The Stonemaker Argument

The latest episode of science-loving web comic The Stonemaker Argument features a little girl after my own heart.


Go read the whole comic!

(via Bad Astronomy)

Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Mega Link Roundup: April 4 Edition

I've slowly - oh so slowly - been going through the links I collected for "future reading" over the past few months. I also had a link roundup post meant to be published in January that somehow never made it out of draft form. The result? A mega maxi link roundup!

General SF Rumination

Gerry Canavan presented a talk on "Science Fiction and Ecological Futurity" (via SF Signal)

Mike Brotherton: Why Science Fiction Rules the World (but not enough!!!)

More and more often these things are aspects of our modern reality that have no precendence in human history. Somehow history gets respect and people say it “repeats itself” even though that is not true. Science fiction isn’t exactly great at prediction, but the process is very useful for meeting the future with open eyes.

Jason Stoddard suggested that the burden of the modern science fiction writer is keeping up with scientific progress. In response, Jeremiah Tolbert explained why Stoddard is wrong. The central issue seems to be how important "realism" in science is to science fiction (via Futurismic).

Meanwhile, Megan at Teen Ink magazine is teaching teenagers how to research science before writing science fiction. (via io9)

BBC talked to Ken MacLeod, Paul Cornell, Iain Banks, and Ian Watson about whether science fiction needs to stay up to date with scientific breakthroughs to be relevant.

Arvind Mishra has a more detailed look at the First National Discussion on science fiction in India.

The Consumerist reports on a study showing people rate harder-to-pronounce words as "riskier". It's true for food additives and rolloer coasters - maybe it's true for alien names too?

Written Word

Vice Magazine interviewed Ursula Le Guin (via SF Signal):

Some sf writers decided a while ago that true sf can only be based on the so-called hard sciences—astronomy, physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science, and so on. The word “hard” brings some gender luggage along with it. And sure enough, these guys find stories based on the “soft,” or social, sciences to be a debased and squashy form of the genre. They see it as chick lit for geeks. So, OK. If anybody wants to build a ghetto inside the ghetto and live there, fine with me. But I wish this sectarianism hadn’t infected Wikipedia. If they want to call my stuff social science fiction, that’s fair enough. But so much of what I write isn’t sf at all.

Graham Sleight at Locus online: Yesterday's Tomorrows: Ursula K. Le Guin

[Left Hand of Darkness] traces a slow process of discovery — of Winter and its inhabitants. In that respect, in that it's about finding out, it's a perfectly science-fictional work. (The later Ace edition carries a provocative introduction by Le Guin, in which she administers a few well-judged kicks to the idea of sf as narrowly extrapolative or predictive.) We find out, for instance, via Chapter 7 how and why the Gethenian biology was created. This chapter is an ethnologist's report on the planet — what would, in other circumstances, be considered an "infodump." But Le Guin is so thoughtful a writer, the implications of her thought-experiments so thoroughly and deeply felt, that you find yourself wanting to hear this information, even if it is couched in as dry a form as this.

Mur Lafferty at Tor.com reviews Scott Sigler's Contagious.

Peter Watts reports that his novel Blindsight is "going to be a required text for a Biological Psychology course at the University of Miami"

Brian Switek at Laelaps rants about Monster, a creationist anthropology thriller:

Peretti also mentions that his favorite author (and chief writing influence) was Michael Crichton, and this makes sense. Not only does the book have an anti-science bent, but it reads as a sort of mash-up between Jurassic Park, Congo, and Icons of Evolution. Even though it is a monster story, the author makes it clear that the real monsters are the immoral evolutionists who will stop at almost nothing to uphold their crumbling intellectual doctrine.

Jeff Carlson writes about the background behind his novel Plague Year

Nancy Kress reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and talks about "cloning-for-organ-donation" in SF in general.

Kress also looks at genetically modified mosquitos, as they appeared in her biothriller Stinger, and in real life.

Jo Walton writes at Tor.com about Octavia Butler's Survivor, a novel Butler repudiated and refused to be a allowed to be reprinted. Part of her problem is the simple interbreeding of humans and aliens, and the way the novel depicts race and color (literally).

Jo Walton also looks at aliens and sapience in H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels

Annalee Newitz at io9.com: The Rise of Science Among Insects in Greg Egan's Incandescence

NK Jemisin reviewed Naomi Novik's Temeraire novel Victory of Eagles last August for Fantasy Magazine and the discussion touched on alternative evolution.

Peter Watts posts a proposal for a new novel, Dumbspeech.

