At SIMF: Room needed on the Ark, for creatures great and small

I have a new post up over at Science in My Fiction - "Room Needed on the Ark" - that considers the following scenario: if Earth were in imminent danger of destruction and we had a space ark that could carry humans, animals, and plants to safety, how would we decide which animals to rescue? and how many individuals of each species we'd need to bring along?

Part of the answer depends, of course, on what the goal would be. Setting up a human colony on another planet might have different requirements than if the goal was to restore life on a ravaged Earth. To set up brand new self-sustaining ecosystems would likely require a wide range of animals and plants, whereas a self-contained and highly technological settlement might not.

And I think there is a bigger picture to look at. If we want to be able to save species from going extinct, or to have a repository to maintain genetic variety in crop plants, we need to be collecting samples and genetic material now (which is being done). So if we want to keep our precious gene banks from danger, do we spread them out in multiple countries? or do we build a DNA library on the moon?

So many questions! Read "Room Needed on the Ark" and share what you think.

Image: Startling Stories, November 1939

Science & SF Tidbits: Speculative Genomics, Snot Whales, and Idiocracy (not)

Some fictional and speculative genetics and genomics for your reading pleasure:

Free Fiction:

• The Authors: Flash Fiction Fest - Four Weeks of Flash Fiction from December House »

Publisher December House is posting several new short fiction pieces every day of November. Many of the stories have a "science fiction feel". Sean Craven's stories feature Henry Cleary; the Colonel, who's a rooster genetically engineered to have teeth and a long muscular tail; and many other science fictional biological oddities.

Craven has also been posting some thoughts on the biological background of his stories on his blog. If you are interested in some real odd biology, give them a read here: Salamanders and Snot Whales, The Shade-Tree Biotechnician

Note that the stories are only available free through the end of November, so check them out soon.

Speculative genetics:

• Brazil To Clone Wild Animals In Danger Of Extinction » io9
EMBRAPA, the Brazilian government's agricultural research agency, successfully cloned a cow in 2001. Since then they've been refining their cloning program to the point where they have now announced they are going to try cloning endangered species. Their list includes eight animals on the threatened species list, such as the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), the jaguar (Panthera onca) and the black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus).

EMBRAPA has stated that their goal is to keep the cloned animals in captivity and only use them for restocking zoo populations and study, rather than releasing them to the wild. But it makes me wonder: is cloning a good use of resources in situations where the wild populations are at risk?

• Cancer, Data and the Fallacy of the $1000 Genome » Forbes
Dr. Mark Boguski has a message: "The time of the $1000 genome meme is over. It served us well for years – driving advances in instrumentation, chemistry and biology. But now it is reducing clinical credibility. It’s time for it to leave the lexicon of healthcare; it has to go."

The fact is that genome sequencing for cancer patients is expensive (far more than $1000), not covered by insurance, available to a relatively limited number of people, and might not be that informative clinically. He argues that the focus should be on precision diagnostics, which involves "big data" and analytics. And because this article is in Forbes, that means that Boguski and colleagues have started a business - Genome Health Solutions - to do just that.

It seems to me that with potentially limited research funds it's not clear whether scientists should be striving to make genome available and affordable for everyone, or if it would be better if they instead focused on deeper analysis of the existing data - or, ideally, if both approaches are possible. Which would be better for the average cancer patient is still unclear.

Image: SNPs: Single Nucelotide Polymorphisms, Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.science.energy.gov/ber/. Used with permission.

• Neuroskeptic: We're Probably Not Getting Dumber »
While it may be popular to argue that the human race is evolving to be dumber Idiocracy-style, the good news is that we're probably not actually getting less intelligent as a species. We won't even become beautiful-but-dim Eloi. In the linked article Neuroskeptic explains how two recent articles claiming that humans are getting dumber are based on faulty assumptions.

