RIP Neil Armstrong: Challenges are in our nature

"I think we're going to the Moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of this deep inner soul. We're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream."

~ Neil Armstrong, quoted in First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon, passed away today at the age of 82. NASA has published an excellent obituary and appreciation of his life.

Since Armstrong's historic moon walk in 1969, only 11 other men have followed in his footsteps, most recently in 1972. I find myself saddened that we have not expanded our human presence in our solar system beyond Earth orbit in those 40 years.

Armstrong was a supporter of NASA's Constellation Program,which aimed to take humans to Mars. As he stated in his 2010 testimony to Congress when that program was cancelled:

If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is allowed simply to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that this would be in our best interests.
[....snip ...]
The now to be cancelled Constellation program showed promise to fulfill lofty goals with a high level of safety and flexibility.

Will the European Space Agency, or China or Russia eventually send humans back to the Moon or Mars or beyond even if NASA does not? I think we humans will land on Mars eventually, since as Armstrong stated almost 50 years ago, the challenge is in our nature.

But when that does happen, Neil Armstrong will still have a permanent place in history as the first human to set foot on solid ground beyond the Earth. A "giant leap for mankind" indeed!

And tonight we can all do as his family requests:

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

RIP Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

Image: Neil Armstrong photographed by Buzz Aldrin after the completion of the Lunar EVA on the Apollo 11 flight, July 20, 1969.

Alien Sex and Worlds: Philip Jose Farmer (1918-2009)

A lalitha's uterus contains ova, the genes of which are duplicated in the bodies of microscopic wrigglers formed in the giant salivary glands in a lalitha's mouth. These wrigglers - salivary ova - are continually released by the adult.

The adult lalitha pass genes by means of these invisible creatures; they infect each other as if the carriers of heredity were diseases. They cannot escape it; a kiss, a sneeze, a touch, will do it.
[...]
Meanwhile, the first wrigglers she is exposed to have made their way through the bloodstream, the intestinal tract, the skin, boring, floating, until they arrive at the uterus of the host.

There, the salivary ovum unites with the uterine ovum. Fusion of the two produces a zygote. At this point, fertilization is suspended. True, all genetic data needed to produce a new lalitha is provided. All except the genes for the specific features of the face of the baby. This data will be given by the male human lover of the lalitha.

Not, however, until the conjunction of two more events. These two must occur simultaneously. One is excitation by orgasm. The other is stimulation of the photokinetic nerves. One cannot take place without the other. Neither can the last two come about unless the first happens. Apparently, fusion of the two ova causes a chemical change in the lalitha which then makes her capable or orgasm and fully develops the photokinetic nerves.
[...]
The photokinetic nerves are the exclusive property of the lalitha. They run from the retina of the eye, along with the optic nerves, to the brain. But the photokinetic nerves descend to the spinal column and leave its base to enter the uterus. The uterus is not that of the human female. Do not even compare them. You might say that the lalitha uterus is the dark room of the womb. Where the photograph of the father's face is biologically developed.

~ The Lovers by Philip José Farmer

In 1952 a 34-year-old science fiction writer broke one of the genre's taboos: he wrote a story where not only a human and an alien fall in love, but they have sex (the female alien even has an orgasm!), and we get a description of alien reproduction. It seems pretty tame by today's standards, but it won Philip José Farmer a Hugo award for "Most Promising New Talent". The story was republished in novel form in 1961, and Farmer's career was off and running.

My introduction to Farmer was when I picked up the first Riverworld novel, To Your Scatted Bodies Go, at some time in the late 1980s. It's a great concept: somewhere, somehow, every adult human who ever lived - up until the mid-1980s if I recall correctly - is resurrected in young healthy bodies on a planet consisting of one long river and bit of shoreline. That meant that humans from any era could meet and interact - Sir Richard Burton, Mark Twain, Prince John, Hermann Göring, Lewis Carroll's real Alice and many other well-known figures share adventures along the river. I eventually read all five of the novels in the series, which pretty much burned me out on Farmer's writing.

I've read a number of his short works, and honestly, a lot of them don't do much for me. They often read like old-fashioned pulp fiction, only set in the future and with lots of sex. The future and sex I like, but the pulp fiction not so much. However, even though I don't count Farmer among my favorite authors, it's clear that he has left a lasting mark on the genre.

Farmer died on February 25 at the age of 91. Make he reawaken on a Riverworld!

There are links to more remembrances at the Official Philip Jose Farmer website.



