Is SyFy the New Bravo?

Here's a confession: I really like contest shows - the kind where creative professionals are compete in  challenges.  Top Chef and  Project Runway my current faves.  Top Chef because I like experimenting with cooking, and Project Runway, because I like watching people create clothes, I guess*.  The competitions involving hair styling and "fine art" and interior design, not so much.

That means SyFy's new show Face Off is right up my alley. The competition pits makeup special effects artists with a range of backgrounds against each other. Some competitors have backgrounds doing makeup for movies (mostly B-grade) or have corporate clients, while others are fresh out of school.  What the do looks like a combination of sculpture, painting and acting (or at least thinking like a character).  The show follows a pretty standard formula: a quick challenge at the beginning that gives the winner immunity or other advantage, followed by the major competition.

In tonight's premiere episode, the competitors teamed up to create a human-animal hybrid character. The limitation? They had to use one of three animals as their inspiration: a black beetle, an ostrich, or an elephant.  The winning team created an "elephant man" that looked good even close up.  I think the way their model moved also helped sell the look.  

The Winners. You can watch full episodes of Face Off at SyFy.com

So far, there hasn't been much soap-opera-like squabbling or painting of particular contestants as the "bad guy" or the "prima donna" or other personality stereotypes, which is also a good thing.  Based on one episode, I find it's entertaining.

But I wonder where SyFy is going with this programming?

During the show, there was an ad for yet another new SyFy reality show.  It stars Marcel - the annoyingly arrogant please-not-yet-another-dish-with-foam Top Chef contestant** - and is going to be about molecular gastronomy.  While I think molecular gastronomy's really cool, Marcel's personality  can be annoying, so I have mixed feelings.

Given the choice between Face Off or Quantum Kitchen and yet another Ghost Hunters episode or wrestling, I'll happily take makeup and cooking. But what I really want to see is more SF!

I'm disappointed SyFy canceled Caprica and decided to burn off the remaining episodes in a long single night marathon. I'm disappointed that they decided on a North American remake of Being Human, rather than importing the superior UK original (at least based on the first couple episodes). 

Until Stargate Universe and Eureka return with new episodes, there's really not much reason to turn to on SyFy at all.

It seems like there's a big hole that SyFy could fill -  The Cape is pretty meh, Chuck is getting a bit long in the tooth, Primeval went way downhill when they killed off Nick Cutter. I only just noticed that V hadn't been canceled and was showing new episodes again - I pretty much lost interest and was watching by the end of the fall season.

The only SF show I make a special effort to watch at the momemnt is Fringe, and I'm afraid that its move to Friday night is a signal they are losing Fox's support.

So while I get that SyFy wants to attract some of Bravo's usual audience who might come for the competition and stay for the ghost busting***, as a viewer who actually likes science fiction drama, I feel neglected.  

Some of us would like both a SyFy with science fiction and a Bravo with reality programming - why mix up the two?

(And yeah, I know NBC Universal-Comcast doesn't care a whit about my personal TV preferences. I just had to get that off my chest.)


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* I really enjoy Project Runway, even though I am one of the least fashion forward people around. The clothes usually fall into the same neat-to-look-at-but-I'd-never-wear-that category for me (for example) that costumes do.

** The current season of Top Chef is also showing Wednesday nights on SyFy's sister station Bravo. It's probably no coincidence that there was a Top Chef re-run tonight and there was no hint of Marcel's new show until he was eliminated from the competition last week. Hmm.

*** Also, the monster-of-the-week movie SyFy's been advertising looks like the hair, makeup and catfighting were taken from one of the Real Housewives of ___ shows. Another crossover, perhaps?

The Mad Science of Human-Animal Hybrids

I've got a post up on Everyday Biology that takes a look at the mad science of human-animal hybrids, in fiction and real life.

It's horrifying! (Or at least the pictures are)

SF Stories that Inspire and Hinder Real Science

Many kids who read science fiction in their youth and teen years were inspired to pursue a career in science. But apparently some SF can have the opposite effect, scaring people away from the sciences. For example, MIT synthetic biologist Drew Endy told io9's Annalee Newitz that "his area of research has also suffered because so much science fiction portrays bio-hacking as horrific (think Frankenstein) or silly (think South Park's "four-assed monkey")." Newitz has rounded up a list of SF stories that either are "inspiring" or "hindering" science.

