporate interests, but really using the opportunity to pursue her own research. Sound familiar to anyone?

• Peter Watts commented a bit on Pandora's biology in his review of the movie

 Someone put a lot of thought into Pandora’s wildlife; it was beautiful to behold, it was amazingly diverse, it even seemed (for the most part) phylogenetically consistent. Across a wide range of species, everything from nostril placement to jaw structure was nicely suggestive of common ancestry. Except for the Na’vi, which are ridiculously anthropomorphic: tetrapod bipeds where everything else on the planet seems to have six limbs; binocular vision on a world where four eyes is the vertebrate norm.

 Read the post for the rest of his (spoilery) comments.

• Astrobiology Magazine: Avatar's Moon Pandora Could be Real

So far, planet searches have spotted hundreds of Jupiter-sized objects in a range of orbits. Gas giants, while easier to detect, could not serve as homes for life as we know it. However, scientists have speculated whether a rocky moon orbiting a gas giant could be life-friendly, if that planet orbited within the star’s habitable zone (the region warm enough for liquid water to exist).

The gist of the article is that moon with life could exist, and if it does, astronomers should be able to detect it.

And if that's not enough, you could order a copy of the official Pandora field guide: Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora


Related Biology in Science Fiction posts:

• Botany of Pandora
• Is Avatar Science Fiction?
  

Holiday Free Fiction: Visions of Gingerbread

At this year's party, as usual, everyone from my executive VP to the mail clerk steered clear of me. An hour into the evening, as conversations buzzed in every other part of the room, I found myself standing alone, eggnog in hand, looking at the Christmas tree. It was as if I had never seen one before. There was something about the shape of the tree, about its deep green shadows and its smell, that spoke to me. It said, forest. It said, everything is alive. It said, this is the perfect moment. And at that perfect moment, I felt as if I were a key sliding into its lock. The universe and I, we fit.

Sometimes feelings of love, peace and joy need just a bit of chemical assistance.

Read "Visions of Gingerbread" by Bruce Holland Rogers.

The Botany of Pandora

James Cameron's soon-to-be-released movie Avatar is about immersion in an alien environment:

We enter the alien world through the eyes of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. [. . . ] He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost of Pandora, where corporations are mining a rare mineral that is key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because the atmosphere of Pandora is toxic [to humans], they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi.

The visuals of Pandora - mostly CGI - look stunning. This video featurette gives a bit of background on how it was created.


Pandora is a lush tropical-looking world, a "garden of Eden with teeth and claws" in the words of Cameron.

To help create the lush backdrop for both the movie and the Avatar game, Cameron consulted with Jodie S. Holt, a Professor of Plant Physiology and Chair of the Department of Botany & Plant Sciences at UC Riverside. She also provided some pointers for Sigourney Weaver's botanist character. As Holt explains:

In 2007, I was asked to consult with an A-list actress who plays a botanist in the movie. She turned out to be Sigourney Weaver. My role was to advise her on how a botanist might dress and act. I met with her in her trailer in a sound studio in Playa del Rey in Los Angeles, and we had a long conversation. A set designer was also present during this meeting. I gave Weaver advice on topics like how a botanist would approach a plant and take samples. With the set designer, I later engaged in an email communication in which I advised him on the sets and equipment that Sigourney Weaver could use in her work as a botanist. I also shared information with him about plant physiology and plant sampling. For a period of months, we exchanged a number of images about equipment a botanist might use to study plants, and I wrote him short lectures on the plants.

Then, in the fall of 2008, I was told that James Cameron was developing a whole suite of game products. I was asked if I would help out by developing content around the plants that appear in the games. I agreed. So in December 2008 I met with Cameron and Jon Landau, the co-producer, in the sound studio, and agreed to develop wikipedia-type entries for the plants. In the game products, players can pause near a plant of interest and read up about it by clicking open an entry about that plant. I provided the content for these entries. Cameron and Landau were looking for credible botanical information for all these fantastic-looking plants. My challenge was to come up with explanations for why Pandora’s environment would select for the kinds of plants the game products have. Some of these plants are fluorescent, some can move, some can fire things off. Clearly, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

Watch a short video of Holt talking about her involvement with Avatar.