• Sci-Fi Political Thriller, Or Fact? - HuffPost Live »
Harvard geneticist George Church, SF author/futurist David Brin, and futurist Jamais Cascio, discuss the speculative possibility of "Hacking Obama's DNA". I'm glad the Huffington Post included a geneticist in the discussion!

Science & SF Tidbits: Life giving asteroid belts and the ethics of cloning

A couple of articles about what might help create life out there and what's possible for the creation of life right here:

• Alien Life May Require Rare 'Just-Right' Asteroid Belts »

Astronomers Rebecca G. Martin and Mario Livio and have proposed that an asteroid belt that's just the right distance away from a system's sun and other planets may make life more likely. Why is that the case? Because asteroids may have helped bring water and organic materials to early Earth.

You may be thinking about the hypothesis that a meteor hitting the Earth caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. But maybe massive extinctions are ultimately a boon to life as well, opening up ecological niches for rapidly evolving critters to expand into.

Yes, it's (educated) speculation, based on the conditions on the only planet that we know has life - Earth, but it's interesting to consider. Considering that less than 4% of known solar systems appear to have an asteroid belt, if they are right that could reduce the chances of our finding life - at least as we know it - in other solar systems.

Image: There are several different scenarios for the evolution of asteroid belts. Depicted is our solar system where Jupiter (or a similarly-sized planet) orbits the sun just outside the asteroid belt. For other models see the NASA Scenarios for the Evolution of Asteroid Belts page. Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI (not copyrighted and free to use)

• Could Clones of 'Cloud Atlas' Be in Our Future? : Discovery News »

In the future depicted in the movie Cloud Atlas, fabricant" Sonmi-451 clones are servants, slaves and sex toys.They sound a lot like the "Gammas" and "Deltas" in Brave New World (only sexier).

Is it even technically possible to grow of an army of human clones in artificial wombs? According to the linked article, while there is ongoing research, it likely would not be really workable for a long time - and that's assuming that ethical considerations allow the development of the technology in the first place.

Discovery News also provides a video where geneticist Robert Lanza talks about cloning technology that can resurrect extinct animal species - and at least theoretically could be used to bring time-displaced genetic copies of dead people back to life too. 

Science & SF Tidbits: Oct. 22, 2012: Fictional Exoplanets, Scientific Goals, Resurrecting T.rex

Interesting links:

• Science Fiction in the Age of Exoplanet Discovery »

SF Author and astronomer Mike Brotherton provides some guidelines for science fiction writers who want to don't want their story set on a distant planet to seem scientifically out of date in light of recent astronomical discoveries.

• Why Mars Died, and Earth Lived (YouTube)

This visually striking video takes a look at why Mars and Venus may have been stripped of their atmospheres while Earth was spared. What saved us? Magnetic fields and the moisture in the atmosphere contributed.

I wonder what this means for possible plans to terraform Mars: is it risking failure because the planet cannot hold an atmosphere? or could we get around that problem continuously replenish the air?

• How should we update Boyle's list of problems for scientists?

In the 1660s chemist Robert Boyle wrote a list of 24 problems for scientists to solve. While some of his goals - like the art of flying and methods of determining longitude - have been solved, Boyle thought big, including some goals that scientists are still working towards 300 years later. We've made progress towards "recovery of youth", "prolongation of life" and "curing wounds at a distance" since Boyle's day, but research in those fields is still ongoing. But Matthew Baggott wanted to know what great visionary goals could be set for today's scientists and so started a discussion at Quora: check it out!

You can see a scan Boyle's original list on the Boyle Project's collection.

• How a T.Rex named Bob is brining about a revolution in paelontology.

Koan de Paus explains how there may be hope yet for Jurassic Park-style cloning of dinosaurs. A key finding: a fossil from a pregnant T.rex nicknamed Bob that contained a fragment of soft tissue. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but it's fun to think about.

Image: Portrait of chemist and visionary Robert Boyle by Johann Kerseboom c. 1689. 