The inspiring stories show science as part of the progress of human society. Her list includes Ian M. Banks' Look to Windward ("synthetic biology is simply a logical way that humans extend their capabilities, but it does not turn them into monsters or make them authoritarian overlords"), China Mieville's The Scar ("human-animal hybrids are often less disturbing than so-called normal humans.") and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time ("potential world of eco-friendly, multicultural feminists is founded on many complex technologies including artificial wombs, green mass transit, a rapid internet-like communications system, and complicated bio-engineering and waste-recycling tech").

The hindering stories, on the other hand are tales of science run amok, with serious negative impact on society. She includes the movie Gattaca, Greg Bear's Blood Music, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.

I'd add to her list of hinderers most of Michael Crichton's science fiction output, which usually features scientists who cause great destruction by a combination of their arrogance and ignorance. That would include The Andromeda Strain (lethal strain of bacteria is brought to earth by a satellite trying to find microbes to create bioweapons), Jurassic Park and its sequels (scientists recreate lethal and clever dinosaurs that are unexpectedly able to reproduce), Prey (swarms of bacterially-produced predatory nanobots that escape the lab and run amok), and Next (unethical genetic engineering of humans and animals). It's harder to come up with stories that portray biotechnology positively. Brin's stories that take place in his Uplift universe (genetic engineering is used for the "uplift" of dolphins and chimpanzees) could be on that list.

I wonder, though how much of an effect the "hindering" stories really have on the study of science. Sure, they negatively portray science and scientists, but from Newitz's list it's pretty clear that that kind of mad science story isn't anything new. In fact, Frankenstein was published almost 200 years ago. It seems to me that while SF certainly can affect the perception of science by the general public, I'm not sure that it has that much of an effect on those who are interested in the science enough to read up on the facts behind the fiction. Or maybe it's because readers with a science bent tend to read widely, becoming exposed to stories that both "hinder" and "inspire".

In any case, the issue of public perception of science and scientists is an important one, if only because that public perception influences politics and funding. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the anti-science stories actually ring true to many people who have a deep distrust (and dislike) of corporations, the government, and anyone who is an "expert". It can be satisfying to see arrogant establishment types who believe themselves to be very clever shown up as bumbling and foolish, even if it does mean death and disaster as a result. Hell, I often enjoy those kind of stories, and I like science.

So what's the solution? More positive SF? That certainly couldn't hurt. But there's no guarantee that any particular novel or movie will become popular enough to really make a difference in public perception. I suspect that education is really the key. Part of what feeds people's fear of scientific progress is that they don't understand it. I'm not sure how we can go about that, though, beyond ensuring kids get a thorough science education in school. Public lectures are a possibility, as are entertaining exhibitions at science museums, and maybe blogs too. I'd like to think that anyway.

Tags:science fiction, biology, education

Christopher Rose on Teaching Biology with Movies

James Madison biologist Christopher Rose has written an interesting essay for Evolutionary Biology¹ about using movies to teach biology (HTML version, pdf version). He points out that public understanding of biology is poor in part because the public is bombarded with jargon and sensationalized sound bites that are presented with little scientific context.

As with many relationship issues, the root of the problem and its solution lie in communication. Scientists as a group love to fault movies for inaccurately portraying facts, procedures and theories, and misrepresenting the benefits and risks of scientific phenomena to humanity (see references in Crichton, 1999; Kirby, 2003). As a scientist myself, I share their concerns. However, as a moviegoer, I agree with Crichton (1999) that making movies and representing science are often at odds with each other simply because entertainment and education are different things. Fictional movies cannot be bound to a strict code of scientific realism if they are to entertain and make money. Also, movies can only portray external experiences, meaning that the internal experiences of creative and critical thinking inevitably get left out. At the same time, movies can convey intriguing ideas and provocative viewpoints about the roles of science in life and society. As a science teacher, I argue that movies provide opportunities to educate not by finding faults, but by making connections to real science (Rose, 2003). This article is designed to illustrate how science teachers and popular science writers can use movies with genetics and developmental biology themes to clarify and deepen the public understanding of science. As movies cannot replace textbooks, I must start with a brief overview of these areas of biology and the fundamental knowledge required to discuss them.

