Hello John I've spent some time going through your site and the agenda you outlined in the link to your seminar. I do have some thoughts, which I've run by Udhay (as this is my first post on this forum, I would like to avoid falling flat on my face, metaphorically!)
Synthetic Biology is an exceptionally widely used construct in SF, with most of the well-known ones having some element of genetic manipulation, usually in response to an environmental constraint or set of constraints. Just as an example, Pournelle's Mote in God's Eye, Dickson's Dorsai series and Van Vogt's Mixed Men stories all use the Race of Supermen (genetically modified) construct as a foundation for their story arcs, and I'm sure there are many more. This considerably large set of references didn't seem to yield anything germane to your subject, and so was abandoned. Biohacking, on the other hand, seemed much more promising as a specific starting point. I came up with the following references that I have read, and can therefore comment on - 1. Blood music, Greg Bear 2. Tuf Voyaging, GRRM 3. Seeding Program, a short story by James Blish. This is part of a collection called Seedling Stars, though I have only this story as part of my collection. 4. The Uplift series, in my view, also relies on biohacking as a basic construct for the act of Uplifting a species, as it would be otherwise impossible to even contemplate Chimp Scientists and Dolphins captaining spaceships while articulating haikus in trinary! Blood Music, in particular, seems to be a widely quoted reference for biohacking, with its reference to individual cells being computing units, and culminating in the one super-organism / gestalt story template. Which brings me to the premise that I wanted to suggest. A recurring theme in my conversation with people in my social circle who are aware of my fondness for SciFi is how much of it actually relates to today. In particular, whenever there is an argument on the subject of genetic manipulation (which invariably comes up in discussions on GMO), that utterly hackneyed statement- "How can we play God?" - makes its appearance. Aside from my irritation at people's desire to use this as a punchline / finishing statement, this behoves an obvious retort "Well, we've done our best to muck up the environment and contribute towards the extinction of quite a few species, so we've already tried to play God to destructive effect. We may as well try it constructively." SF has an important role to contribute here, as it has done in the past. Much of the writing that I have come across has taken an alarmist slant to genetics, raising concerns on unchecked experimentation. True, yet the converse also holds - nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'm quite sure that these alarms would have been sounded during research on nuclear physics in the first half of the 20th century. Yet that didn't stop people from taking risks (though one can argue that the basis for taking such risks had its roots in military applications). My point is - why not bring out something that accentuates the beneficial side of what can happen? In a conversation with Udhay, he mentioned that Neal Stephenson has been saying much the same thing of late. I would posit that SF writers have an obligation towards this purpose, all the more so when confronted with the anti-science and anti-intellectual bent of mind that seems to be taking hold nowadays. I notice that your weblink already highlights this point as a responsibility from writers, so all I've done is lend support to it. Good luck with your talk. Regards Rajeev -----Original Message----- From: silklist [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Sundman Sent: 20 June 2016 21:21 To: [email protected] Subject: [silk] "obligations" of a novelist? I’ve been invited to give a talk at a synthetic biology symposium in Scotland next month. http://synbiobeta.com/advice-novelist-prepare-biodigital-era/ I would welcome any comments. Regards, jrs P.S. despite the title of the article (not chosen by me) I have precious little advice to give.
