John Carter versus the Clone Army

The Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs is filled with technological marvels. Earthman John Carter discovers the Martians have anti-gravity "fliers", disintegrator ray weapons, and even a great factory that maintains the atmosphere of the planet.

The Martians also have advanced medicine and biological technology.  Indeed the great Martian scientist Ras Thavas - known as The Master Mind of Mars -  has perfected biotechnological techniques that are both fantastic and terrible.

Burrough's 1939 novel Synthetic Men of Mars reveals Ras Thavas's greatest achievement: a vast army of clones.

After Ras Thavas was driven from his great laboratories by Vobis Kan, Jeddak of Toonol," explained Gan Had, "he came to this island to perfect a discovery he had been working on for years. It was the creation of human beings from human tissue. He had perfected a culture in which tissue grew continuously. The growth from a tiny particle of living tissue filled an entire room in his laboratory, but it was formless. His problem was to direct this growth. He experimented with various reptiles which reproduce certain parts of their bodies, such as toes, tails, and limbs, when they are cut off; and eventually he discovered the principle. This he has applied to the control of the growth of human tissue in a highly specialized culture.

From a mass of cultured undifferentiated human cells, Ras Thavas was able to grow arms, legs and eventually whole bodies.  The "synthetic men", known as hormads, would all be genetically identical to both the original human cells and to each other, making them clones even though that term is never used.

The technology isn't perfect. Most of the synthetic men aren't very smart or physically attractive.  And left unsupervised, the process can fail horribly:

"In fact things seem to go all wrong without him," and when I reached the first vat room I realized that that was a crass understatement of fact. Things couldn't well have been much worse. The floor was covered with the remains of hideous monstrosities that the officers had had to have destroyed. The parts still lived. Legs were trying to walk, hands were clutching at whatever came within reach, heads were lying about screaming and moaning. 

A gruesome sight.

So where did Burroughs find his inspiration for Ras Thavas's mad science?  My guess is that he was influenced, at least in part, by the research of French biologist and surgeon Alexis Carrel.  In 1912 Carrel took a piece of embryonic chicken heart and placed it in a flask with nutrients. He successfully cultured the cells for decades, a feat that caught the public's imagination. In the 1930s Carrel (along with aviator Charles Lindbergh) went on to develop techniques that allowed human organs to be kept alive outside the body during surgery. This achievement was also celebrated in popular culture, with Carrel appearing on the cover of Time Magazine in 1938.

Carrel's achievements inspired a number of writers during science fiction's "Golden Age", from Arch Oobler's 1937 radio play "Chicken Heart" in which cultured cells escape the lab and threaten to engulf the world, to the "Chicken Little" food source in  Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants.  The ever-growing human cells in Synthetic Men of Mars fits right in with these stories.

But science doesn't really play a central role in Burroughs' novels.  Instead science and technology and unusual creatures are a backdrop for the real story, which usually involves a fight (or three) and romance.  In Synthetic Men, it turns out that some of the hormads are quite intelligent, and they gather their brethren into an army in hopes of conquering the world.  The hero - in this case the Martian Vor Daj - and John Carter work together to destroy the terrible mass of tissue and hormads run amok.  And Vor Daj finds love, despite having his brain transplanted into an ugly hormad body.

You can read the rest of the story for yourself:

Project Gutenburg Australia has a copy of the Synthetic Men of Mars. If you are not in Australia, you can purchase an ebook: Kindle version (Amazon.com, affiliate link)
Further reading:

• ERBzine has a detailed review, along with a great collection of covers from different editions of Synthetic Men of Mars.
• Related Biology in Science Fiction post: Cultured Meat
• Witkowski, JA "Dr. Carrel's Immortal Cells" Medical History 24:129-142 (1980) (note: pdf)

Top image: Cover of Synthetic Men of Mars, 1963 edition

Middle image: Colony of human embryonic stem cells by Ryddragyn at Wikimedia Commons. Bottom image: Fan cover of Synthetic Men of Mars by zimeta08 on DeviantArt

Nancy Kress on Dogs

Mike Brotherton has an interesting interview with Nancy Kress about her new bioterrorism thriller Dogs and writing science fiction. Her inspiration for her latest novel was real deadly pathogens:

I’m fascinated by the way viruses and bacteria, including pathogens, can both mutate naturally and be genetically engineered. I’ve read everything I can find, for instance, on the outbreaks of Ebola in Congo and Sudan. Genetically engineered pathogens turn up in my books OATHS AND MIRACLES and STINGER. In fiction, the pathogens are usually transmitted by humans. But, I mused, it doesn’t have to be that way …and just about that time I happened to get a dog.