Free Friday Flick: Clonely

This week's free movie - Clonely - is a short film written, shot, edited and scored in a mere 48 hours as part of the  2008 Chicago 48 Hour Film Project.

It's the story of a lonely widower who has his dead wife cloned, but who finds she really isn't the same woman he married, even though their daughter (his daughter?) seems happy to simply have her mom back.

Clonely (Science Fiction) from Jerry Vasilatos on Vimeo.

Created by Jerry Vasilatos and Nitestar Productions, the movie won an award for "Best Use of Line of Dialogue" ("What's the password?").  The other required elements for the film were a Character "Walter or Wilma Western, Repair Person" and a prop "urn or container with a deceased's ashes".

 I'm not sure if I'd consider the story to have a happy ending or not.

It reminds me a bit of the stories you read about wealthy folks who spend huge sums of money to have their dead dog or cat cloned. The replica is never going to be the same as the original. I can't imagine that a human clone would not be able to fill the hollow place left when a loved one leaves us, although I can understand how tempting it might be if that option were available.

Ultimately, isn't better to move forward with your life than to try to replicate the past?

Friday Free Flick: Moon

Imagine you are are managing a mining facility on the far side of the Moon, working all alone.  You have no direct contact with your family and friends back on Earth, and you are counting the days until your three year contract is finished and you can return home. And then it happens: you are in a life-threatening accident, and you realize that your situation is not at all as it seems.

That's the premise of the critically acclaimed and Hugo award winning 2009 movie Moon, which stars Sam Rockwell as the moon base worker Sam.

You can watch Moon for free via Crackle on YouTube if you are willing to sit through a few ads.



Note that the video is rated "R", and so you'll need to sign in to your YouTube account to "prove" you are at least 18 years old.

[the rest of post has spoilers]

In the movie, Sam wakes up in the base's infirmary with no memory of the accident, and makes a startling discovery: he's not the Sam that was in the accident, but a replacement clone. The old Sam and the new Sam work together to figure out what's really going on before a "rescue" squad from the mining company arrives.

While the movie's director Duncan Jones has apparently thought a lot about how a Helium-3 mining facility on the Moon would operate, cloning is pretty much just a plot device. As Jones put it:

Cloning seemed to fit  well into the embryonic story I was playing with of a man stuck in a moon base. I got excited thinking:
“If you met you in person, would you like yourself?” I think it’s the most brutal, honest and human question there is…and that makes it perfect for sci-fi.” 

And the movie raises what I think is an important philosophical question: if human cloning were cheap and easy, to what extent would cost-cutting businesses use clones if they were interchangeable and disposable parts of a machine? And how would people respond if that user were discovered?

Moon does not address the issue quite as as deeply or movingly as Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, but it still provides ample food for thought.

I think Rockwell did an excellent job playing two different versions of himself: one whose physical and mental health is breaking down, and a younger, healthier version who has not yet experienced the years of managing the base alone. It's thoughtful science fiction, rather than an action-packed blockbuster. I recommend it.

(If you prefer an ad-free version, you can watch for $0.99 through Amazon Instant)

March Free Fiction Highlights: Humans and their Clones

This month the free science fiction with biology directory highlights stories featuring humans and their clones who don't always live up to expectations...

Photo: Multiple Lucys by fruity monkey on Flickr

Understanding Science in Science Fictional Times

I just finished reading Rebecca Skloot's excellent book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 30. Cells taken from her tumor were out to be the first human cells that could grow in the laboratory.

Those "immortal" cells - coded named HeLa - would play an a crucial role in testing the first effective polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in the mid-1950s. Since then, HeLa cells have been used in thousands of studies, and added to our understanding of how both normal and cancel cells function.

Skloot goes beyond discussing the science and bioethics surrounding the development of cell culture technology and human experimentation to provide a portrait of Henrietta as a person. And a big part of her story involves Skloot's decade-long interactions with Henrietta's family and friends, and in particular with Henrietta's daughter Deborah Lacks Pullum.