Watch a short video of Weaver talking about making Avatar.

Avatar will be released on December 18th.
Avatar the game is due to ship December 1. (It can be preordered through Amazon.com)

Top Image: Sigourney Weaver in her avatar body, via MarketSaw.
Bottom Image: Official Avatar movie still

Strange Nature: From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7

Today's free fiction:

American SF author Nnedi Okorafor's "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7" explores the surreal far-future Forbidden Greeny Jungle in the form of a field journal. I especially like how the story has been enhanced with audio entries and links to the jungle's Field Guide.

• Read or listen to "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7" at Clarkesworld Magazine.

Tags:science fiction, natural history

Living in a Pocket Biosphere

Mstislav, our most dedicated gardener now that Sledge rarely emerges from the Attic, has been tinkering with the carbon-dioxide balance, a dangerous but crucial sport. At six or seven hundred parts per million, the air in here is dreadful but sustains life. Regular jiggering of organic functions is needed to keep the ratio from ballooning to something deadly. To make a long story short, after an alarmingly high reading Mstislav discovered a mound of rotting mangrove fronds under a seemingly healthy hillock of wheatgrass—a camouflaged nightmare of poison-leaching compost. Endgame for us could be that simple, that foolish.
~ "Lostronaut" by Jonathan Lethem

Half of the oxygen in the air we breathe is produced by phytoplankton, tiny plants living in Earth's oceans. The plant life is crucial to maintaining the proper balance of gases in Earth's biosphere. It's only natural, then, that NASA has been trying to develop efficient bioregenerative life support systems that incorporate plants and bacteria for long term space settlements and space stations.

It's not an easy problem, though, either scientifically or politically, as NASA scientists pointed out back in 1997.

"If the current [funding] level is maintained, I would not expect to see a functional ground-based regenerative system for 10-15 years, or a space-rated system for 15-20 years," Finger said. "If a long-duration manned mission becomes a reality, then I would expect the budget to increase significantly for all aspects of life support research."

In addition to the reality of funding, doubts about the reliability of biological systems remain fixed in many people’s minds. Can a closed system recycle waste material quickly enough to renew vital resources? Will the reduced gravity environment of space affect the biological system in ways we cannot assess on Earth? What back-up life support must lunar or planetary colonies have if a plant-based system should fail? Above all, is the concept truly feasible?

"The challenges of designing a working bioregenerative life support system are gargantuan," Morris admitted. He noted that investigators will need to find ways to make such a system extraordinarily compact and energy-efficient. Physicochemical back-up systems add a slew of weight and energy requirements.

Browsing through the NASA web site, it doesn't look like there has been too much progress in the past ten years. The International Space Station (ISS) has a Plant Research Unit is being used to study the effects of microgravity on plant growth and reproduction . It's important research to determine the best plant strains and growth conditions for low gravity environments, but it's just one of the first steps in developing a self-sustaining environment. Science not Fiction has more about NASA's plant research.

But science fiction steps in where science has yet to go. Jonathan Letham's short story "Lostronaut", published in the November 17th issue of The New Yorker, is set on a space station orbiting Earth. The Chinese have planted mines below the station's orbit, preventing the astronauts from leaving the station or supplies from being delivered. They are completely dependent on the the slowly deteriorating systems, including the plant beds that provide them with oxygen and absorb excess carbon dioxide. Letham doesn't provide a lot of scientific details, but does give us a moving story of memory and love and death and life.

Read Jonathan Lethem's "Lostronaut"

For more technical information about plant research on the International Space Station, see "Factors Affecting the Utilization of the International Space Station for Research in the Biological and Physical Sciences" (2003)

Top Image: 39-inch closed glass Ecosphere in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History. The sphere is a closed ecosystem containing small shrimp, bacteria and algae in salt water. Credit: me.