And she strives to get the science right in her novels:

Whether it’s detailed or merely sketched in, I try hard to get the science right. This isn’t always easy for me, since I have no scientific training. One of my proudest moments was a call from the Whitehead Institute for Biological Research in Boston. The scientists there had been passing around OATHS AND MIRACLES, part of which is set at Whitehead, and they wanted to know whom I knew up there that was working on envelope proteins.

That must have been a very cool moment!

You can win a copy of Dogs from Tachyon Publications by submitting a photo of your favorite canine before July 31.

Tags:Nancy Kress, Dogs

Ratha's Creatures

Clare Bell's Ratha series of young adult novels features sapient prehistoric cats who live by herding deer. The first novel in the series, Ratha's Creature (published in 1983) won young adult fiction awards from the International Reading Association and PEN Center USA. The novels are about Ratha, a young female of the "the Named", a clan of sapient prehistoric big cats.

They have laws, languages, and traditions and live by herding the creatures they once hunted. Surrounding the Named are the more numerous non-sentient UnNamed, who prey on the clan’s herds. Mating between Named and UnNamed is forbidden, since the clan believes that the resulting young will be non-sentient animals.

Ratha breaks with the clan's tradition that herders are male - and discovers the use of fire, fundamentally changing the cats' society.

The series is set in the Miocene epoch, about 20 million years ago, and "all the animals that appear in the novels are based on fossil creatures, with some extrapolation." On Bell's web site, she talks about the fossils that inspired Ratha and her clan. Originally the cats were based on the leopard-like Nimravus, naming her species Nimravus illumina sapiens (recent research has suggested that Nimravus is not a true feline). She currently imagines "the Named" as Dinaelurus illumina sapiens, based on Dinaelurus crassus, a "cheetah precursor" discovered in the Jon Day Fossil Formation in Oregon. Bell has gone on to make a detailed sculpture recreation of a Dinaelurus head.

She has blogged about about more of the prehistoric creatures the animal characters in her novels are based on, including the "face-tails", "treelings", "seamares", "barking raiders", "bristlemanes" "blubber-tusker", and the character Shongshar. Of course the information isn't necessary to enjoy the stories, but I find it interesting to learn what the critters were based on.

Ratha's Creature and Clan Ground were reissued in 2007. The fifth novel in the series, Ratha's Courage, was published last October by E-Reads.

More about Ratha:

• Ratha's Creature was made into an animated special for CBS's "Storybreak", which Bell has posted to Youtube. Go watch!
• Bell has recommended The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives as a non-fiction source on fossil felines.
  
• The first six chapters of the fourth book in the series, Ratha's Courage, can be read for free at Baen Webscription.net.
• Clare Bell's Ratha drawings and sculptures on deviantART
  

Image: Clare Bell's design for a sapient feloid
Tags:Clare Bell, palentology, cats

Discuss science in fiction at the LabLit forums

Readers who are interested in discussing the science in fiction should check out the forums at LabLit.com. There are subforums for discussion of science in novels and plays, science in films and TV, and science in poetry (not to mention other science-related topics). The focus is primarily the "lab lit" genre, but some science fiction sneaks in. Go check it out!

Tags:science fiction, lab lit

The Stolen Bacillus

This again,' said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, 'is a preparation of the celebrated Bacillus of cholera - the cholera germ.'

The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. 'I see very little,' he said.

'Touch this screw,' said the Bacteriologist; 'perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this way or that.'

'Ah! now I see,' said the visitor. 'Not so very much to see after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!'