DamienBarret has a great Flickr set of his visit to Alan Dean Foster's house. He got to see Foster's awards and decorations including a "fossilized critter" that "might help ADF with his depictions of the Thranx or other insectile cratures in his books."


Television

The Oyster's Garter takes a look at what the Earth was really like 150,000 years ago, when the Battlestar Galactica folks landed in Africa.

James F. McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix writes about John the robot in Sarah Connor Chronicles who questions why God didn't make humans with more ball socket joints and uses to talk about evolutionand "the image of God" (via io9)

Science Not Fiction talks about the real science of Sanctuary's abnormals, gives the lowdown on Sanctuary's Bad Bad Prions, and looks at the series' gene therapy

Charlie Jane Anders at io9: Kyle XY: How Not To Do a TV Series Finale

Science Not Fiction: Battlestar Galactica, Self-Repairing Material and biofilms

Movies

ScienceOnline: Alexis Gambis brings science and film together to create a new genre of science fiction (ScienceOnline is a project of NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program)

George Dvorsky posts about young filmmaker Jason Silva's short film "The Immortalists", which is "a love letter to science and philosophy that explores the idea of engineered radical life extension and biological immortality"

T. Ryan Gregory at Genomicron: Would you act as a consultant on a scifi movie? And more importantly, would you accept compensation if you did?

Jonathan Fahey at Forbes.com writes about The Science Behind 'Watchmen' and the teaming of Hollywood with scientists

John Scalzi @ SciFi Scanner on Video Game Movies:

In point of fact, the average gamer is nearly thirty, not dumb, and while he may enjoy bombs, blood and babes, I'm willing to bet he'd happily see a movie that doesn't assume he's stupid. When I watched Doom, the scene where a scientist explained that a certain percentage of the human genome has never been mapped (and the part that hasn't, well, that's your soul, you see) made me want to throw a rock through my TV -- which is ironic, as the film stars The Rock.

SciFi Scanner looks at directors that include some real science in their science fiction. Included are Andrew Niccol, director of Gattaca and Steven Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park (and lots of other movies, of course).

Matthe Nisbet at Framing Science: "What about the "Gattaca" Effect on Perceptions of Medical Cloning?"

James Sanford takes another look at GATTACA, plucked from Rotten Tomatoes' list of "Ten Sci-Fi Flicks for the Thinking Man... or Woman".

At Nature Jascha Hoffman reviews films about science at the Sundance Film Festival (subscription required). LabLit.com points out that "it seems a lot of this was more medical than scientific, with tales of mental breakdown, bipolar disorder, autism and psychopathology."

Scientific American 60-Second Science: Science at the Oscars

Ain't it Cool News reports that Ronald D. Moore's prequel to The Thing will be directed by Matthijs Van Heijningen, who is an experienced director of commercials. Hopefully he can make the transition from the 15 second to 90 minute storytelling. In any case, it's supposedly heavily based on John W. Campbell's 1938 novella "Who Goes There?", which I'd think makes it a remake of John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing, which itself was a remake of the 1951 move The Thing From Another World, rather than a prequel. Don't moviemakers realize there are SF stories out there that have never been made into movies? But what do I know.

Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology reports on the whereabouts of the Krayt dragon skeleton from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

BoingBoinger Xeni Jardin reviews her favorite B-Movie - The Food of the Goods - for Fancast.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is coming to DVD. Genevieve Valentine at Tor.com rounds up the special features. BloodyDisguisting.com has an exclusive peek at the DVD's "Sing-Along" feature.

io9 has a nice clip of Vegan Horror, Sheep Punching, and a Lot of Fart Jokes (with a clip from Black Sheep)

Miscellaneous

Torsten Reil gave a TED talk on how he studies biology to make realistic animation.

John Holbo at Crooked Timber points out that Jack Kirby's comic books are really bad on evolution and Norm Doering has more on creationist misconceptions about evolution that seem to be based on comic book science.

An article in the January 2009 issue of Scientific American looked at the depiction of evolution in the game Spore.

NotCot visited Alien Fresh Jerky in Baker - a small town out in the California desert between Barstow and Las Vegas. Despite the name, they don't sell jerky made from aliens, which might or might not be tasty. No, what they sell is beef jerky made from abducted cows and other alien-related products. Sounds awesome.

Correlation vs. causation: There are fewer babies and fewer storks - is it pollution? or space aliens?

Tags:science fiction, biology

Molecular Biology or Thundercats?

How many can you get right?