Bottom Image: Corn growing under red LED grow lights, which would be efficient for growing plants in space. Source: NASA.

Tags:science fiction, biosphere, ecology

Meet the Surreal Botanists

If you will be in New York City this Friday, you'll have the opportunity to learn about surreal botany first-hand:

This Friday, December 19th at 7:00pm, nine authors from A Field Guide to Surreal Botany will share their botanical discoveries at the KGB Bar in New York City (83 E. 4th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues). Jason Erik Lundberg (editor) and contributors Erik Amundsen, Steve Berman, John Bowker, Christopher M. Cevasco, Kris Dikeman, Susan Fedynak, Matthew Kressel, Livia Llewellyn, and James Trimarco will present their work and sign copies of the book, which will be available via Mobile Libris. Artwork will also be displayed during the reading. Admission is free.

More details.

Related Post: A Field Guide to Surreal Botany

Tags:botany, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: December 13 edition

It's been a while since I did a round up, so there are lots of links!

General SF

SF Signal has video of a 1997 discussion between Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski, Herb Solow and Yvonne Fern about the meaning of the terms "science fiction" and "SciFi". Be sure to read the comments too.

Livemint.com has an extensive article about the state of science fiction in India with a number of video interviews with Indian SF writers, including Indian Science Fiction Writers Association secretary (and frequent commenter here) Arvind Mishra, Mohan Sanjeevan, Nellai Muthu, YH Deshpande, and GS Unnikrishnan.

John Scalzi points out that Technology Changes, People Not So Much

Ursula LeGuin and George RR Martin appeared on the public radio show To The Best of Our Knowlege, and discussed the future of science fiction and the genre boundaries between fantasy and science fiction (via io9)

Written Word

There's a great post at Metafilter about John Wyndham (author of Day of the Triffids), including links to the BBC Four documentary "The Invisible Man of Science Fiction".

The 2009 One Book - One Edinburgh reading campaign will feature Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

In 2009 it will also be 200 years ago that Charles Darwin was born, who also has ties to our city. It was during his study at the University of Edinburgh that he developed a keen interest in natural history, and it was here and around the Forth that the foundations for his theory of evolution were developed.

To mark this double celebration, it seems only natural that the 2009 reading campaign - The Lost World Read 2009 - will focus on Conan Doyle's classic adventure story, The Lost World, in which a group of explorers set out on an expedition to South America to prove that deep in the jungle there is a forgotten world where dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals still survive.

They will be distributing thousands of free copies of The Lost World with a special cover by Aardman Animations, as well as a comic book biography of the life of Charles Darwin.

Moira Gunn at ITConversations has posted her 2003 interview with Michael Crichton about his novel Prey.


Movies

Annalee Newitz at io9 has a detailed review of The Day The Earth Stood Still

BioethicsBytes has a discussion of the 2004 DeNiro cloning movie Godsend.

Chris Mooney writes about the new science-Hollywood venture, The Science and Entertainment Exchange.

At io9 Lauren Davis rounds up Science Fiction's Deadliest Plants

There will not, as rumored, be a sequel to I Am Legend, but plans for a prequel apparently are real.

Jennifer Ouellette at Cocktail Party Physics writes about The Blob, slime molds and endocytosis

Rich Handley has recently published Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definitive Chronology. It sounds like it provides the background information on how the apes came into power on Earth, including a bunch of biology:

• How the apes acquired sentience and the power of speech—while man descended into mute savagery
• Where the plague that ravaged the planet originated, and the effects it had not only on man and ape, but on other creatures
• The many unique simian and human cultures that spawned around the globe in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust—and how the Statue of Liberty ended up in pieces on a desolate beach

Television

Science Not Fiction looks at the Stargate Atlantis episode "Remnants" and speculates on colonizing the galaxy by sending out pods with our DNA.