H.G. Well's 1895 "The Stolen Bacillus" is a satirical short story about an absent-minded scientist whose work may end up facilitating bioterrorism. It's as timely today as it was 100 years ago.

(via AmericanLiterature.com's short story of the day)
Image: image of wild type Cholera from the Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility
Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: June 7 Edition

Here's a roundup of biology in science fiction-related blog posts and articles from around the web:

Written SF

Nancy Kress writes about her concern that a story she is working on - which is told from the point of view of an anchondroplastic dwarf - might be culturally trespassing.

I still feel uneasy appropriating a culture not my own as a subject for fiction. Writers do this all the time, of course, and critics and readers then complain about it all the time. (Look up the controversy over Memoirs of a Geisha, written by a non-Asian man.) I don't want to step on anyone's sensibilities. But if I stuck to my own culture -- white, female, middle-aged and middle class -- I would have a very narrow range of stories.

It seems to me the important thing is getting it right.

At Making Light commenter Michael Roberts asked :

what science-fiction books would the assembly recommend for getting a good picture of alternate ecologies? A little perspective: we've just read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (aside: holy schemoley, what a great set of books!) and the alternate world with the wheeled creatures definitely caught her fancy.

I searched through the boxes, and came up with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, Niven's Protector, Rainbow Mars, and Smoke Ring, Brin and Benford's Heart of the Comet, Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, Forward's Flight of the Dragonfly, Orson Scott Card's Wyrms, and Brin's Glory Season. What am I not thinking of? This wasn't intended to be a survey of biologically-oriented SF, but there's got to be others. I didn't give her Dune, I suppose.

Making Light's knowledgeable commentariat comes up with some more suggestions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and, well, just keep reading down the thread for more).

Nina Munteanu reviews Robert Sawyer's Neanderthal Trilogy.

Television

The Science of Battlestar Galactica takes a look at how Colonials and Cylons can interbreed . The conclusion: Earth “humans” must be a cross between Colonials and Cylons. Read part 1 and part 2.

Have we seen the "father" of the Cylons? Check out Michael Hinman's column at SyFy Portal to find out (SPOILERS!).

Eva at EasternBlot has an alternative explanation for the invisible non-humanoid life forms Doctor Who detected in the library.

Adam Hadhazy, Scientific American intern, liked A&E's Andromeda Strain - at least the first half.

A remarkable amount of the science in the 40-year-old original still holds up as compelling and has been wisely retained. Who doesn't get excited when the scrambling scientists, whisked away to a top secret laboratory, discover that the microscopic invader contains no DNA or RNA—making it unlike any other life-form on Earth? To try and wow science-savvy people, as well as inveigle the layman, A&E cranks its version up a notch by throwing in buckyballs and singularitywormholes, though somewhat unnecessarily.

Only somewhat? And I seriously doubt it was the "science-savvy" they were trying to wow.
Sarah Stegall has a positive review - at least of the The Andromeda Strain's science - for SF Scope.

The current research into the communities of chemosynthetic organisms is among the (ahem) hottest topics in ocean research today. More cutting edge science is threaded throughout this updated version: buckyballs, Archaea, DNA research, wormhole theory, messenger theory. We discover after a couple of hours that the Andromeda strain was picked up by a secret research mission to a secret wormhole that has since collapsed. Best of all, nobody stops to explain all this stuff. While it may leave some viewers in the dust, this is the best integration of actual science into a science fiction story I've seen in a long time. Apart from the wormhole itself (which is still part of respectable physical speculation), there is no hand-waving, no "Trek science" to insult the knowledgeable viewer. The science is real, and that makes the supposed threat more real.

I don't really agree that there wasn't any "Trek science" (wormhole from the future anyone?), but it definitely could have been worse.

Genevieve Valentine has a funny review of the very bad SciFi original movie Aztec Rex (Aztecs, a bewigged Cortés and great big dinosaurs) at Fantasy Magazine. No real science involved.

Fantasy Magazine also has a discussion of "SciFi movies we love to hate". See also io9's peek at the upcoming SciFi movie "Flu Birds".