(via Miss Prism)

Tags:Thundercats

Engineering Aquamen? It's harder than you might think.

Stephen Cass at Science Not Fiction recently tackled the question "could genetic mutation or manipulation create a superhuman?". The answer, not too surprisingly, is maybe - it all depends on what kind of superpower you have in mind. Flying? Probably not. A fluorescent glow? Almost certainly.

One of the examples of genetic engineering that Stephen writes about piqued my interest: a team of scientists at the MRC in Cambridge were able to modify human hemoglobin so that its biochemical properties were more like crocodile hemoglobin. Could that give a human Aquaman-like powers?

First a little background. Hemoglobin is the protein in our red blood cells that carries oxygen. One of its properties is that it binds oxygen more strongly when carbon dioxide levels in the blood are are low (such as in the blood vessels in the lungs). Higher levels of carbon dioxide - produced as waste when oxygen is used by cells to generate energy - reduce the affinity, promoting the release of oxygen from the hemoglobin. The exact biochemistry of the protein varies from species to species, depending on the animal's physiological needs and the environment it lives in.

Crocodile hemoglobin, for example, is more sensitive than the human version to dissolved carbon dioxide in the blood. The result is that a greater proportion of the hemoglobin bound oxygen can be released when the crocs are holding their breath, which allows them to stay under water for as long as an hour. It turns out that changing just a few amino acids in the human hemoglobin sequence changes its biochemistry to that of the crocodilian version. This recombinant "scuba" hemoglobin was developed as an improvement to artificial blood products, and was only produced in bacterial cells. But imagine introducing such a modified hemoglobin sequence into a human - it would potentially allow the carrier to hold their breath for an hour, just like crocs.

But unless such engineered Aquaman wannabes want to spend their time in warm shallow water lurking for their prey evildoers, they would need a number of other modifications to reach their superhero potential. Besides stay under water a long time¹, Aquaman is also supposed to be able to dive very deep in the ocean and swim very fast. Neither ability is going to be provided by modifying hemoglobin.

The problem is that both the intense cold and high pressure in the ocean depths can easily kill any ordinary human. Animals that do routinely dive to great depths - like sperm whales - built anatomically to survive the pressure changes: they lack sinuses, have special structures in their ears and reinforced airways. There is no way to create similar changes in human anatomy without multiple genetic alterations. Whales also have a nice layer of blubber that acts as insulation. The blubber also makes the whale's body more buoyant and streamlined, which are important for rapid swimming.

Possibly a human could be modified to live like a whale, but he would end up looking pretty whale-like. In other words, he'd look like the big guy in the picture below, rather than the slim muscular dude wearing little more than tights.
The idea that genetic engineering could easily be used to reconfigure the human body to give it extraordinary abilities (for a human anyway), while retaining a normal human shape is a pet peeve of mine. If you are talking about biological beings, rather than magical ones, function does affect form.

1. I know Aquaman is supposed to be able to extract oxygen from the water in some kind of gill-less fashion. I'm not even sure where to begin to tackle that one.

Image (top): Cover of Aquaman 17 at comics.org
Image (middle): Structure of hemoglobin of the antarctic fish Pagothenia bernacchii. DOI 10.2210/pdb1hbh/pdb .
Image (bottom): Aquaman fights a whale guy in a panel from JLA #223 at The Aquaman Shrine.
Tags:Aquaman, biology, genetic engineering

Evil Triplet Repeats and The Age of Magic

I'm not really much of a superhero comic book fan. Ask me whether I prefer the DC Universe or the Marvel Universe, and my answer is pretty much "who cares?" That isn't to say that I don't enjoy comics or other sequential art, though. For example, I love many of the titles in the Vertigo line of graphic novels¹.

I've been slowly working my way through the Books of Magic and related titles, which follow the adventures and trials of Timothy Hunter. Tim is a bit of a misfit teenager who learns that he is destined to be the most powerful magician of our age, and his story is about learning the ways of magic, while searching for the truth about his parents and learning to understand himself. While there are some superficial similarities to Harry Potter (which was published several years after the original Books of Magic series), I think the story of Timothy Hunter is much darker and much more wide-ranging, since Tim has to not only learn to navigate the good and evil of the magical world, but also the mundane world of his family and friends.

While the series is fantasy, it has occasionally included tropes that would be familiar to any science fiction fan, including time travel, alternate universes, and a steampunk cyborg. That's why it didn't surprise me that DNA sequencing, genomics and genetic engineering made it's way into the Timothy Hunter mythos.