Deborah was a baby when Henrietta died from complications of cervical cancer in 1951. She never knew her mother, but really wanted to learn more. And even though she had little formal schooling, she wanted to know what was happening with her mother's cells. As Skloot described it in an interview:

She had always wanted to know who her mother was but no one ever talked about Henrietta. So when Deborah found out that this part of her mother was still alive she became desperate to understand what that meant: Did it hurt her mother when scientists injected her cells with viruses and toxins? Had scientists cloned her mother? And could those cells help scientists tell her about her mother, like what her favorite color was and if she liked to dance.

Deborah began to teach herself about the basics of how cells work, and read everything she could about HeLa cells. But even when you have a solid background in biology, it can be hard to sort out what's solid science and what's speculation when scientific research is reported by the mainstream media. Even relatively mild headlines like "Cancer cells from long-dead woman invade other cultures" or "Human and plant cells combined" sound pretty sensational.

So it doesn't surprise me that while Deborah was struggling to understand all this unfamiliar information, she latched onto science fiction with related science. That all came bursting out during her first face-to-face meeting with Skloot:

"I saw [Jurassic Park] a bunch of times," she said. "They talking about the genes and taking them from cells to bring that dinosaur back to life and I'm like, Oh Lord, I got a paper on how they were doin that with my mother's cells too!" She held up another videocassette, this one a made-for-TV movie called The Clone. In it, an infertility doctor secretly harvest extra embryos from one of his patients and uses them to create a colony of clones of the woman's son, who died young in an accident.

"That doctor took cells from that woman and made them into little boys look just liker her child," Deborah told me. "That poor woman didn't even know about all the clones until she saw one walk out of a store. I don't know what I'd do if I saw one of my mother's clones walking around somewhere."

It's not that Deborah didn't know the movies were fiction, but that they seemed tell story similar to what she had been reading about her mother's cells. The science fiction seemed to help her imagine the foreign science.

I don't find that surprising.  An entertaining story can make science seem more "real" than a dry newspaper article or textbook filled with technical terminology.  What I know about neutron stars comes more from reading Niven's "Neutron Star" than from any technical reading.

It's sometimes said that we are living in "science fictional" times. Indeed we have the ability to manipulate the biology of  plants, animals, and even humans in ways that were solely the realm of speculative fiction when the structure of DNA was discovered nearly 60 years ago. But the underlying science is complex, and the often poor reporting of current research rarely makes it much easier to understand.

That's part of the reason why I find it so frustrating when science fiction movies and books get the basics wrong.  We still can't clone dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park, and of course a big part of science fiction is pure speculation as to how science and technology might develop. But even wildly speculative biology should start with ordinary cells, DNA, and proteins in the same way that entirely fictional spaceships should obey the laws of physics.

Science fiction - particularly in the movies - has the potential open the door to science to people with a wide range of educational backgrounds.  I wish Hollywood would put more effort into getting the basics right.

------

For more information about the writing of  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, listen to the Radiolab interview with Rebecca Skloot that includes some of her recorded interviews with Henrietta's daughter Deborah.

You can read an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks at Oprah.com.

Image by Dr. Timothy Triche, National Cancer Institute. Scanning electron micrograph of cultured HeLa cells infected with Adenovirus.

"Never Let Me Go" is relatable science fiction?

In last Sunday's LA Times, there was a lengthy article about director Mark Romanek and his soon-to-be-released movie adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go.

The story, which the article calls a "dystopian drama", is based on a science fictional premise. But Never Let Me Go is not an action-packed adventure tale, and the science fiction is hidden from both the reader and the characters for much of the novel. Most reviews only hint at the SF themes, because they are considered "spoilers" for the story.

And it seems clear to me that even if Never Let Me Go is science fiction (and I think it is), it's much more likely to be shelved with Ishiguro's  Remains of the Day in the "literary fiction" section of your local bookstore, than next to the latest Brian Herbert novel.