Science Not Fiction also discusses Skynet's bioweapon in this week's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Armchair Commentary has an interview with Primeval cast members Hannah Spearritt and Andrew Lee Potts.

About Eleventh Hour:

• Science Not Fiction: Eleventh Hour: Super Soldiers and Beyond
  
• Genevieve Valentine @ Tor.com: Eleventh Hour: Surge
  
• Genevieve Valentine @ Tor.com: Eleventh Hour: Frozen
• Genevieve Valentine @ Tor.com: Eleventh Hour: Titans
• Science Not fiction: Eleveth Hour and Decompression Chambers
• Genevieve Valentine @ Tor.com: Eleventh Hour: Flesh
  

About Fringe:

• Kate Schweitzer @ Popular Mechanics: Episode 7: Scientist Say Fringe Parasites are Far From Realistic
  
• Kate Schweitzer @ Popular Mechanics: Episode 9: How Fringe Gets Memory Science Wrong
  

Cool Bioscience

Mike Brotherton explains how to build a giant monster

Seed Magazine profiles Mac Cowell, the cofounder of DIYbio and "the biohacking hobbyist"

Invitrogen is sponsoring a new ScienceBlogs biotech blog, "What's new in life science research". A few interesting recent posts: "Genetically Modified Humans? No Thanks." and "Bizarre cloners and serious questions" by Marcy Darnovsky; "10 Things You Should Know About Cloning" by Hsien-Hsien Lei; and "Short, Euphonious, and Different: Clone is Born, 1903" by Alexandra Stern.

Japanese scientists were able to create clones from the nuclei of cells isolated from dead mice that had been frozen for 16 years. What made this particular experiment unique is that the mice had not been frozen using chemicals to protect cells from damage. That suggests that extinct animals for which frozen samples exist could be resurrected by cloning.

A virus carrying the DNA encoding a light-sensitive protein was introduced into the spinal chord of nerve-damaged rats. The infected cells produced the protein which allowed the scientists to restore the function of the neurons by pulsing them with light.

Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex explains that "Hell is a Perfect Memory"

Scientific American has an in-depth article about Peptide Nucleic Acids (PNAs), which "combines the information-storage properties of DNA with the chemical stability of a proteinlike backbone"

"The Big Picture" at Boston.com has a fantastic collection of micrograph images. The very very small is like an alien world. (via Hoyden About Town)

WebEcoist has pictures of 20 Strange and Exotic Endangered Species (via BoingBoing)

Zooillogix has video of spiders spinning webs in the microgravity environment of the space shuttle.

Ask Metafilter tackles the question of whether virulent microbes can survive in crypts.

Sequencing of the Neanderthal genome is about 50% complete, and the first draft should be completed "by year's end" the NewScientist reports. So far there is no evidence that prehistoric European humans regularly interbred with Neanderthals. Meanwhile,William Saletan at Slate asks "Should we resurrect the Neanderthals?"

The J. Craig Venter Institute has made the news again. This time they successfully manufactured the first synthetic yeast organism in a single step. Meanwhile, scientists have created a virus from scratch based on SARS.

Virginia Hughes posts about "Genes & Jazz", a collaboration between virologist Harold Varmus and his musician son Jacob.

A new type of giant squid with "elbows" has been caught on video.

The IRAM radio telescope has discovered a sugar molecule - glycolaldehyde - in a star-forming region of space where planets that can support life as we know it might exist.

Wired Science has the Top 10 Amazing Biology Videos

io9 looks at the winners of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition

Tags:science fiction, biology

Plants Take Manhattan

The final scene of the 1986 Frank Oz musical version of Little Shop of Horrors ends on a positive note: Audrey survives being chewed by the menacing man-eating plant and Seymour defeats it in a fight. Audrey and Seymour live happily ever after. But that was not the original version.

In the original ending, Audrey is eaten, Seymour loses the battle and the plant takes Manhattan.