The article is written with non-scientists in mind and even has a glossary of biological terminology at the end. Some of his suggestions for movies that can be used as teaching tools:

• The Fly (1958 & 1986): Discussion of the role of genes in animal development and evolution, and formation of chimeric animals
• The Boys From Brazil (1978): Cloning somatic cell nuclear transplantation
• Jurassic Park (1993): How DNA "builds" an organism
• GATTACA (1997): Use of recombinant DNA technology and human genetics
  

Rose actually teaches a course on "Biology in the Movies" at James Madison, and his course page has a course syllabus and links to questionnaires he uses with some of the movies. In addition to the movies listed above, his syllabus also includes Inherit the Wind, Quest for Fire, Blade Runner and Contact.

¹Rose CS. "Biology in the Movies: Using the Double-Edged Sword of Popular Culture to Enhance Public Understanding of Science." Evol Biol 34(1-2):49-54 (2007). doi:10.1007/s11692-007-9001-8

Tags:Christopher Rose, biology, science fiction, movies

Ann Halam's Young Adult SF

John Scalzi has an interesting post about the science fiction to be found in the young adult section. It never occurred to me to go looking outside the adult areas of my local library and the nearest B&N, mostly because there are so many books on my "to read" list already. But now at least I know to be on the lookout for novels that aren't shelved in the regular SFF section. By coincidence I recently ran across a young adult novel that sounds quite interesting: Dr. Franklin's Island by Ann Halam (the YA pen name of SF novelist Gwyneth Jones).

We were flying to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We were going to stay in a hotel there, before traveling overland to the rain forest base. It'll be all right once we've settle in, I told myself (hoping it was true). We'll be working, helping the scientists, learning about the wildlife. It's easy to talk to people when you're doing something together. Back at home, my brother and my parents were getting ready to go to Jamaica for their summer holiday. My brother thought I was mad to prefer going on a science trip, and I was beginning to agree with him. But I wasn't going to get downhearted. Even if I didn't make any friends, even if I never had a single conversation beyond "could you pass the graph paper" or whatever, this had to be th trip of a lifetime. Meeting real scientists, seeing the Galápagos . . .
~ Dr. Franklin's Island, by Ann Halam

Three children survive a plane crash on an isolated island, and find that they are not alone. There is a military research facility manned by a Dr. Franklin, who uses genetic engineering to create human-animal hybrids. If the plot sounds familiar, that's probably because the novel is loosely based on H.G. Well's Island of Doctor Moreau. As Halam explained in an interview with her publisher:

Dr. Franklin’s Island is sort of an argument with The Island of Dr. Moreau. When I started thinking about my transformation story, The Island of Dr. Moreau immediately came to mind and set the scene on the “desert island”–the isolated place where the mad scientist could do his will, undisturbed by public opinion. When I reread the story, I found I didn’t like the ideas in it at all. This is different from not liking the story. I think it’s a great story, but I didn’t like H. G. Wells’s ideas about animal nature versus human nature. Part of what happens in Dr. Franklin (though this isn’t Dr. Franklin’s intention!) is the wonder and joy of being reunited with the animal kingdom, rediscovering the delight of being an animal, at home in the living world–but still this special kind of self-aware, conscious animal that is a human being. H. G. Wells comes to a very different conclusion about his “beast men.” I won’t try to explain it; read the story and make your own judgment. In short, I like H. G. Wells’s terrific stories, but I’m not much of an admirer of his opinions.

The (long) Wikipedia summary of the plot makes it sound both horrific and thought-provoking, and Lisa DuMond at SF Site gave it a very positive review.