Given all that, it's not too surprising that Romanek downplays the SF elements of the movie version.

However, I was a bit disappointed by the way that Romanek - and the reporter who wrote the LA Times story - described the movies take on science fiction:

"Never Let Me Go" is a science fiction film with none of the conventions of the genre. There are no rocket ships, alien life forms or sentient computers — just a group of outwardly normal schoolchildren and young adults whose lives will be truncated by a procedure forebodingly referred to as "donation" that ends in "completion."


"I never wanted it to be a science-fiction film in terms of its being fantastical. I wanted it to be relatable," says Romanek. "We said, 'Let's make a science-fiction film that doesn't have any tangible science fiction in it.'"

I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising the LA Times writer used the tired "science fiction is about rocket ships and aliens" trope, since that description isn't too far off for most movie SF. At least he didn't refer to talking squids from outer space.

What I disagree with is Romanek's suggestion that "fantastical" elements automatically make a movie "unrelatable". For me, it's the depiction of a character's personality and relationships that determines whether she's relatable, not the setting.

And considering pretty much all I know about English boarding schools comes from George Orwell's essays and  Harry Potter novels, the setting of Never Let You Go doesn't seem much less exotic than a love story set in the 19th century American prairie or future Tokyo or the moon.

It turns out that Romanek actually did have to add some SF background for people to fully understand what was going on in the film:

As it turned out, some members of the "Never Let Me Go" preview audiences were thrown by what the film intentionally left vague. Was it unfolding in the real England of the late 1990s, or some parallel reality? Romanek worried that the audience was so busy trying to sort that out that it wasn't hooking into the story's emotions, its chronicle of first love. So working with Ishiguro, Romanek and Garland added a new opening card that reads:

"The breakthrough in medical science came in 1952

"Doctors could now cure the previously incurable

"By 1967, life expectancy passed 100 years"

As the movie makes clear, that breakthrough came at an unimaginable price. And that's the heartbreak of "Never Let Me Go."

Sounds like science fiction to me.
Official trailer:

• Ask Kazuo Ishiguro a question about the film - you might even get a response
• Official movie site for Never Let Me Go. The movie opens September 15th in "select markets", and nation-wide on October 1st.
• "With 'Never Let Me Go,' Mark Romanek decides there's no need to spell it all out" by John Horn, Los Angeles Times
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro at Amazon.com (affiliate link)

He shoots! He scores!

I'm not much of a winter sports fan, but when the Winter Olympics rolls around, I find myself watching speed skating and ski cross and skeleton and figure skating. And that's how I found myself watching the exciting USA-Canada hockey game on Sunday.

What does this have to do with science fiction? It an excuse to post a link to Steven Popkes' 2002 story "The Ice".   

Phil Berger is a young hockey star who learns that he is actually a clone of Canadian hockey great  Gordie Howe. 

 The lead article, by Frank Hammett and Carl Weatherspoon, is about the "Gordie Howe Clone." The article continues, occupying most of the flimsy with a host of associated links. There are several pictures of DNA chromatographs and chromosomes, documenting the similarities between the Howe genotype and that of Phil Berger.

Phil feels as if the world has entered into some long, horrible tunnel. He shakes his head and stares at the pictures. This is his life on display without his permission. No. It’s more than that. He feels naked before strangers. He feels shame without knowing why.

The story isn't so much about hockey,  as it is about a young man trying to figure out who he really is and what he wants to do with his life.

Read "The Ice" by Steven Popkes

(I wonder what Mr. Howe thinks of the story.)
((Also, Go Team USA!))

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickspacee/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Tags:science fiction, cloning, hockey

The Clone Song: You don't need to

Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.

The Beam Me Up blog has posted "The Clone Song", a ditty sung to the tune of Home on the Range, penned by Randall Garrett and Isaac Asimov. As the first verse above suggests, it's all about -er- self love.

