Thanks Rajeev, These are all good points and I appreciate your taking the time to share them with us.
I’m traveling today from USA —> Scotland, so I won’t take the time to reply at length. But I will say that I think you will find that the remarks I intend to give at the synthetic biology gathering on Thursday address many of your points. They do explicitly address Stephenson and the “Project Hieroglyph” at Arizona State University. http://hieroglyph.asu.edu <http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/> After I’ve given my talk I’ll post the text to my blog and post the link here. I shall then look forward to continuing the conversation. Kind regards, jrs > On Jul 5, 2016, at 8:17 AM, rajeev chakravarthi <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 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. >