In issues 8-11 of Hunter: The Age of Magic, genetics and magic become entwined. Tim meets a molecular biologist who has been studying the genomic sequence of evil individuals, including a young girl who became evil - and whose genome changes - when she was possessed by a demon. He discovers that sociopathic behavior is associated with an alteration of the "F5412 Gene".² In evil individuals the gene has the repeated insertion of three nucleotides in the sequence ACT.

While I wouldn't call triplet DNA repeats evil, they can cause serious problems in the human genome. A few examples of human genetic syndromes caused by trinucleotide repeat insertions:

• Fragile X syndrome is associated with CGG repeats in the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome. Proper FMR1 expression is required for normal neural development, and excess CGG repeats causes the DNA to be methylated, which silences FMR1 expression. The result is intellectual and physical disability.
  
• Huntington's chorea is caused by excess CAG repeats in the Huntingtin gene on chromosome 4. The symptoms include jerky, uncontrollable movements and impaired cognitive abilities, which usually appear when the person carrying the mutation is in her 30s or 40s.
• Myotonic dystrophy, a muscle wasting disease, can be caused by expansion of the sequence ACG in the DMPK gene on chromosome 19.
  

The trinucleotide repeats undergo dynamic mutation. Not so much over the course of a liftime, as in the case of a demon possessed little girl, but over the course of multiple generations. The severity of the symptoms can increase as the number of trinucleotide repeats increases from generation to generation. In adult-onset diseases like Huntington's, that means parents can pass a more detrimental form of the mutation on to their children even before they know they are affected themselves. That's a terrible situation, but certainly not evil.

Of course Age of Magic is fantasy, so DNA sequences have the same kind of transformative power as magical words. An analysis of Tim's DNA turns up a sequence with totally different properties that reflect the magic within him. And the DNA from an angel's feather is something else altogether . . .

If you'd like a glimpse of the series, you can download Issue #1 of the Books of Magic

Related reading: Sutherland GR and Richards RI. "Simple tandem DNA repeats and human genetic disease" Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1995 April 25; 92(9): 3636–3641.

1. Yes, I know Vertigo is a DC imprint, but that doesn't mean the graphic novels they produce are exactly part of the DC universe the way the superhero comics are.

2. F5412 appears to be an entirely made up gene on human chromosome 2

Tags:Timothy Hunter, Age of Magic, genetics

Special: Drugs and Superpowers

Today the LA Times published it's Holiday Movie Sneak Preview, with news and tidbits about the films scheduled for release through the beginning of January. Among the period dramas, predictable comedies and fantasy blockbusters is the indie dark comedy Special (or if you'd like a flash-free site without music, check out the original UK Special site).

Michael Rapaport stars as Les Franken, "an average guy" who is obsessed with comic books. He participates in a clinical drug trial for a new antidepressant, Specioprin Hydrochloride aka "Special". As the drug trial progresses Les is convinced he is starting to develop superpowers and he decides to quit his job and use his new abilities to fight evil. But this isn't the world of Heroes; Les's abilities are all (or mostly?) in his mind.

The trailer:


Special was released in the UK in 2006 and has been doing the film festival circuit, to generally positive reviews. It opens in limited release in the US on November 21.

Tags:Special: The Movie, drugs

The Global Genome and Biotech in Pop Culture

Eugene Thacker is a Associate Professor in the School of Literature at Georgia Tech whose studies touch on philosophy, science fiction, and horror, with an emphasis on the expanding role of biotechnology. In 2006 Thacker was interviewed by Roy Christopher about his book The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture, which looks at biotechnology as a global phenomenon. Thacker expanded a bit on biotechology in pop culture:

It’s pretty obvious, if one looks around, that the life sciences and biotechnology have pervaded popular culture. A great way of demonstrating this is to look at all of the re-makes of Cold War-era science fiction and comics: Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc. It seems to now be a requirement to somehow put genetics in the stories, even if it really doesn’t make any sense (which is often). I’m less interested in what the director ‘intended’ to mean by this than what it means culturally that genetics, biotech, and even nanotech are always found in SF. One thing it means is that these sciences and technologies are normalized in a way that the general public going to a film will ‘accept’ their inclusion as a matter of course. Certainly there are always SF-geeks who dispute the technical accuracy of how the genetic mutation actually creates the superhero or villain, but on a general level these technosciences have become a part of a certain cultural imaginary. So the question is ‘what conditions had to be in place such that these particular technosciences could become normalized as a part of a certain world-view?’ Perhaps this process is somewhat parallel to the normalization of medicine and public health practices themselves.