Movies

SciFi Weekly reviewed Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds giving it a B-. You might do better reading the "far superior short story by Daphne du Maurier" that the movie is (very loosely) based on.

At Laughing Squid Scott Beale posts some anatomical cross-section diagrams of Gamera & Godzilla (via SF Signal).

On Science Friday, Ira Flatow talked to M. Night Shyamalan about The Happening and "the intersection between real-world environmental issues and Shyamalan's fantasy world" (to listen, subscribe to the podcast or check back next week when the archived audio is posted). If you want more, Bloody Disgusting has new widgets, trailers and clips of The Happening.

And if CGI monsters are your thing, io9 has information about the upcoming dinosaur scifi movie Reptisaurus. It stars former Buck Rodgers Gil Gerard, so how can it miss?

Will Ridley Scott be making an updated version of Brave New World?

On a more serious note, SciFi Scanner writes about a panel at the recent World Science Festival on "The Brain and Bourne: Neuroscience in the Bourne Trilogy."

Science bits

io9's resident Biogeek looks at bioengineered ecologies.

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine created a brain-machine interface that allows a money to operate a robotic arm.

Scientists at Davidson College have created a simple living computer made from E.coli bacteria (via Metafilter).

“It’s kind of like that computer in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ ” she said, referring to a popular novel by the late Douglas Adams. “It’s been working on a problem so long that by the time it comes up with an answer, everybody forgot the question.”

Athena Andreadis, author of To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, writes about transhumanism and the future of space travel. (via Sentient Developments)

Willamette Week interviewed Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story and the new book Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science.

When I was a kid I read a lot of science-fiction and read all these predictions of how the world would be in the future. So I love to think about things that seem small now but could become enormous later.... Global climate change is driving [infectious disease] invaders from one ecosystem to another. Dengue virus, which is carried by the Asian tiger mosquito, has begun to appear in areas very close to the Southern United States—most people feel dengue is going to be in the U.S. before too long. Dengue can make people die of hemorrhages flowing from all orifices of their body. And it can look like Ebola virus. It’s a grisly, scary disease for which there is currently no good vaccine.

Human fetal brain cells - stem cells - that were injected into mice were able to correct a nervous system defect. All of the control and untreated "shiverer" mice died within 150 days, while 4 of 26 injected mice were still living at 14 months.

The mice did better than just survive — as the myelin grew, the mice began to lose signs of being shiverers. They gained normal brain activity, no longer had seizures and lost much of the shakiness. “As they live longer, they slowly but surely get better,” says Goldman.

The treatment is not anywhere near ready to use on humans, but it's an important result nonetheless.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Biology and Science Fiction on Tech Nation

I just came across the Tech Nation/Biotech Nation podcast*, which interviews scientists and authors once a week. Browsing through their archives, I came across a couple of interviews with science fiction writers:

April 8, 2008: Interview with Scott Sigler, author of Infected

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Scott Sigler, who talks about his bioterror thriller "Infected." While it's based on the premise of a biological weapon on the loose, he's actually a modern day Charles Dickens.

August 14, 2007: Interview with Richard Morgan, author of Thirteen

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Richard Morgan about what life may be like after a hundred years of biotech. Morgan explains we'll have gotten plenty right and plenty wrong.

* thanks to Discovering Biology in a Digital World

Tags:science fiction, biotechnology, Scott Sigler, Richard Morgan

Black Oxen and the regain of youth

If you like stories featuring Jazz-age high society, you might want to download Gertrude Atherton's 1923 number one best seller Black Oxen. What's the biological and/or science fiction connection? It's the story of the beautiful Countess Zattiany, who causes a stir when she appears in New York because of her mysterious background and strong resemblance to the elderly Mary Ogden, who also is a Countess Zattiany. Have you guessed the twist? The young Countess is Mary herself, having undergone a rejuvenation treatment in Vienna. It's oh so scientific:

"It may relieve your minds to hear that I was at first as indifferent as all of you no doubt would have been. The war—and many other things—had made me profoundly tired of life—something of course that I do not expect you to understand. And now that the war was over and my usefulness at an end, I had nothing to look forward to but the alleviation of poverty by means of my wealth when it was restored, and this could be done by trustees. Life had seemed to me to consist mainly of repetitions. I had run the gamut. But I began to be interested, at first by the fact that science might be able to accomplish a miracle where centuries of woman's wit had failed——"

"Wit?" snorted Mrs. Vane. "Ignoble vanity."