Tags:Philip Jose Farmer, obituary

Majel Barrett Roddenberry (1932-2008)

I was very sorry to read that Majel Barrett died today of complications from leukemia. Barrett's acting career was intimately twined with the Star Trek franchise, not only because she was the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, but because she played so many roles in the the various TV series:

• In the original pilot for Star Trek she played Number One, first officer on the Enterprise. The role was dropped at the suggestion of NBC's executives who thought "audiences would never accept a woman being second-in-command of a ship."
• She played nurse Christine Chapel in Star Trek: The Original Series.
• She voiced Chapel and M'Ress for Star Trek: The Animated Series
• She had a recurring role as Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space 9
  
• She played the voice of the Enterprise's computer in The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and two episodes of Enterprise. She also voiced the computer in four films: Star Trek Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and Star Trek Nemesis. And it has been reported that she recently finished recording the voice of the computer for the upcoming Star Trek movie to be released next May.

In addition to her Trek roles, she also produced and occasionally appeared in the role of microbiologist/neurosurgeon/genetic engineering expert Dr. Julianne Belman on the unintentionally funny* Earth: Final Conflict.

It's sad to think that she's no more.

* I do a wicked Taelon impression.
Tags:Majel Barrett Roddenberry

Biology in Science Fiction Roundup: November 16 Edition

Some recent biology & science fiction-related links:

General

Arvind Mishra has an overview of The First Ever National Disuccussion of Science Fiction: Past, Present, Future, held in Varanasi, India from November 10-14.

If you like both "Lost World" and Americana you'll probably love Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge, Virginia, where the Civil War meets dinosaurs (via Metafilter)

Written Word

Lots of memories of Michael Crichton. A few that talk about the biology in his books:

• Discoblog: The Top 5 "Crazy" Michael Crichton Ideas That Actually Came True
  
• New York Times: Builder of Windup Realms That Thrillingly Run Amok
• New York Times: When Science Fiction Morphed Into Politics
  
• New Scientist: Crichton's Legacy Remains Intact
  
• Science Not Fiction: Michael Crichton's Legacy
• Contrary Brin: Michael Crichton, Dream On
  

Jennifer Rohn posts about natural-sounding ways to have your scientist characters introduce science background into your novel.

Peter Watts has finished an outline for a new novel (not a completed novel like I first wrote, bummer). Like Blindsight it is based in neuroscience:

What we got here is a Blindsight spinoff; a thought-experiment on the nature and evolution of Singularities, past and future; a cast of characters who don't understand their own actions (one of the themes of the book is that it's neurologically impossible to understand our own true motives; the best we can do is make guesses after the fact); all told through the eyes of a man whose brain is literally being rewired throughout the course of the story.

There's a CJ Cherryh link roundup at Feminist SF.

Television

A Fantasy Magazine Randy Henderson explains Why We Need Scientist Heroes Again

The LA Times Show Tracker blog interviewed Fringe writer Jeff Pinkner, who claims the shows plots are based in science fact:

A: There’s always a degree of responsibility we feel, but all of our science is grounded in reality. We’re not telling any stories that are in the world of potential.

Q: If you’re playing with the reality anyway, why rely on scientific fact at all? Couldn’t you just completely make something up that sounds plausible and go with that?

A: Yes. But our rule is we don’t want to do it if it’s totally made up. I’m sure people would tell you everything we’re doing is totally unbelievable, but for us, if we set out to do an utterly fictional show, it would probably be easier in some ways, but it would be less exciting. I think we all quite like the idea that we’re working in the realm of the real, as opposed to the entirely made-up. Again, it’s not necessary to watch the show and see how it’s ripped from the headlines, because it’s not. But there’s a certain quality of authenticity that it’s much easier to create if you know the parameters.

Science Not Fiction reviews the Primeval DVD:

The other big stars of the show are the creatures, beautifully and realistically animated CGI creations–it’s not a surprise that they’re good, since the team that produces them was responsible for the BBC documentary Walking With Dinosaurs. For Primeval, some artistic license does get taken, but the creatures that run, swim, and fly through the show are very believable, and prove you don’t have to travel to another planet to find creatures and worlds that are utterly alien.

Science Not Fiction also has another look at science in The Eleventh Hour: Staying Safe From Scary Germs

Movies

Hero Complex talked to Guillermo del Toro, who told them that Swamp Thing is "one of the last Holy Grail projects that is still out there."