So I think that popular culture is relevant, not because I believe that films should educate and moralize, but because there is actually a great deal of ambivalence in pop culture’s treatment of technoscience. We can’t live without it, and yet it seems to be our downfall. The movies that moralize about the ineradicable human spirit do so using the most advanced computer graphics and special effects. There’s also a sense in many of these films, books, and comics, that we as a culture are not quite sure what to do with all of this information and all these gadgets. It’s almost as if the greatest challenge posed to SF now is finding something interesting to do with all the technology that exists.

I think Thacker makes an interesting point that genetics has been "normalized" in pop culture, even though the science isn't usually accurately portrayed. I wonder if that (inaccurate) familiarity with biological concepts is actually a detriment to the public understanding of science. Is learning about real biology like unlearning a bad habit to the general public? I hope not.

Other publications by Eugene Thacker:

• Sample chapters of The Global Genome
  
• "Cryptobiologies" in ArtNotes Journal
• "Biophilosphy for the 21st Century" in CTHEORY
• "Nomos, Nosos and Bios" in Culture Machine
  
• "Lacerations: The Visible Human Project, Impossible Anatomies, and the Loss of Corporeal Comprehension" in Culture Machine
  
• In his course Biomedicine and Culture (pdf), the readings include The Plague by Albert Camus; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine by Roy Porter; and Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
  by Susan Sontag.
  

Tags:Eugene Thacker, science fiction, biotechnology

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

It's Not Easy Being Green

One thing that the various video versions of The Hulk have in common is that he's big and he's green. But what would a big dude with green blood flowing through his veins actually look like? In both the original TV series and Ang Lee's 2003 movie the Hulk (played by Lou Ferrigno in the former and CGI in the latter) was a bright green color. If you've seen the new movie version that was released on Friday, you probably noticed that the Hulk was looking a little less brightly colored. According to an article in Sunday's LA Times about the movie's visual effects, the toned-down skin color was meant to be more "realistic."

Skin tone was another primary focus, as animators studiously considered, yes, what it would mean to be someone with green blood coursing through his veins. Their determination: The "meat" would be darker as a result, not brighter. Accordingly, their Hulk appears olive in most scenes and, fleetingly, almost slate gray. "We wanted to incorporate him more into our environment, to make him feel like he's right there and you could touch him," says visual effects supervisor Kurt Williams, whose team used software engineered for the fantasy menagerie of "The Golden Compass" as a springboard for rendering the Hulk. "We needed to approach him like a CG [computer graphics] human, not a creature."

I wonder if they'll use the same philosophy when they make up Zachary Quinto as young Spock in the upcoming Star Trek movie (probably not).

Tags:The Hulk, biology, green blood

How is Superman like a beetle?

One of the most powerful aliens in fiction is Kal-El of Krypton AKA Superman. But what kind of anatomy and physiology would be required to be faster than a speeding bullet? Perhaps a protective hard chitinous shell? Find out more in this clip from a TV show about the science of Superman. (The section on super-physiology starts at 3:09.)


Tags:Superman, physiology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: February 9 Edition

Some biology in science fiction bits from around the internets:

Times Online lists The Top 10 modern sci-fi movie clichés, starting with "A virus has decimated the population . . . " (via SF Signal)

As quoted in the latest edition of Ansible:

History looks more and more like a science-fiction novel in which mutants repeatedly arose and displaced normal humans -- sometimes quietly, by surviving starvation and disease better, other times as a conquering horde' (Gregory Cochran, co-author of a paper on human evolution, quoted in Newsweek , 19 January)

David Hughes, editor at Electric Spec, reviews Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain, including how well the science holds up 15 years after its original publication.

I'm afraid that Kress didn't get it right in terms of how much genetic science (among other things) would develop. (If fact, there's one point where smoking is referred to as an "archaic" habit. If only we'd come that far!).

Wil McCarthy's Lab Notes column in Sci Fi Weekly takes a look at the science of the Cloverfield monster

Adam Weiner, author of Don't Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies looks at the science of superheroes for Popular Science. It is mostly about physics, naturally, but there are also bits on the physiology of The Hulk and the improbability that The Torch has intact DNA.

A special edition of GATTACA will be released March 11.