"Well, call it that if you like, but the desire to be young again or to achieve its simulacrum, in both men and women, has something of the dignity which the centuries give to all antiques. However, at the time, you will also be glad to know, I was far more interested in the prospect of reënergizing my worn out mind and body. I was so mortally tired! And if I had to live on, and no doubt with still much work to do in distracted Europe——"

"But what did they do to you?" cried Mrs. Tracy. "I'd have done it in your place—yes, I would!" she said defiantly as she met the august disgusted eye of Mrs. Vane. "I think Countess Zattiany was quite right. What is science for, anyhow?"

"Go on! Go on!" murmured Mrs. Goodrich. She was too fat and comfortable to have any desire to return to youth with its tiresome activities, but all her old romantic affection for Mary Ogden had revived and she was even more interested than curious.

"I am trying to! Well, I must tell you that the explanation of my condition, as of others of my age, was that the endocrines——"

"The what?" The demand was simultaneous.

"The ductless glands."

"Oh," said Mrs. Prevost vaguely, "I've seen something——"

"It is all Greek to me," said Mrs. Vane, who felt that unreasoning resentment common to the minor-informed for the major-informed. "You promised to avoid technical terms."

Madame Zattiany explained in the simplest language she could command the meaning and the function of the ductless glands. The more intelligent among them looked gratified, for the painless achievement of fresh knowledge is a pleasant thing. Madame Zattiany went on patiently: "These glands in my case had undergone a natural process of exhaustion. In women the slower functioning of the endocrines is coincident with the climacteric, as they have been dependent for stimulation upon certain ovarian cells. The idea involved is that the stimulation of these exhausted cells would cause the other glands to function once more at full strength and a certain rejuvenation ensue as a matter of course; unless, of course, they had withered beyond the power of science. I was a promising subject, for examination proved that my organs were healthy, my arteries soft; and I was not yet sixty. Only experimentation could reveal whether or not there was still any life left in the cells, although I responded favorably to the preliminary tests. The upshot was that I consented to the treatment——"

"Yes? Yes?" Every woman in the room now sat forward, no longer old friends or rivals, affectionate or resentful, nor the victims of convention solidified into sharp black and white by the years. They were composite female.

"It consisted of the concentration of powerful Röntgen—what you call X-Rays—on that portion of the body covering the ovaries——"

"How horrible!" "Did you feel as if you were being electrocuted?" "Are you terribly scarred?"

"Not at all. I felt nothing whatever, and there was nothing to cause scars——"

"But I thought that the X-Rays——"

"Oh, do be quiet, Louisa," exclaimed Mrs. Tracy impatiently. "Please go on, Countess Zattiany."

"As I said, the application was painless, and if no benefit results, neither will any harm be done when the Rays are administered by a conscientious expert. My final consent, as I told you, was due to the desire to regain my old will power and vitality. I was extremely skeptical about any effect on my personal appearance. During the first month I felt so heavy and dull that, in spite of assurances that these were favorable symptoms, I was secretly convinced that I had forfeited what little mental health I had retained; but was consoled by the fact that I slept all night and a part of the day: I had suffered from insomnia since my duties at the hospital had ended——"

Yes, they X-rayed her ovaries to make her young. If only it were so simple! A contemporary reviewer in Time Magazine was not completely convinced :

The scientific probability of Mary Zattiany's rejuvenation has caused considerable discussion. Such cures have been affirmed. Whether they are sufficiently established to warrant Mrs. Atherton's use of the idea is another matter.

I guess that's the difference between science fiction and other literature - science fiction can use science that's not in the least "established" to create an entertaining story.