Repo! The Genetic Opera has been released on a small number of screens, and the reviews are in - and pretty bad. Says the LA Times:

The film is bad -- not good-bad, tacky-bad or fun-bad, just plain awful and nearly unwatchable. "

On the other hand, some fans in LA have already seen it 4 times. Paris Hilton groupies, perhaps?
And io9 has an interview with writer and on-screen graverobber Terrance Zdunich. He says there's a real organ trade behind the fiction:

... when Darren Smith and I were researching and doing the writing of Repo!, we actually had some really cool interviews and some cool stories we found with surgeons and transplant doctors. We just studied what's really out there. The reality is, a lot of what's happening in Repo! isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. And certainly, perhaps not that far off in the future. Organs are used as currency. Maybe not at Walmart, but there is a market around body parts — and ironically, right now, at least in the States, the only people that don't profit from organ donations are the actual donors. Everyone else literally makes a killing off of it. And in other countries, there are tons of stories, in South America, for example, of people who are selling, like, a kidney to fat rich Americans. And they're doing it for a price that you'd be kind of like — "Woah, you're losing a kidney for just, you know, a Whopper combo super-sized? That's pretty intense." And even recently, the Chinese government, which has denied it for ages, came clean on the fact that they had been in many cases executing prisoners and then taking their organs and selling them again to rich, fat Americans. So I don't think it's that far off. Do I ever think that Big Brother's going to come in and actually on-the-books sanction murder? I don't think so. But do I think that there's perhaps a lot of social commentary and satire in what we're doing? Yes, that was definitely intentional.

Mike Brotherton lists ten great SF novels that would make terrible movies. He doesn't think people would want to see Connie Willis's plague novel, The Doomsday Book, even though it's about the survivors; Forward's The Dragon's Egg is too alien; and the smart dolphins of Brin's Startide Rising would "look dumb on film". I'd watch any of those over the rumored Ridley Scott movie based on the Monopoly board game.

SF Signal has a trailer for the new animated CGI movie Monsters vs. Aliens. Looks cute!

Slice of SciFi reports that there may be a new Planet of the Apes movie in the works - not a sequel to Burton's recent version, but another "reboot".

Wired reports on "Six Real Gadgets Minority Report Predicted Correctly", including neuroscientists being able to "predict mistakes" (no, not murder, though). I'm not sure it's that clever that the 2002 movie "predicted" technologies that were almost certainly in the pipeline at the time it came out. It's still nifty stuff.

Cool Bioscience

Carl Zimmer has a great science fiction idea: aliens whose skin turns green from the plants they eat. It's based on the real science emerald green sea slugs that turn green from plant matter they retain in their skin from the algae they ingest.

Japanese scientists cloned a mouse that had been in the freezer for 16 years, and have speculated that extinct animals like the wooly mammoth could be next. Aparently a Pleistocene Park (ala Jurassic Park) is already in the planning stages.

Scientists have identified the genetic changes that allowed vampire bats to "subsist on a diet of pure blood."

Lifehacker has clips from the 60 minutes program about recent developments in brain-computer interfaces.

Post-Weird Thoughts has a bit on a plant named Midori that has its own blog. Somehow Midori's bioelectric signals are translated into words - sounds like science fiction to me.

The New York Times ran an interesting series of articles about epigenetics. The Knight Science Journalism Tracker has an overview and links. Two of my favorite science writers contributed: Natalie Angier on the meaning of "Gene" and Carl Zimmer on "the rest of the genome".

Hourglass is the blog carnival of biogerentology: the science of aging. Read the latest edition at psique.

Ian Musgrave at Panda's Thumb points to a cool interactive web exhibit exploring the origins of life on the Boston Museum of Science Web Site.

Genetics & Health rounds up information on the "hard questions" about the personal genome revolution.

Tags:science fiction, biology

Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

"Life is too short, and DNA too long."
-- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Author Michael Crichton unexpectedly passed away yesterday at the age of 66 after a battle with cancer. His novels usually focused on the dangers of scientists pursuing research without restraints and science run amok, as the article reporting his death points out:

"Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand," his family said in a statement.

Crichton's works often focused on the use and abuse of emerging technologies which spiral out of control and endanger people, as was the case in "Prey," "Sphere," "The Andromeda Strain" and "Timeline." The author's medical background also played a role in his work, leading to the award-winning television series "ER." His most recent novel, 2006's "Next," dealt with genetics and law.

Crichton received an MD from Harvard, despite the fact that he found himself more interested in writing than practicing medicine, at least according to his his autobiographical book Travels. After receiving an MD, from 1969-1970 he was a postdoc at the Salk Institute in San Diego, before leaving both science and medicine for writing and Hollywood. It's not surprising with his background that many of his novels featured biotechnology, usually with deadly unintended consequences.