A miniature effects team led by Richard Conway went to great lengths to create this dramatic finale during which Audrey II takes over New York City, attacks the Brooklyn Bridge, fights the U.S. Army, climbs the Statue of Liberty and, in homage to the 1933 classic monster movie King Kong, scales the Empire State Building. There are also various nods to the 1953 film The War of the Worlds. Finally, in the last shot after the title "THE END?!?" has appeared, the plant crashes through the screen of the film and laughs as the camera (the audience) comes closer and closer to its gaping maw. The sequence cost $5 million to produce.

Audiences apparently found that too disturbing. But now, thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can watch the ending as it was meant to be:




Happy Halloween!

(via Slice of SciFi)

Tags:Little Shop of Horrors, plants

Killer Super-Plants

Kevin Maher of AMC's SciFi Department visits the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to take a look at killer plants in fact and fiction - particularly horror B-movies.

Here are links to some of the mentioned movies, in case you want to add them to your video library or Netflix queue.

Tags:science fiction, botany

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 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

WALL-E and Plants in Space

At the Science Fiction & Fantasy Novelists blog, fantasy writer S.C. Butler writes about the scene in the Pixar's WALL-E that just about ruined the movie for him:

It’s a short scene. Wall-e and Eva are zooming around outside the spaceship trying to rescue the plant from earth. (SPOILER ALERT!) And they do rescue it. But then Wall-e takes it out to show Eva while they’re both still outside the ship.

That’s right. In a movie that’s basically about the ecological consequences of our failure to properly manage our planet, the heroes wave a plant around in space. And the plant’s none the worse for it.

So what's the problem with that? The problem is that space is very cold (-270°C), and dry, and a vacuum. Would that kill a plant? That probably depends on how long the exposure is for. I haven't actually seen WALL-E yet, so I don't know how long the plant is exposed to space, but it probably would actually survive if the exposure was short enough. Heck, even humans could likely survive space exposure for 30 seconds or so, and plants have the advantage of being able to grow back from

There's more discussion on whether the little plant would survive at Ask Metafilter.

Tags:science fiction, biology, WALL-E, plants, space

Thomas M. Disch (1940-2008)

On Friday, July 4, science fiction writer Thomas M. Disch sadly took his own life. While there hasn't been much in the main stream media, it's been all over the science fiction blogosphere. Here are a few links:

• Ellen Datlow
• Making Light
• Boing Boing
  
• Omnivoracious
• Enter the Octopus has a great link roundup
  

Disch's first novel, The Genocides, was published in 1965. It is set on a bleak Earth where humans are being exterminated by aliens using the Earth to grow plants:

[. . .] the exploitation of available resources by these fast-growing plants causes the soil to become barren for any other crop or tree. In addition, these plants are unsuitable for feeding any animal (except, perhaps, the rabbits which appear to be very numerous in the book), causing an ecological catastrophe. The effects on humans are very drastic: Human society breaks down, with people no longer able to live in cities.

The action of the novel is centered on a small group of people who still harvest some corn and have a single pregnant cow. The leader of this group is a religious fanatic who kills every other stranger in the name of the survival of the group. Their already-difficult life fighting against plants and protecting the small crop changes suddenly when an outsider begins living with the group, bringing news of strange forest fires. The fires are started by alien machines (presumably from the same civilization that sent the seeds of the plants) and finally destroy the group's refuge, forcing them to escape into a cave.

And there's no happy ending. The story concludes:

Nature is prodigal. Of a hundred seedlings only one or two would survive; of a hundred species, only one or two.

Not, however, man.

Some of Disch's other novels include Camp Concentration (1968), 334 (1972), On Winds of Song (1979), The M.D.: A Horror Story (1991), and The Brave Little Toaster (1980).

Interviews with Thomas Disch:

• Thomas Disch on the Bat Segundo Show, recorded on June 25.
  