• Download Black Oxen from ManyBooks.net
• Download Black Oxen from Project Gutenburg

(via Futurismic)

Image: still from the 1923 movie version of Black Oxen, from the Project Gutenberg HTML version of the text
Tags:science fiction, Black Oxen

H.P. Lovecraft and the science of resuscitation

The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in the medical school where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and by his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind by calculated chemical action after the failure of natural processes. In his experiments with various animating solutions, he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the prime nuisance of the college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of life in animals supposedly dead; in many cases violent signs but he soon saw that the perfection of his process, if indeed possible, would necessarily involve a lifetime of research. It likewise became clear that, since the same solution never worked alike on different organic species, he would require human subjects for further and more specialised progress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the college authorities, and was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the medical school himself – the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham.
~ "From the Dark" (collected in Herbert West: Re-Animator), H.P. Lovecraft

Aschwin de Wolf at Depressed Metabolism has an interesting post about the science of resuscitation in H.P. Lovecraft's 1922 stories about Herbert West: Re-Animator* West is depicted as a serious (and flawed) man of science who invents a reagent that can bring the dead back to life.

West does not only anticipate the future science of resuscitation, but also the phenomenon of selective vulnerability of certain brain cells because we know that West fully realized “that the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a short period of death would be apt to cause.”

As Aschwin points out, though, actual resuscitation is unlikely as described because injection of the serum wasn't followed by some form of artificial circulation. I'm sure there's a good explanation . . .

Read "Herbert West: Re-Animator".

* Herbert West: Re-Animator was originally serialized in Home Brew Vol. 1, No. 1–6, an amateur magazine published by his friend George Julian Houtain." Lovecraft supposedly wrote the stories for the money, and heavily parodied Shelley's Frankenstein. And, yes, the 1980s Re-Animator movie was based on Lovecraft's stories.

Tags:Herbert West: Re-Animator, resuscitation, biology, HP Lovecraft

Amy Sterling Casil: Perfect Strangers

Denny was born with HLHS. That's an acronym for hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is universally fatal, if left untreated. Even now, there are babies that do not survive, even with full-lenght clone DNA therapy administered in-utero.
When at five months of pregnancy, Carolyn went for a high-level ultrasound that determined Denny had HLHS, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to try gene therapy. The doctors explained how the heart healed itself as the baby grew.
~ "Perfect Strangers", Amy Sterling Casil

Amy Sterling Casil's "Perfect Strangers" is a touching story of a father and his genetically engineered son. Her preface notes that the story was inspired by her own experience, which makes it all the more moving for me:

My son Anthony died in 2005. He was born with Down Syndrome. I began thinking about what this story became when the genetic counselor discussed chromosomal abnormalities with me, saying that a cure for them was a long way off, but other genetic illnesses would soon be cured. Every therapy mentioned in the story is currently being developed. The story is fiction; the feelings are real.

While the technology is certainly being discussed and developed, I don't think we are anywhere near to routine human genetic engineering. It's not just that there are technical difficulties (and there are), but serious ethical concerns. Take, for example, this week's report of the first genetically modified human embryo. The scientists didn't attempt to make any changes to human genes; instead they inserted DNA that encodes a fluorescent protein allowing the modified cells could be tracked. The embryo that was used was abnormal and nonviable, and was never intended to implanted or even develop beyond five days. Even so, there research provoked intense debate and discussion. I do believe that genetic engineering technology will eventually improve to the point that it can be used safely in humans, but the ethical concerns that arise from the technology will be harder to overcome.

"Perfect Strangers" was originally published in the September 2006 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. You can read it free online (pdf).

Tags:science fiction, genetic engineering

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

How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story

John Scalzi has posted one of his short stories, "How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story". It's being offered as shareware: you can download it for free, but you are encouraged to make a donation through PayPal or Amazon. Half of the money will be donated to The Lupus Foundation of America.

It's a cute story based on the strange and wonderful biology of reproduction. I think it's definitely worth a small donation.

Download a zipped pdf of "How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story" (instructions for those wishing to donate are included).