Even though the science in his novels often wasn't very accurate, I actually found it fun to read (and later watch) stories where the actual process of doing science was portrayed. Take Jurassic Park, for example. Crichton's suggestion that the "gaps" in dinosaur DNA be replaced with frog sequences was grossly unlikely, and the actual DNA sequences published in the novel turned out to be from bacterial expression vectors rather than related to genes found in vertebrates. But the science got biogeeks like me talking about it. And the portrayal of the bio lab in the movie version of Jurassic Park was recognizable as a molecular biology lab, down to the Falcon tubes and the pulling of ethidium bromide-stained bands of DNA from a CsCl gradient (even though that particular method was becoming obsolete). Even though wasn't great science, but it was science being portrayed. And even though Crichton's biotechnology usually spins out of control, I would bet it has inspired many a youngster to find out more about the real science. Who wouldn't want to clone a dinosaur?

A selection of his biology-based novels:

The Andromeda Strain (1969) was Crichton's first bestselling novel. A military satellite collecting upper atmosphere microorganisms to exploit as bioweapons falls back to Earth carrying a deadly extraterrestrial bacterium. A team of scientists races to find a way to stop the deadly plague.

The Terminal Man (1972) is the story of Harry Benson who suffers from psychomoter epilepsy. He has an experimental procedure in which electrodes and a minicomputer are implanted in his brain to control his seizures. Instead of curing him, the treatment ma turns Benson into a homocidal sex fiend.

In Congo (1980) competing groups of explorers race to find an extremely valuable deposit of diamonds deep in the rain forests of the Congo. They unexpectedly meet a band of killer gorillas (which are possibly gorilla-human hybrids) which were bred by the natives in prehistoric times to guard the diamond mines.




In Jurassic Park (1990) dinosaurs have been recreated from prehistoric DNA extracted from amber in the hopes of making an island off the coast of Costa Rica into a sort of wild animal theme park. The dinosaurs turn out to be much more dangerous than their creators anticipated. Even worse, the biological controls on the dinosaur population - lysine deficiency and an entirely female population - also fail. That brings us to the sequel, The Lost World (1995), in which dinos have escaped from their tropical island and wreak havok on the mainland.

The dangerous technology in Prey (2002) is very small, rather than very large. Nanorobots by genetically modified E. coli bacteria escape from the laboratory and into the desert, where they form predatory swarms, eventually evolving the ability to infect and take over people.

In Crichton's most recent novel, Next (2006), is the ultimate in scary biotechnology. The villain is BioGen, a biotechnology that decides their legal rights to a cancer survivor's cells also gives then the right to harvest cells from the survivor's daughter and grandson, who flee. Meanwhile, BioGen has created a gene therapy treatment that cures drug addiction, and the scientist in charge of the project is unsure whether he should spread the news before understanding the side effects - which turn out to be rapid aging and death. There are also a cast of transgenic animals, from glow-in-the-dark turtles to a human-ape child.

In addition to his techno-thriller-scifi novels, Crichton also wrote, directed and produced movies and TV shows, including the movies Coma and Westworld, and the television series ER.

Related posts:

• Dinosaurs in our future?
• Ridley Scott on Virus, The Environment and The Andromeda Strain
• Is Science Fiction Obsolete?
• Next: More Science, Less Story
• The fake "Ethics in Genetics" Blog
• Next: Michael Crichton and Genetics
• Jurassic Park: Helpful or Harmful?
  

Thanks to Guy Plunkett for the Jurassic Park quote and for reminding me of the popularity of Jurassic Park amongst the biosci set.

Tags:Michael Crichton, biotechnology, genetic engineering, obituary

Thomas M. Disch (1940-2008)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not, however, man.

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

Interviews with Thomas Disch:

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

Tags:Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides

Stan Winston (1946-2008)

Special effects legend Stan Winston died yesterday of multiple myeloma. He won three Oscars for his work, which included The Thing, Aliens, Predator, Edward Scissorhands, all three Terminator movies, Jurassic Park, AI, and Iron Man, among many others.

Winston was interviewed by Hugo Perez at SciFi.com when AI was released in 2001. He talked about his work, and his views on science fiction and science:

Can you talk about how you see aspects of certain films you've worked on, i.e., Terminator, Jurassic Park, A.I., becoming the truth of tomorrow?

Winston: [. . .] Someone has now with their imagination said, "Boy, wouldn't it be cool if you could take the DNA of something as historic as the dinosaur and bring it to life based on DNA that has been fossilized over years?" Well, guess what? Something like that is going to happen. Why is it going to happen? Because Michael Crichton imagined that it could happen, and there is a science that is at the base of that imagination. And now with the combination of science and this man's imagination, there are going to be some human beings out there that will crack this problem, and using DNA are going to create life. It's happening now. It's science and the imagination that fuels the creative mind of mankind, and there is nothing that will stop it from happening until mankind doesn't exist anymore, and I don't see that happening anytime in the near future. As long as we exist, we will continue to create, and we will create a reality that we have imagined.