Some of Halam's other novels also have biological themes. In Siberia, a young girl and her mother are living in a prison camp, where the mother secretly creates and harvests animal life using a "Lindquist kit". From Bookslut's review:

At some point in Siberia’s future, the world has lost touch with nature and become a cold wasteland separated by domed cities. The people in the cities are distanced from those who live in the wilderness, and all of them are distanced from nature. Animals are now raised in fur farms (dogs, cats, everything) and wild animals are rare. Sloe’s parents were city scientists who opposed the government’s decisions concerning the destruction of wild animal DNA. After her father was arrested and killed by the government she and her mother are to a camp; a camp that sounds a lot like a Soviet era gulag. It is there that she learns about her mother’s “magic” and the compressed DNA she smuggled out of the city and now safeguards until they can one day escape to the safety of the almost mythical city on the other side of the forest. This compressed DNA, referred to as Lindquists in the book and named by Halam in honor of real life MIT biologist Susan Lindquist, is able to express itself in many forms. In essence, Sloe and her mother have the future of every wild animal in the small kits they hide beneath the floor of their Siberian hut. What will become of these kits after Sloe is sent away to school and her mother is arrested by the government authorities for teaching her daughter science is the crux of the story. Can Sloe save them and successfully travel to the safety of the northern city, and more importantly, can she learn enough about how to control the DNA so that they can save her from those who wish her harm (and want the DNA).

And Halam's novel Taylor Five is the story of one of the first human clones. From the Amazon.com description (affiliate link):

Taylor Walker seems like any ordinary 14-year-old. Ordinary—if you overlook the fact that she lives on the island of Borneo, on a primate reserve run by her parents, and knows how to survive in the jungle. Obviously, Tay isn’t just like everyone else. But she is like one other person. She’s exactly like one other person. Tay is a clone, one of only five in the world, and her clone mother is Pam Taylor, a brilliant scientist. When rebels attack the reserve, Tay escapes with her younger brother and Uncle, an exceptionally intelligent orangutan. As they flee through the jungle, Tay must look within to find her strength: Pam’s DNA, tempered by Taylor’s extraordinary life. And she looks to Uncle for guidance—for Tay knows that the uncanny bond between Uncle and herself is the key to their survival.

All three novels sound interesting, and I love that the protagonists are all smart resourceful girls. I've added Ann Halam to my reading wish list.

Previously: Free fiction by Gwyneth Jones

Tags:Ann Halam, biology, cloning, genetic engineering

Splice: Rock and Roll Geneticists and the Horror of Genetic Engineering

Update: The publicist for Splice has asked me to take the promo image down, so I have. You can see the images at Ain't it Cool News. She also points out that Guillermo Del Toro is the executive producer and that Steve Hoban of Copperheart Entertainment is the producer. Hopefully they'll release some promotional images soon.
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Producer Guillermo Del Toro and Director/Writer Vincenzo Natali's latest movie is Splice, which stars Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley as a pair of molecular biologists with more ambition than sense.

Elsa and Clive, two young rebellious scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Named "Dren", the creature rapidly develops from a deformed female infant into a beautiful but dangerous winged human-chimera, who forges a bond with both of her creators - only to have that bond turn deadly.

Nelson Cabral of Bloody-Disgusting.com interviewed Natali, whose description of the main characters makes them sound a bit like computer hackers:

. . . I sort of saw it as the natural evolution of whats happening with computer programming. A lot of really young people do computer programming, they deal with really sophisticated technology, really sophisticated hardware. I’m sure that that is happening currently in the bio-technology field as well. It just seemed like the appropriate thing. On some level, the movie is about deciding to have a family, and what you do with becoming a parent, so it had to be about young people so Clive and Elsa are sort of, as rock and roll geneticists, are ill equipped to become parents, and that’s what makes it exciting to watch them have a mutant kid.

Natali also mentioned the real science that was his inspiration for the movie:

Why splice? Because years ago there was this thing I saw a photo of, its called (something)mouse, it was, by all appearances, a human ear on its back. It actually was a plastic armature under a kind of skin that could be grafted onto human beings. It was such a crazy, shocking weird image that I was inspired to write a story about genetic splicing.