BoingBoing TV presents Codehunters, a short anime by Ben Hibon. There are demons and death and DNA:

Since Khaan came into power his supremacy had been challenged by a single dissenter, a man named Krai. This man was a renowned “Coder”; one of the last survivors of a supreme race possessing the ability to manipulate DNA, the code of life. Krai was the only person with the power to challenge Khaan’s rule of terror. As his wrath turned against Khaan, Krai became the people’s hero, a symbol of rebellion and freedom.

io9 determines which giant monster is tallest - Cloverfield monster? King Kong? Godzilla? Kroll? Read it to find out.

In the New York Times Paper Cuts blog, Dave Itzkoff lets actor/comedian Bill Hader review his favorite science fiction and horror novels. (via the Dizzies)

I was reading an interview with Alex Garland about “28 Days Later,” where he said: This is basically me ripping off this book I read when I was a kid, called “Day of the Triffids.” I found it in a used-book store in L.A., called the Iliad, and from the first chapter alone I was hooked. It is a lot like “28 Days Later” – a guy wakes up in a hospital and there’s no one in there, and all of London is vacant. But instead of turning into zombies, everyone in London is now blind, because they were watching an asteroid shower. They figure out that he can see, so he’s being chased by all these blind people. Think about if everyone in New York lost their sight, and you were the one guy who could still see, and people figured it out. It’s just such a terrifying image. And then the plants show up. Just to add another layer, there are plants that whip out and destroy you. After I read “Day of the Triffids,” I read “The Ruins,” a Scott Smith book that’s also about killer plants. Now I’m afraid of plants

You can win a copy of Edward Willett's new novel Marseguro. From the cover blurb:

Marseguro, a water world far distant from Earth, is home to a small colony of unmodified humans known as landlings and to the Selkies, a water-dwelling race created by geneticist Victor Hansen from modified human DNA. For seventy years the Selkies and the unmodified landlings have dwelled together in peace, safe from pursuit by the current theocratic rulers of Earth–a group intent on maintaining human genetic and religious purity.

Then landling Chris Keating, a misfit on any world, seeks personal revenge on Emily Wood and her fellow Selkies by activating a distress beacon taken from the remains of the original colony ship. When the Earth forces capture the signal and pinpoint its origin, a strike force, with Victor Hansen’s own grandson Richard aboard, is sent to eradicate this abomination.

Yet Marseguro will not prove as easy to conquer as the Earth force anticipates. And what Richard Hansen discovers may alter not only his own destiny but that of Marseguro and Earth as well…

Find out how to win a copy and read sample chapters.

Finally, to get yourself a weekly fix of cool free fiction, head over to Tor and sign up for their mailing list.

The first week's free book is Mistborn, by rising fantasy star Brandon Sanderson. Next week's will be Old Man's War by John Scalzi, 2006's winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Over the next several weeks, other books still.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: January 19 Edition

A few Biology in Science Fiction bits from around the web:

Peter Mc at The Beagle Project Blog asks where are the fictional scientific heroes for our young people?

But where are the books for children and teenagers in which evolution does not cause mutated threats to the human race, where science and scientists save humanity and get the credit. Where scientists get the natty threads and the whip-crack one-liners. Where they don't just get to watch while their good work is taken by a cut lead man or woman and put to good use.

He's asking for some good science-based fiction for 2009.

Greg Burgas at Comics Should be Good blog lists his picks for the best comics of the year. Elephantmen by Richard Starkings and Moritat is one of his picks for best ongoing series.

Starkings’ science fiction tale, like all good sci-fi, illuminates issues that we grapple with in the present, such as war, bigotry, genetic engineering, and an unfair class system. [. . . ] Obadiah Horn and his consort, Sahara, are two other beautifully realized characters, giving us a view of what happens when a human-animal hybrid seizes power within Los Angeles and the prejudices he and the woman he loves faces. Like all good villains, Obadiah Horn isn’t completely villainous, and the tender moments he shares with Sahara make his dark side even more horrifice.

Slice of SciFi reports on the new internet-only series "IQ 145":

Shot almost entirely in front of green screen in hi-def, the series will follow Nate Palmer, the son of a renowned, inventor/futurist. Nate’s father, not known for fits of depression has mysteriously committed suicide. Nate is recruited by a secret organization to help search for his father’s last experiment but will soon discover that it is he that is the experiment.

IQ 145 starts next week.