• Joseph Francavilla in Science Fiction Studies (March 1983): Disching it Out: An Interview with Thomas Disch
• David Horwich interviews Thomas Disch for Strange Horizons (2001)
  

Tags:Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides

Win a Wii! Space Squid - Mushroom Men Writing Contest

Space Squid has announced a free writing contest based on the game Mushroom Men:

Contest Details:
- Deadline August 1st, 2008
- Write a story that incorporates the universe of the Mushroom Men console game, published by Gamecock Media. Entrants should read the game background information before submitting their entries.
- Free writing contest entries should be between 500 and 1500 words.
- Submit writing contest entries to Space Squid as an attached RTF file. Please put "Free Writing Contest: YOUR STORY TITLE" in the subject line.
- Submissions will be judged according to a) How well they adhere to the game universe, and b) How much they rock.
- First prize is a free Wii game console, the Mushroom Men videogame, and publication in Space Squid.
- Runners up prizes TBA and publication in RevolutionSF.com.
- This is a free writing contest; multiple entries encouraged.

Additional information and updates here and at:
http://www.revolutionsf.com/bb/weblog.php?w=5&category=Space%20Squid

Here's a taste of the Mushroom Men universe:

An ichorous green meteor plummets through the Earth's atmosphere, fracturing and showering the earth with glowing green space dust that affects all forms of life nearby. Some plant life -- mushrooms and cacti -- acquire sentience while, the meteor twists and mutates other life forms, transforming insects and animals into semi-intelligent, warlike communities.
[. . .]
Some among the four Mushroom Men tribes believe that the secret to winning the Spore War lays in uncovering the facts about the Mushroom's origins. As the myth states, the Mushroom who discovers the truth of this mystery is promised the power to change the entire course of evolution, putting the Mushroom species at the top of the evolutionary ladder. The tribe that claims this prize can reshape the world any way they see fit. The Amanitas Empire and The Lepiota Order see the myth as a chance to not only defeat the other nations (the Bolete Tribe and the Morel Brotherhood) but also wipe out all of their enemies and put their tribes at the forefront of terrestrial evolution.

If you are interested in submitting a story, be sure to read all the background information.

(via Mike Brotherton)

Tags:Mushroom Men, writing contest, Space Squid

The Happening and Intelligent Design

Annalee Newitz at io9 reviews The Happening, and points out that the science isn't just bad - it's actually an anti-science movie.

Maybe you thought Ben Stein's ill-fated documentary Expelled was the only movie to argue in favor of the neo-Christian idea that an "intelligent designer" created the universe. Think again. With its references to "unexplained acts of nature" and a science teacher main character who calls evolution "just a theory," The Happening is basically a giant propaganda machine for intelligent design. Maybe science journalists are jizzing all over its allegedly realistic plants-attack-humans plot, but we talked to Shyamalan and we know the truth.

It's really a movie that touts Shyamalan's devout Christian world view. Not only is "science not enough" to explain nature, but it's about Zooey Deschanel's character "Alma" becoming a proper wife.

In the film's other major Christian-influenced subplot, we discover that Alma and Elliot have "been fighting" — not only does Alma have the gal to insist that they "wait to have children," but she also went out to dessert with a male colleague without telling Elliot. What? Dessert and lack of babies makes her evil? Apparently so.

And of course it ends with Alma happily preggers. I'll definitely save my $10.

Tags:The Happening, intelligent design, evolution

What Kills Everybody in The Happening?

*** Spoilers ahoy. Stop reading now if you want M. Night Shyamalan's new movie The Happening to be a complete surprise. ***

M. Night Shyamalan has been talking with reporters about The Happening, which opens in theaters on Friday the 13th. It turns out the rash of human suicides - and mysterious bee deaths - are due to neurotoxins produced by plants and algae. He told Shock Till You Drop:

Shock: I know "Scientific American"* grilled you earlier at the press conference earlier (see below) and the bees were something out there, but did you look into all the possibilities of this movie's scenario coming true?
Shyamalan: Definitely, yeah, we did and we got all kinds of research on similar events that happened in the water, plankton releasing toxins and things like that, which just happened again, there were some neurotoxins released in a lake in Bali or Thailand or something like that. Then there was interesting articles about things rising. One of the things that I guess was in the back of my mind was that one in six emergency room cases for the United States is asthma-related. I'm going, "What? When I was a kid, the kid who had asthma was that freak kid three schools down who had asthma." Now, it's like every other kid has asthma. Everybody's like wheezing and there's a line outside the nurse's office for an inhaler. What's that about? We're becoming allergic to what? There's peanut-free tables in every school right now. When was that (done)? We're all becoming really sensitive to something in the air.