The experiment that Natali is remembering is probably the work of Joseph and Charles Vacanti of the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. Back in 1997 their photo of a mouse with a human ear-shaped growth on its back made a splash in the popular media. It's no wonder that it caught Natali's attention. He apparently didn't pay much attention to the story attached with the picture, though, because the experiment had absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. What the Vacantis and colleagues actually did was form a biodegradable polymer into the shape of a human ear, seed it with cow cartilage cells (bovine chondrocytes), and implant it under the skin of the experimental mice¹. They found that new cartilage formed in the shape of the implant. And it turns out their methodology had immediate real-world applications. They used similar techniques to grow a "shield" in the chest of boy who was born with no cartilage or bone between his skin and heart. They also were able to grow a replacement thumb tip using a scaffold made of coral. It's very cool tissue engineering technology.

It isn't that surprising that Natali thinks that genetic engineering was involved. He may have seen the full page ad in the New York Times placed by the anti-biotechnology group the Turning Point Project, which (according to Wikipedia) showed the picture of the ear-bearing mouse with the description "This is an actual photo of a genetically engineered mouse with a human ear on its back"². The image also made the email chain letter rounds with similarly misleading information.

I've noticed that the term "mutant" is commonly used as shorthand to describe any mal- or unusually-formed animal, even when no mutations or other DNA changes are involved, so it's not such a stretch for people to believe that genetic engineering could be used for something as fantastic as growing an extra ear. Splice taps into the idea that genetic engineering is the can-do-anything science for the 21st century. As Splice co-producer Steve Hoban commented, “If Mary Shelley had been born 200 years later she wouldn’t have written Frankenstein, she would have written ‘Splice’.

Splice is scheduled to be released in 2009. In the mean time, check out Ain't It Cool News for more images of Splice's human-animal hybrid (some NSFW).

1. Cao Y et al. (1997) "Transplantation of Chondrocytes Utilizing a Polymer-Cell Construct to Pruduce Tissue-Engineered Cartilage in the Shape of a Human Ear", Plast Reconstr Surg 100(2):297-302.

2. It's not clear to me if their deception was intentional or the creator of he ad was merely incompetent. Unfortunately advertisements aren't required to be truthful (or issue corrections for inaccuracies), so public perception is influenced by the misleading copy.

Tags:tissue engineering, Tags:genetic engineering,Vincenzo Natali,Splice

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: April 12 Edition

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

Books and Comics

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

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

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

io9 writes about the new comic book Transhuman.

Television

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

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

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

Movies

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

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

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

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

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

LiveScience writes about the creatures in 10,000 BC.

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

Other

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

Tags:science fiction, biology

Bioscience News Roundup: 01-14-07

Some interesting bits of bioscience in the news (I apologize if some of them are old, I've been cleaning out my collected links):

Science News reports on making "life from scratch", with a focus on the work at the J. Craig Venter Institute (via BoingBoing) From the article:

"We eventually want to make an organism called Mycoplasma laboratorium," Smith says. The more familiar name for this hypothetical cell is Synthia.

Glass says that the team is on the verge of making such a cell within the next few months. In the Aug. 3, 2007 Science, the researchers announced that they had transplanted the entire genome of one species of Mycoplasma into a related species. The recipient cells began using the foreign genome as if it was their own, showing that the receiving cells can "boot up" the newly inserted DNA (SN: 6/30/07, p. 403). All that remains is to finish piecing together a minimal, synthetic genome and then to insert it into a Mycoplasma bacterium by the same technique.

Beyond serving as a hobby-kit cell for unraveling basic cell biology, Synthia might serve as a platform for developing novel biotechnologies.

"Learning how to rebuild something will give us control over a cell that we don't now have," Glass says. Craig Venter, the scientist-cum-biotech tycoon who led the private effort to map the human genome and now heads the Venter Institute, has said he hopes that a minimal genome will serve as a base upon which to add custom functions, such as genes for converting feedstock into hydrogen for fuel.

They should probably read io9's post about the "Dos and Don'ts of Biology Hacking"

Wired Science also looks at microbes reengineered "to do humanity's dirty work"

University of Minnesota researchers have created a beating heart in the laboratory. You can even watch a video of the process. (via Pharyngula).