J. Craig Venter isn't just about synthetic organisms. He recently announce that he had sequence his own genome and revealed his genetic traits to the public. The New Haven Advocate asked Yale professor Jim Noonan and Stanford professor Bill Hurlbut whether they thought that meant we are heading towards a real-life Gattaca. Noonan said:

"The problem with the movie Gattaca is that it's assumed that these are guaranteed diseases and conditions, whereas that's not the case." According to Noonan, the associated risks for these genetic indicators "aren't 50 percent—they're more like 5 percent." Still, he worries the information could be used irresponsibly, even discriminatorily.

io9 takes a look at the upcoming movie Sleep Dealer:

In Sleep Dealer, the U.S. has finally succeeded in stopping illegal immigrants crossing over from Mexico. But Mexicans can still work in American factories and farms for almost no money, thanks to the miracle of telecommuting. The people in Alex Rivera's film hook up their nervous systems to the Internet to control robots in the U.S., but it takes a toll on them, as you can see from the spooky clip and stills above. The film's title refers to workers who get so drained they collapse.

Greg L. Johnson lists his favorite science fiction books of 2007 for SF Site, including Thirteen by Richard Morgan:

Speaking of paranoia, Thirteen reeks of it. Set in a near-future Earth where concerns with genetically-influenced behavior has become a world-wide obsession, the 'thirteens' are humans whose genetic structure has been altered to remove most, if not all, of their inhibitions toward sudden, inter-personal violence. The main character is one of the thirteens, and it is a major achievement of Richard Morgan's novel that as the story goes on, the reader's sympathies align more and more with the actions of a character who scares the entire world.

Robert Sawyer writes about movie adaptations of Pierre Boulle's La Planète des singes (AKA Planet of the Apes).

Finally, Jay Garmon writes about "75 words every sci-fi fan should know" for TechRepublic. A few bioscience terms made his list, including (via ).

1. mindfood (n.)
2. posthuman (n.)
3. sapient (n.)
4. sentience (n.)
5. wetware (n.)
6. xenology (n.)

Tags:science fiction, biology

Prehistoric Pulp

The Prehistoric Pulp blog focuses on dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters in novels, comics, and the occasional game and television show. There have been a couple of recent posts of particular interest to paleo-SF fans:

• A list of free paleo-stories on the web, with links to tales by a wide range of 20th and 21st century authors, including: Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert J. Sawyer, Clark Ashton Smith, Howard Waldrop, and many others. (via SF Signal)
• There is also an interesting post about novels featuring extinct animals. Some let you see prehistoric times through the animals' eyes (e.g., Evolution by Stephen Baxter), others resurrect the animals in the present (e.g., Henry Adam Knight's Carnosaur or cast dinosaurs as aliens (e.g., Catherine Wells' Beyond the Gates), or present alternate timelines where the dinosaurs never went extinct (e.g. Harry Harrison's West of Eden (Eden Trilogy)). Read the full post for a number of examples in all of these categories - and more! (via Robert J. Sawyer)
  

Image: Ornithopods, by John Conway for Wikipedia.
Tags:science fiction, paleontology, dinosaurs, free fiction

Y: The Last Man and Blue Moon Butterflies

A paper in today's issue of Science by Sylvain Charlat and colleagues looks at the evolution of a population of Blue Moon butterflies that was infected with the Wolbachia bacterium, which selectively kills male embryos. The result was a population of butterflies with a female to male ratio of 100:1. When individuals in the population that were resistant to Wolbachia appeared, presumably due to a nuclear mutation, the resistance rapidly spread through the population and within 10 generations the sex ratio was back to 1:1.

PZ Myers compares the Wolbachia-infected Blue Moon butterfly population to the situation in the graphic novel Y: The Last Man, in which all male mammals are killed by a mysterious disease - except the hero Yorick and his monkey.

Substantial parts of it are biologically nearly impossible: the wide cross-species susceptibility, the near instantaneous lethality, and the simultaneity of its effect everywhere (there are also all kinds of weird correlations with other sort of magical putative causes, which may be red herrings).

A disease that infects only males is clearly plausible, but Yorick doesn't follow the example of his butterfly brethren, as PZ points out.

Now here's one thing that bugs me about Y: The Last Man. For this rapid dispersal of resistance to spread, resistant males should be procreating profligately. In the book, Yorick seems to be obstinately abstinent! (Some of the women, at least, understand the principle, and there are plots with attempts to capture the last man for breeding stock for their group.) I can understand how the author might want to resist turning the story into a boring male fantasy of having the only penis among teeming millions of fertile females, but come on, biological reality has to intrude at some point. The future of the human race demands it!

I suppose you have to read the series to find out if Yorick indeed does his part to save humanity.

Tags:Y: The Last Man, sex ratio, Wolbachia, blue moon butterfly

The Disney Version of Life on Mars

Nearly 50 years ago the Disneyland TV show broadcast the episode, "Mars And Beyond." The clip below takes a fantastic animated look at possible Martian life.