Phytoplankton - microscopic single-celled algae - can "bloom" causing the phenomenon commonly known as a red tide. The plankton produce potent neurotoxins that become concentrated in shellfish, making them poisonous to eat. Other algae, such as the dinoflagellate Pfiesteria piscicida, produce toxins that can cause memory loss, confusion, upper respiratory irritation and acute skin burning. I Googled a bit, but wasn't able to come up with any particular algal bloom at an Asian lake that Shyamalan might be talking about, though. There's no connection to asthma or peanut allergies. (Also, Shyamalan's perception of the prevalence of asthma is a bit skewed. While there was a significant increase in the percentage of kids with asthma between 1980 and 2005, that increase was from 3.6% to 8.9% - hardly a change from a few "freaks" to "every other kid".)

Shock: What do you find that science allows you to do that fantasy hasn't?
Shyamalan: When I came up with the idea, I said to the research people, "Give me every piece of information. I want to know 1 to 10 whether this idea is totally possible, probable or impossible, completely." When they came back with a stack of information about how the environment works and how plants work and how examples of anomalous things that have happened in the world. How a cotton plant can send out a signal to the other side of the field to tell them that this insect is coming and they send out poisons and they send out toxins and all these things happening in a smaller form, the exact kind of thing. It was really fun and then I talked to the University of Massachusetts and some other institutes about how the brain works, about toxins and how they affect each other. It was really fun to ground… [. . .]

Plant-to-plant communication is a relatively new area of study. It turns out that many plants that are pest-infested or damaged can send out a signal that stimulates neighboring plants to beef up their defenses. Discover Magazine ran a feature on "talking plants" in 2002:

[Marcel] Dicke and his colleagues have found that mere exposure to airborne emissions from mite-infested cotton and lima beans will prompt undamaged plants to release signals that summon an enemy of the infesting mite. Over the last 19 years, in various experiments, researchers say they've caught willow, poplar, alder, and birch trees listening to their own kind and barley seedlings listening to other barley seedlings. In each case, damaged plants, whether eaten by caterpillars, infected by fungus or powdery mildew, infested by spider mites, or even clipped mechanically, sent out chemicals that seemed to jump-start the defenses of undamaged plants nearby.

Presumably in The Happening plants have evolved to fight their biggest pest: humanity. That sounds like an interesting science fiction-horror premise. However, from what Shyamalan said in a recent press conference, the science is wrapped in New Agey spirituality.

The idea of plants having consciousness is kind of a non-western world view. Did you consider that as coming from your other influences. Could you guys talk about how your non-western experiences have influenced you? And could you talk about the spiritual side of the film?

Shyamalan: Definitely. It’s interesting because the Native American culture, that’s all it’s about. My middle name, Night, it’s an American Indian name. That is what I felt so attached to when I was a kid—from the American Indian culture—the relationship to nature, and worshipping the sky, the earth, the rock. That relationship felt correct then, as a kid, and it feels correct now, as an adult. It’s interesting how in all our religions, so little is said about how we should feel towards nature. It’s an interesting thing to kind of get the hierarchy back in line. We’re just one of many living creatures on the planet.

Apparently the movie ultimately turns away from science fiction, with a "spiritual message" and a conclusion that demonstrates that there are "limits of rational thought".

For more: check out the early reviews at Ain't It Cool News. The consensus seems to be disappointment.