Twisted Bacteria reports on the work of Chinese scientists to improve microbial strains by giving them a ride in space.

Wired Science has a report on cool new bioscience-related technology presented at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. Neo-Organs and anti-fat ray sound like something out of Futurama.

American Scientist has an interesting article about the possible origins of larvae that are very different from the adult forms.

Biologist Williamson has proposed that larvae are juvenile forms acquired through hybridization—the fusing of two genomes, one of which is now expressed early in an animal's life, the other late. This hypothesis, which goes against traditional thinking that branches on the evolutionary tree cannot fuse to form chimeric species, is one of several possible solutions to open questions about the evolution of larvae. Although an experiment did not yield convincing DNA evidence, the hypothesis is consistent with certain patterns seen in the distribution of genes across species. Along with other evidence of cross-species hybridization, it implies a pattern of evolution that looks more like a network than like Darwin's tree of life.

There is an interesting Ask MetaFilter discussion about whether you can use DNA analysis to determine the time of conception. I'm pretty sure I've seen that used as a plot device. On Enterprise maybe?

Ron at Beam Me Up writes about recent research on space agriculture. Does our future hold space bug entrées?

Did you know the first structure visible from space was made by wombats? Discover Magazine reviews the book Built by Animals: The Natural History of Animal Architecture, and links to images of some of the structures.

In legal news, Wired Science reports on the United Nation's report that recommends treating human clones as our equals.

Finally, in the category of "pseudoscience", The Mental Floss blog lists 5 creatures that probably don't exist, yet received government protection anyway.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Beasts into Men

She was a girlygirl and they were true men, the lords of creation, but she pitted her wits against them and she won. It had never happened before, and it is sure never to happen again, but she did win. She was not even of human extraction. She was cat-derived, though human in outward shape, which explains the C in front of her name. Her father's name was C'mackintosh and her name C'mell. She won her tricks against he lawful and assembled lords of the Instrumentality.

- From "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" by Cordwainer Smith (1962)

Animals shaped into the likeness of men have been a staple of science fiction for more than a century. The classic of the genre, of course, is H.G. Well's 1896 novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau in which a mad scientist uses vivisection to create beast-humans. His creatures are ultimately unable to overcome their innate animal nature. I much prefer the human-like animals created by Cordwainer Smith in the 1960s. In his universe, the governing Instrumentality of Mankind maintains an enslaved class of animal-derived underpeople. Unlike the creatures of Dr. Moreau, however, Smith's underpeople eventually rise up and gain their rights within human society.

While talking human-like cats may not ever become a reality, experiments in "humanizing" sheep have recently made the science news. Professor Esmail Zanjani at the University of Nevada, Reno has created sheep in which up to 15% of the cells are of human origin. Zanjani and his colleagues inject adult human bone marrow stem cells into the sheep fetus, and those cells are incorporated into the developing liver, heart, lungs, brain and other organs. The ultimate goal is to grow custom organs for human transplant. For those of you in the UK, there will be a segment on Zanjani's research in the TV series "Animal Farm"*. While Zanjani's sheep are human on the inside rather than the outside, they raise similar ethical questions as to how human an animal must be to be considered one of us.

I recommend reading Smith's short story, The Dead Lady of Clown Town, which features a dog-girl, D'joan, in a Joan of Arc-like role (free from Baen). If that whets your appetite for more about the Instrumentality, Smith's stories have been collected in We The Underpeople (amazon.com) and The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (amazon.com).

You can read H.G. Well's The Island of Doctor Moreau for free at Project Gutenburg.

ETA: On the Posthuman Blues blog Mac Tonnies recommends Paul DiFilippo's short story collection Ribofunk if you are interested in biotech-based science fictional look at man-human fusions.

*For a technical report see Narayan et al. "Human embryonic stem cell–derived hematopoietic cells are capable of engrafting primary as well as secondary fetal sheep recipients." Blood 107: 2180-2183 (2006).

The image is the cover of the October 1962 Issue of Galaxy Magazine, illustrating "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" (from the Pulps & Magazines Americains web site).

Tags:science fiction, human-animal hybrids