It actually reminds me a bit of "Nine Lives", Ursula Le Guin's clone-based short story that was published in Playboy in 1969. Those clones didn't need anyone but each other either. (I find the whole "if I had a clone I'd be totally into incest" theme a bit creepy, but it's a popular one in SF.)

Tags:science fiction, clones

The Fiction of Now

The September 19th issue of London-based popular science magazine New Scientist is a special section, "Sci-fi special: The fiction of now"*, guest edited by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I don't feel like I know enough to either agree or disagree with Robinson's assessment of British science fiction. I would agree with him, however, that the British SF writers who contributed flash fiction to the special issue are excellent.

Justina Robson's story "One Shot" is the only completely biological one of the bunch, but it's worth spending the short time it takes to read them all.

And if you think you could do better, enter New Scientist's Flash fiction competition with your story or 350 words or less.

* New Scientist unfortunately seem to have missed the memo that some consider SciFi a dirty word - perhaps the hyphen removes the sting?

Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: May 16 Edition

Some miscellaneous biology-related science fiction links from around the web:

On SF

Charlie Jane Anders @ io9: Is "Sense of Wonder" Just a Code for Returning to Childhood? (my answer: no way!)

Nancy Kress: SF is Dead - Again

Ben Bova: Science is so important to us, yet so unappreciated

Written Word

Wired Science lists science fiction novels that feature memory alteration

SF Signal interviews CJ Cherryh about her new novel Regenesis.

Jo Walton @ Tor.com reviews Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

From A Sci-Fi Standpoint reviews James E. Gunn's 1962 novel, The Immortals.

Actually the Immortals appear very little in the book, primarily at the beginning, and play a relatively small role. As you read on, you find that the book is really all about issues relating to medicine and its role in society, and especially about its differential availability to those at various economic levels. Indeed, the hunt for the Immortals is really a metaphor of sorts for the privileged status of the ultra-rich who have access to the best, most cutting-edge medical care.

In a BBC interview, author Peter F. Hamilton (Night's Dawn) talked a bit about genetic engineering:

PFH: The genetic technology that hopefully will cure Spina Bifida one day could also be used to create viruses that could just wipe us out completely.

But does that mean you should stop researching genetics? We laugh, we hold politicians and the political process in contempt, but the societal structure of international law and order does actually hold that off.

Movies

What do you call a movie that is set in the very near future, explores biotechnology that is almost-but-not-quite-yet possible, but doesn't otherwise use any science fictional tropes? What if it's a bit too speculative to be considered true realism, but too realistic to quite be SF? I don't really have an answer (speculative bioethics?), but there are a couple of recent films that seem to fit the bill: My Sister's Keeper (watch the trailer at Genetics and Health) and The Baby Formula.

According to SciFi Wire, Warner plans to remake the BBC's Primeval as a big-screen movie.

Warner and Goldsman will transplant the action to the United States and ramp up the spectacle.

Because battling dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures clearly just isn't actiony enough. BBC-America will show season 3 of Primeval beginning tonight, and SciFi is currently airing season 1 on Friday nights.

Center for the Study of Science Fiction has video of Forrest J. Ackerman on Mad Scientists in the Movies

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is being made into a movie starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. It is being filmed in the UK and there is no word on whether the spectacle is bing

At SciFi Scanner Christine Fall writes about Sleep Dealers and new technological advances that may help allow scientists to translate brain activity into images.

Miriam at The Oyster's Garter compares Vampire ecology in Twilight vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

CHUD.com reviews The Gene Generation, recently released on DVD. Bottom line: be very glad you didn't pay to see this movie in the theater.

Live Science: Can You Have Bones Like Wolverine?

ComputerWorld asks "Do sci-fi films get advanced tech right?" including genetic engineering.

Television

Science Not Fiction has a series of posts reviewing the science of each Fringe episode.
Popular Mechanics also has a series of posts reviewing the science of Fringe.