Tags:science fiction, sex

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

Unwelcome Bodies

"They call themselves 'body sculptors.' They take healthy people and turn them into monsters. Giancarla's a plastic surgeon too — one of the best, but not the best, and it sticks in that massive craw of hers. She only took me in to try to start a fad. 'Amputee chic.' It lasted about three months. Then she tried making burns fashionable." María Luisa rearranged her hair to try to cover more of her scar. "But will she fix me? No. She claims it's bad for business."
~ "The Last Stand of the Elephant Man"

There is something both marvelous and horrifying about the extremes to which the human body can be taken. Nebula Award-nominated author Jennifer Pelland explores those themes in her new short story anthology Unwelcome Bodies. As she described it to John Scalzi:

We already live in a time when plastic surgery and body modification are pushing the boundaries of what constitutes humanity. Right now, people are having surgery to change things as fundamental as their face or their gender. Are you the same person if you can’t recognize yourself in the mirror? If you have your labia and vagina turned into a penis? And what about the people who use extreme body modification to make themselves look deliberately inhuman, maybe by tattooing every inch of their skin, or by splitting their tongues, or having horns implanted in their scalps?

That’s happening now. What’s going to happen in the future as medical technology comes up with more effective ways to change our bodies? And on the other side of the equation, what about when things go terribly wrong with someone’s body? How does that change them in ways other than the obvious?

It's not just body modification that she explores. Her stories also touch on sex and disease and immortality - and the the sometimes terrible intersection of religious fanaticism and biology.

You can read several of the stories from Unwelcome Bodies online:

• "Last Stand of the Elephant Man"
• "Captive Girl" - on the 2007 Nebula ballot
• "Immortal Sin"
• "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great"
• And just for fun: "When Science Fiction Clichés Go Bad"
• See Pelland's web site for links to more of her fiction.
  

Tags:Jennifer Pelland, Unwelcome Bodies

The Science in Fiction Project

If you need inspiration to to read some good science-based fiction - either science fiction or "lab lit" - you might want to sign up for the Science in Fiction Project.

You might be asking yourself where you would even start with finding out about novels that are science-oriented. I didn’t know where to start either, so I googled “science in fiction” and found a great resource called lablit.com. At their site they talk about the very idea I had, and many of the books on their list are ones I had planned on reading at some point anyway. Some of these include Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon, Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, and Intuition by Allegra Goodman. It’s a great list to start from.

And, of course, you could alway check out some of the SF suggestions over in the sidebar.

Anyway, I've signed up and I'm keeping an eye on the reviews by other project members. I'll add a review of my own, once I actually get through one of the novels on my nightstand.

Tags:science in fiction project

Ecology of Dune

SciFi Weekly reports that Frank Herbert's novel Dune is slated to be made into a movie once again, this time by Peter Berg, director of The Kingdom. According to SciFi, the move is still in the early planning stages:

The Berg Dune is now seeking writers, with the producers looking for a faithful adaptation of the Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book.

New Amsterdam's Richard Rubenstein, who produced SCI FI's Dune and its sequel, Children of Dune, is also producing alongside Sarah Aubrey of Film 44, Berg's production banner. John Harrison and Mike Messina executive-produce.

It will be interesting to see what approach Berg will take to the movie. I think it's pretty safe to assume that it will have a very different feel from the 1984 version directed by David Lynch.

In this YouTube video of an interview that Herbert gave about the time the Lynch movie was released, he talks about charismatic leaders, and how the desert planet Arrakis (aka Dune) with it's highly desirable "spice" reflects some of the limitations of Earth's environment: valuable oil, and limited clean air and water, and problems with overpopulation.


One of the things I find fascinating about the Dune series is that the planet itself plays such an important role in the story. The Fremen have learned to live in the harsh landscape of Arrakis, yet dream of a future in which careful weather control will turn the desert green. There is a catch, of course. Arrakis is the only source of the drug melange, or "spice", which is both essential for intersteller navigation and is used by the wealthy to extend their lifespans. Melange is a byproduct of the life cycle of the great sandworms, which both created the desert and require the arid climate for their survival. A green Arrakis is one without sandworms - and without the spice.