(via Metafilter)

Tags: Life on Mars, Mars, Disney, animation

X-ray Vision

Corie Ralston takes a look at the science of x-ray vision in the May 21 edition of Strange Horizons. She points out that there are some good reasons not to scan your loved ones with x-rays.

First, x-rays happen to be at just the right frequency to a) get through your skin, and b) break the oxygen-hydrogen bonds in water and produce radicals in your body. Radicals in turn wreak havoc on your DNA. The result? Cell growth out of control (i.e. cancer). Sorry, Superman! Maybe using x-rays to see through the clothing of your beloved isn't such a great idea. The x-rays used at the dentist and doctor's office are used very sparingly, and even so it still isn't a good idea to get too much exposure. There's a good reason they drape that lead apron over you and then leave the room while you are being irradiated.

There are also technical problems: since x-rays tend to pass through, rather than bounce off of, solid objects it's not clear how the x-rays emitted by Superman get back to his eyes. Ralston speculates that Superman could possibly use the Compton effect to detect x-ray scattering, but even that isn't very plausible. Read the entire article for her nice explanation of what you can and cannot do with x-rays.

Tags:Superman, x-ray vision

The Silver Surfer and the Sandman

The current Lab Notes column at SciFi.com talks about the science of the Silver Surfer. If you haven't seen the promos, the chrome-plated Silver Surfer hangs ten through the vacuum of space to appear in the new Fantastic Four movie. As fantastic as he might seem, Will McCarthy cobbles together a plausible explanation. SS taps into the zero point energy of the universe to power his board. He (if that's the right term) must be far from human:

Also, what if his skin isn't made of atoms and molecules at all, but is actually some sort of perfectly reflective spacetime barrier, akin to the edge of the screen in an old-fashioned game of Pong? If the Surfer's body is essentially a programming glitch in the information fabric of the universe, it might well be impossible to destroy, at least with the sorts of weapons human beings—and mutants—can bring to bear. Also, if it could reflect gravitational energy as well as photons, that would explain why he's so light on his feet, and it even suggests an explanation for his talent of sliding through buildings without damaging them. I.e., he isn't a solid object at all.

That sounds at least as plausible as a naked man surfing through space.

As a comic book-based movie bonus, check out Pharyngula commenter PaulC's speculation as to how the brain of Spiderman 3 villain the Sandman might work.

Tags:Silver Surfer, Sandman, movies

Spiderman vs. Spiders

LiveScience takes a look at How Spider-Man Compares to the Real Thing. It turns out that

Spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight, is stronger than bullet-proof Kevlar and more elastic than nylon, biologists say.

There are also species of spiders that spin silk from their feet, rather than their abdomen.

No word on whether real spiders can woo attractive redheads, though.

Image: Garden Spider @ U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Tags:science fiction, biology

Marvel Super Heroes Science Exhibition

The Marvel Super Heroes Science Exhibition is a traveling exhibit that uses the world of Marvel comics to teach science to kids. In the biosciences, for example, the X-Men are used to introduce DNA and mutations, Spiderman is used to demonstrate the strength of spider web silk, and the Hulk helps explain the origin of emotional outbursts. In all, 78 Marvel characters appear in the exhibit.

Until March 25, the exhibit is at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, then it's on to the St. Louis Science Center, where the exhibit will run April 28-September 7. To help keep the focus on science, you can download the free Marvel Companion Guide (pdf) with related lessons and activities for kids from Kindergarten through 12th Grade.

(found via easternblot, who links to several other online sources for using comics to teach science)
Tags:comics, biology , science, museums

Mighty Blue Science!

Science writer Jennifer Ouellette reports good news in her excellent blog, Cocktail Party Physics: Season 1 of the animated version of The Tick is now on DVD. It's clever and funny, and, as Jennifer points out, full of twisted science:

And there's lots of science! Of a particularly twisted nonsensical sort, granted, but science nonetheless. For people like me, who adore finding pop culture tie-ins as an excuse to talk about science, this is a very exciting thing. Consider the case of a slime-based organism called Thrakkorzog, inventor of the Clonerizer. His cloning process involves mixing together a "secret cloning sauce," a pinch of a oregano, and a toenail from the subject to be cloned. Talk about being ripped from the headlines! Or perhaps the menu of an Italian restaurant...

Read her whole post for more mighty blue science. Spoon!



Tags:The Tick, biology, physics