Also at Popular Mechanics: Dollhouse's Memory Science Mixes Fact With Fiction
Annalee Newitz @ io9: Five Brain-Maanipulating Technologies That Prove Dollhouse Exists Right Now

If you are interested in the science of Eleventh Hour, check out the regular Eleventh Hour posts at Science Not Fiction and Genevieve Valentine's posts at Tor.com.
Also Åsa Karlström has an article about the depiction of biophysicist Dr. Jacob Hood at LabLit.com

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

Kyle XY and Einstein's Brain

ABC Family's Kyle XY is one of those shows that sounds interesting, but I've never quite gotten around to actually watching. Maybe it's because ABC Family isn't one of the stations that's on my schedule radar, or maybe it's because the teen angst aspect of the show makes it less appealing than the other shows in its time slot. In any case, the new season starts Monday, and I thought it was high time that I looked at a bit of the biology behind the show. Forgive me (and feel free to leave a comment) if I get part of the storyline wrong .

Here's the general premise of the show: Hunky 26-year old Matt Dallas plays teenager Kyle, who one day wakes up naked and belly button-less in the forest with no memory of his childhood. He's an innocent who needs to learn to learn everything: from learning to speak to simple social interactions, all while trying to discover who he is. Of course it helps that has superior mental and physical skills.

During the first two seasons, Kyle's origins are revealed: he's a clone - subject 781227 - who is part of an experimental program funded by the Zzyzx Corporation to develop super soldiers. At this summer's Comic-Con, io9 interviewed Matt Davis about the show. He talks a bit about Kyle's origins, and suggests that Season 3 (which premiers Monday) will delve heavily into science.

So what sets Kyle apart from your usual supergenius clone? It all started with Albert Einstein. You see, Einstein supposedly spend an extra three weeks in the womb, which allowed his brain to develop further in utero than usual. The result was that he became a physics genius - and started a research program to create others like him. Kyle is one of the latest results of that many-decade long research project. He actually spent 16 years in an artificial womb which allowed him to develop high intelligence, telepathy and other mental skills. It also explains his lack of a belly button.

Now is this based on real science? Not really, as far as I can tell.

- Did Einstein spend an extra 3 weeks in the womb?

I couldn't find any mention of anything unusual about Einstein's birth in any of the biographies I browsed online or on Google Books. It's possible that his birth was later than expected, but I would think that even in the 19th century a pregnancy three weeks past its due date would have been a serious cause for concern. The doctor or midwife attending Einstein's mother would likely have tried to induce childbirth before that time. Today doctors usually induce labor when pregnancy continues two weeks beyond the due date.

- Was Einstein's brain special?

As a boy, Einstein excelled at mathematics, solving problems far above his grade level. However, that aptitude didn't extend to every subject. Einstein's parents supposedly consulted a doctor about his slow verbal development. Even at the age of nine he had difficultly speaking. That may have made him seem slow to his teachers and family. It doesn't seem that anyone expected him to end up an icon of scientific genius.

We actually know a lot about Einstein's brain. Since his death in 1955 it has been analyzed by a number of neuroanatomists. While we still don't understand what made Einstein a genius, it appears that his brain differed from the average in several ways:

• In the early 1980s Marian Diamond examined the ratio of glial cells to neurons in Einstein's brain. In she found that Einstein had a higher than average number of glial cells per neuron in one region of the left inferior parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex which is involved in language and similar functions (see Diamond et al (1985) for details). The significance of these results are unclear and the methodology Diamond used has come under fire.
• A 1996 study showed that Einstein's cerebral cortex had the average number of cells, but was thinner than the control brains. That meant that the neurons were packed more densely in that region. (see Anderson & Harvey (1996)).
• A 1999 study showed that the pattern of grooves in Einstein's parietal lobes wasn't quite normal: the groove called the lateral sulcus or Sylvian fissure was shorter than normal and the inferior parietal lobe, a region of the brain responsible for mathematical thought and the manipulation of objects, was 15% wider than average (see Witelson et al. (1999)).