Herbert based Arrakis on real desert ecology, having been inspired by the sand dunes along the Oregon coast. In a 1969 interview with Cal State Fullerton English professor Willis McNelly, he talked about his research that lead to the novel:

FH: [. . .] Sand dunes are like waves in a large body of water; they just are slower. And the people treating them as fluid learn to control them.

WM: Fluid mechanics, in other words.

FH: That’s it. Fluid mechanics, with sand. And the whole idea fascinated me, so I started researching sand dunes and of course from sand dunes it’s a logical idea to go into a desert. The way I accumulated data is I start building file folders and before long I saw that I had far to much for an article and far too much for a story, for a short story. So, I didn’t know really what I had but I had an enormous amount of data and avenues shooting off at all angles to gather more. And I was following them … I can’t read the dictionary, you know; I can’t go look up a word…

WM: (Laughter)

FH: I get stopped by everything else on the opposite page. But … so, I started accumulating these file folders, which I’ll show you later, and as a result, I finally saw that I had something enormously interesting going for me about the ecology of deserts, and it was, for a science fiction writer anyway, it was an easy step from that to think: What if I had an entire planet that was a desert? During my studies of deserts, of course, and previous studies of religions, we all know that many religions began in a desert atmosphere, so I decided to put the two together because I don’t think that any one story should have any one thread. I build on a layer technique, and of course putting in religion and religious ideas you can play one against the other. [. . . ]

Read the whole interview for more about Herbert's thoughts on ecology and the effect of humans on the environment, feudalism, religion, his writing process and more.

I think that wars fought over the control of rare commodities and changes in the environment are themes that are as relevant today as they were in the 1960s. However, I suspect the new movie version is more likely to be an action thriller with lots of explosions than a thoughtful allegory of our dependence on oil and Earth's changing climate. Actually, in my ideal version it would be both!



(Herbert video via The World in a Satin Bag; Image is a photo of Oregon Dunes by Artbandito on flickr)

Tags:Frank Herbert, Dune, ecology

Scott Sigler's Infected

The problem with saving up my blog reading is that sometimes I miss out on cool offers. Scott Sigler's Infected is coming out in hard cover today, and as part of the pre-publication promotion, a pdf of the novel could be downloaded for free. That offer ended a few hours ago, unfortunately.

The story is a mixture of science fiction, horror and thriller, with lots of biology. Sigler was interviewed as part of John Scalzi's "Big Idea" series, which gives a synopsis of the story:

Animals are basically biological machines, capable of growth, self-repair and design modification based on changing environmental stresses. All of the processes used for those things should be able to be controlled in the human body, if we had the technology. For Infected, that technology is there, but humans are not the ones using it. The story is taking the concept of a virus, hijacking the human body’s natural processes to make copies of a simple organism, and extending that to building highly complex organisms, organisms with a pre-programed purpose and an evil, evil plan. We are a walking planet to the bacteria and arachnids that cover our body in the billions — and if we can modify our planet, why can’t they modify us?

According to Sigler, he basis his stories on hard science..

There are no magic wands, no random wormholes, no ghostly teleportation and no history-altering time travel — my stories are the same world you live in every day, which means characters and monsters will obey the laws of physics (for the most part, anyway). And if you read up on pop science or you remember your biology classes, you’re bound to run into things in my books that you already know. Again, there is something about incorporating knowledge that’s already around us that grips the reader, and helps build up the illusion of reality within the story.

For me the plausibility of the science makes the horror elements that much more horrifying. There's no escaping the many many microbes that are an integral part of our bodies. In Infected, the victims are infected by the genetically engineered "Triangles", that feed off their host's nutrients and thoughts. Once they have grown strong enough, they hatch from the host's weakened body. It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.

The good news is that even if you didn't download the free pdf, you can listen to the whole story in Scott Sigler's podcast: prologue and Chapter 1, Chapters 2-4, Chapters 5-9, Chapter 10. Subscribe to Sigler's blog to find out when new chapters are posted. Or, of course, you could buy a copy.

Tags:Scott Sigler, Infected, viruses