ETA: In the less-than-glowing review in today's LA Times, reviewer Carina Chocano asked:

The mysterious airborne substance that's making people kill themselves is believed to be some kind of neurotoxin that blocks the self-preservation instinct in humans. But would simply removing the self-preservation instinct really cause people to instantly annihilate themselves? En masse? I'd have thought it would lead to slower, more indirect forms of self-destruction, like riding a bike without a helmet or drinking and driving or unsafe sex. This, sadly, is the question Shyamalan neglects to answer, which, in the wake of films like "28 Days Later," is a letdown.

Sounds like Shyamalan should stick to fantasy.

(via Abbie at ERV, who isn't at all pleased about the spirituality stuff)

* Scientific American hasn't published anything about the movie yet.
Tags:The Happening, M Night Shyamalan, plants, algae, red tide

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: April 12 Edition

Here are some Biology in Science Fiction bits from around the internet:

Books and Comics

Ursula LeGuin talked about science and the fantastic in her review of Salman Rushdie's new fantasy novel The Enchantress of Florence:

Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for "re-enchantment". But it's clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as "disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic" dissidents from revealed truth.

The Amazon Omnivoracious blog interviews Scott Sigler about his new novel, Infected.

io9 writes about the new comic book Transhuman.

Television

Evolutionary biologist and noted atheist Richard Dawkins is scheduled to appear in the current season of Dr. Who, playing himself. Presumably Dawkins has received acting tips from his wife Lalla Ward, who played Romana, companion of the Fourth Doctor. If Dawkins isn't your cup of tea, Nature Editor Henry Gee suggests some other "celebrity scientists and not-so-scientists" who might be right for a Dr. Who bit part. The current series premiered in the UK on April 5 on the BBC, and premiers in the US on SciFi on April 18.

David Eick (Bionic Woman producer/Battlestar Galactica writer-producer) is working on a proposed TV series based on PD James' Children of Men.

The new season of ReGenesis has started in Canada, and Eva Amsen of the easternblog blog is writing the Facts Behind the Fiction articles that accompany each episode. Very cool.

Movies

Shock Till You Drop reviews the new I Am Legend DVD, including the bonus feature "Cautionary Tale: The Science of I Am Legend".

Big Picture Big Sound reviews the new GATTACA Blu-Ray DVD, which includes a "featurette" on the science behind genetic engineering. i09 has some GATTACA "behind the scenes" trivia.

The new official "REPO: The Genetic Opera" web site has launched, with music, video and stills. (via Bloody-Disgusting)

The Ruins ("Terror Has Evolved") has a some evil plants, according to io9.

Ain't it Cool News reports on the remake of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

LiveScience writes about the creatures in 10,000 BC.

Bloody-Disgusting lists "The 10 Worst Things That Could've Been in Brundle's Machine ... Besides a Fly" (ew)

Other

Wired Science has the top 5 real biology concepts in BioShock.

Tags:science fiction, biology

The Color of Alien Plants

The current issue of Scientific American takes a look at what plants on other worlds might look like. Of course talking about the actual shape of alien plants - or what we might characterize as "plants" - would be purely speculative. However, we can speculate as to the likely color of photosynthetic life on planets circling non-Sol-like stars, based on what we know about plants on Earth.

Light of any color from deep violet through the near-infrared could power photosynthesis. Around stars hotter and bluer than our sun, plants would tend to absorb blue light and could look green to yellow to red. Around cooler stars such as red dwarfs, planets receive less visible light, so plants might try to absorb as much of it as possible, making them look black.

In addition to the article, which is based in solid science, there is a slide show of an artist's fantasy of what those alien plants might look like.

There are also some related informational in that issue:

• Filtering Starlight
  
• Biosignatures For Developing Life
• Timeline of Photosynthesis on Earth

Of course the article doesn't really address the issue of whether a lifeform with photosynthetic pigments is necessarily a "plant". I don't think we should make any such assumptions.

Image: From the Scientific American"The Color of Plants on Other Worlds" slide show
Tags:xenobiology, botany