So what does all of this mean? One suggestion is that Einstein's abilities were due to the fact that the parts of the brain involved in language were smaller than than typical, which allowed parts of his brain involved in processing numbers and spatial relationships to grow larger. That's highly speculative, though, and we may never really know the answer.

One thing is clear: Einstein's brain doesn't appear to have developed more than usual, just differently from average.

- So could extended development in the womb increase intelligence?

Einstein is really only a small part of the Kyle XY mythos. The real biological claim is that Kyle has extraordinary abilities because he remained the equivalent of "in utero" for sixteen years. Is that possible? I don't think so. Human intelligence is determined by a complex set of factors, including genetics, nutrition, and other environmental factors. The connections between neurons in our brain are set in response to training and education, particularly during childhood. That means that it's unlikely that Kyle would develop into a genius would develop without some sort of outside stimulation. And if Kyle wasn't exposed to language in the early years of his life, it's unlikely that he would be able to learn to speak normally at all.

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you readers that have seen the show about what Kyle's development was actually supposed to be like. Was he really isolated in an artifical womb? or was he actually allowed to grow up in some sort of accelerated learning environment? Perhaps that's what will be shown in the show's upcoming season.

Season 3 premieres on Monday, January 12. Or, if you can't wait, you can watch the opening episode right now.

I've only seen the 10 minutes, but it looks like it'll be good entertainment if you are in the mood for teen angst (prom night!) mixed with your SF. You can see full episodes from the first two seasons on the ABC Family web site. (Note: as of 2012 the free episodes of Kyle XY are unfortunately no longer available.)
(I was going to discuss Kyle's missing belly button, but this post is long enough already. Maybe I'll get to it later in the season.)

Sponsored Links Buy the Kyle XY 3rd Season DVD on Amazon.com Download full episodes of Kyle XY on iTunes

2008 Holiday Gift Guide: Bioscience Fact

Even if the people you are buying gifts for aren't interested in SF, they might enjoy a popular science book. I've rounded up a selection of books that take a look at different aspects of the biosciences that were published this year. Note that the descriptions were swiped from Amazon.com, since I haven't read most of these books myself. All Amazon.com links are affiliate links.

Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael S. Gazzaniga Neuroscientist Gazzaniga is "adept at aiding even the scientifically unsophisticated to grasp his arguments about what separates humans from other animals. His main premise is that human brains are not only proportionately larger than those of other primates but have a number of distinct structures, which he explores along with evolutionary explanations for their existence."

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer Science writer Zimmer "guides us on a memorable journey into the invisible but amazing world within and around a tiny bacterium. He reveals a life-or-death battle every bit as dramatic as that on the Serengeti and one that offers profound insights into how life is made and evolves."

The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson "The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume. [...] Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades."

Cloning: A Beginner's Guide by Aaron D. Levine This is a well-reviewed introductory guide to the science and ethics of cloning.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin. "Fish paleontologist Shubin illuminates the subject of evolution with humor and clarity in this compelling look at how the human body evolved into its present state."

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach Roach offers a witty look at the science of sex. I think it would make a nice gift bundled with Laura Woodmansee's Sex in Space.

The Science of Heroes: The Real-Life Possibilities Behind the Hit TV Show by Yvonne Carts-Powell Carts-Powell uses the TV show Heroes as a jumping off point for discussing biology and physics. I actually have a copy of this which I'll post a review for soon.

Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs by Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malatre "The simple title of this book belies its profundity-and its sense of humor. Besides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of developments in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, physicist Benford and biologist Malartre also address deeper questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind, as well as humankind's nervous relationship with increasingly sophisticated machines"

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are many more similar books listed at the Biology in Science Fiction bookstore.

Tags:books, biology