His enthusiasm about the boundlessness of human creativity and its effect on science sounds strangely optimistic coming from someone who has worked on movies in which the hubris of scientists wreaks havoc (for example, Jurassic Park and Terminator) or man's insatiable need to travel between the stars brings us into contact with monsterous aliens.

RIP Stan Winston.

(via Ain't It Cool News, which has some cool photos)
Image: The Thermians in Galaxy Quest
Tags:science fiction, special effects, science fiction, monsters

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

It was reported today that Arthur C. Clarke has died at the age of 90. Clarke wrote many science fiction classics: Childhood's End, Against the Fall of Night, The Fountains of Paradise, Rendezvous with Rama, and, perhaps the story best known even to non-science fiction fans, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unlike Clarke's other novels, 2001 was written with the specific purpose of being adapted into a screenplay, starting from his short story, "The Sentinel". Director Stanley Kubrick had significant input into the story, but the novel was not completed before the screenplay, and differs in some details from the movie version. Clarke's account of collaboration was published in 1972 as The Lost Worlds of 2001. He describes the creative process that lead to the scene with the monolith teaching pre-human hominids how to use tools, which was inspired in part by the ideas of anthropologist (and screenwriter) Robert Ardrey. He didn't stop there, though, continuing to consult with both Kubrick and other anthropologists. From Clarke's diary:

October 2. Finished reading Robert Ardery's African Genesis. Came across a striking paragraph which might even provide a title for the movie: "Why did not the human line become extinct in the depths of the Pliocene? . . . we know that but for a gift from the stars, but for the accidental collision of ray and gene, intelligence would have perished on some forgotten African field" True, Ardrey is talking about cosmic-ray mutations, but the phrase "A gift from the stars" is strikingly applicable to our present plot line.
[snip]
November 20. Went to Natural History Museum to see Dr. Harry Shapiro, head of Anthropology, who took a poor view of Ardrey. Then had a session with Stan, arguing about early man's vegetarian versus carnivorous tendencies. Stan wants our visitors to turn Man into a carnivore; I argued that he always was. Back at the Chlesea, phoned Ike Asimov to discuss the biochemistry of turning vegetarians into carnivores.

November 21. Read Leakey's Adam's Ancestors*. Getting rather desperate now, but after six hours' discussion Stan had a rather amusing idea. Our E.T.'s arrive on Earth and teach commando tactics to our pacifistic ancestors so that they can survive and flourish. We had an entertaining time knocking this one around, but I don't think it's viable.

Ultimately, they went with tool use. Originally, the story had an alien named Clindar who came, observed that Earth's hominids had the potential for intelligence, and decided they were worth teaching. That chapter was cut, but was resurrected in The Lost Worlds of 2001:

It was a wonder they had survived, and their future did not look promising. [. . .] But Clindar, with the experience of many worlds behind him, knew that appearances could be deceptive. These unprepossessing near-apes had one great advantage over all he other creatures of their planet. They were still unspecialized; they had not yet become trapped in any evolutionary cul-de-sac. Almost every animal could beat them in some respect - in strength, or speed, or hearing or natural armament. There was no single skill in which the hominids excelled, but they could do everything after a fashion. Where the other animals had become virtuosos, they had specialized in a universal mediocrity - and therein, a million years hence, might lie their salvation. Having failed to adapt themselves to their environment, they might yet one day change it to suit their own desires.

Here's the dawning of tool use as depicted in the movie version of 2001:




The use of tools allowed our distant ancestors to more reliably obtain food and defend themselves, which in turn likely led to an increase in brain size and increased intelligence**. Several million years later, here we are. Clarke makes clear in 2001 that our current state is not the end of evolution. Astronaut David Bowman has an encounter with another monolith, which molds his mind anew. Bowman becomes the Star-Child, returning briefly to Earth to clear the skies of orbiting nuclear weapons before he explores the universe. I like to think that's the direction evolution will take the human race.

R.I.P Arthur C. Clarke

* There's an interesting article at Talk Origins about the inaccuracies in Leakey's human ancestral tree as published in Adam's Ancestors in 1934. The Smithsonian has a more up to date version.

** See, for example Flinn MV, Geary DC, and Ward CV. "Ecological dominance, social competition, and coalitionary arms races: Why humans evolved extraordinary intelligence." Evolution and Human Behavior 26: 10-46 (2005) (pdf)

Tags:Arthur C. Clarke, 2001, evolution, hominids, anthropology