Of Mice and Men, not Martians and Moons
Hello friends,
It’s been more than fifty years since I discovered the double-helix that would change everything. I can remember the moment so well, wondering how the world might look down the road, where I now stand. I pondered whether the science fiction of my time would become prophecy, or perhaps whether genetics and DNA would be thrown by the wayside as new discoveries or world events emerged. I was reminded of this moment while reading Zadie Smith’s incredible novel, White Teeth, in which a brilliant geneticist creates a genetically modified “FutureMouse.” When I was a child, the science fiction of the time seemed to focus on worlds beyond our imagination, such as Assimov’s Foundation Trilogy and George A. Smith’s “Venus Equilateral.” However, it seems to me that science fiction has now become less of a means to predict future events or hypothesize on other worlds or universes and now focuses on the social commentary of the present day.
In White Teeth, the proposed FutureMouse has had its life mapped out, programmed and designed by Marcus Chalfen, a brilliant geneticist driven to improve quality of life through controlling it. However, once it’s born, it escapes, almost as if taking control over its own life. Of course, all this speculation of control and freedom stems from the author controlling the book. But, I digress. What interests me is not the subject of the author’s commentary, but that she focuses on something that is already happening in science rather than speculating about the future as so many of the most classic and treasured authors of science fiction aimed to do long ago. As authors shift their focus from the future to the present, what does that say about the state of science in general? I’ll let the mouse speak for himself:
The Future(Mouse) is the present.
-James Watson
cskene said,
April 21, 2008 at 12:36 am
While any number of things are possible today that were not possible during Asimov’s formative years, I’m not convinced that this is the reason that speculative fiction is now tending to focus on the near-future consequences of current scientific achievements. I believe that there are four reasons that the scope of speculative fiction has diminished in recent years:
1. Space travel has not panned out as expected. As a species, we have not made much progress in establishing off-world transportation in the past several decades. Because of this, good speculative fiction now focuses on advances set within the confines of the Earth’s gravitational field. How can one speculate on the existence of vast galactic empires when, as a species, we can’t even muster up the willpower to set up shop on our own moon?
2. Science has become MUCH more complicated than it was fifty years ago. Good speculation requires a strong foundational knowledge in current technologies, and that foundation is much more difficult to achieve now than it used to be.
3. With our recent increases in knowledge, we have become much more aware of what is not possible. The fact that it is becoming possible to access the sum of all human knowledge with a device that fits in your pocket makes other technologies, such as force shields and faster-than-light travel, all the less believable. Wireless communication? Most certainly. Voice-recognition technology? Sure. Phasers? Perhaps. Transporters? Definitely not.
4. This is just speculation itself, but I suspect that speculators are much more concerned about getting it “just right” than they used to be. There is a very fine line between speculative fiction and science fiction, and I think that those who consider themselves speculators might be afraid to cross it.
watsoncsh said,
April 21, 2008 at 2:03 am
Greetings, Chris, it is a delight to hear from you,
I very much enjoy your statements, and I would like to respond to them accordingly.
Perhaps it is not that we have placed this intergalactic speculation on the bottom of our list of priorities, but perhaps we have lost ourselves within the cosmos itself. As we have come to know more about astronomy and the heavens above, we have begun to feel increasingly smaller within our world as well as skeptical that we should find anything of any importance. Let us also consider that the academic who studies biology is now far more respected than the astronomer. You raise an incredibly valid point, which I feel somewhat agrees with my position, especially in your third point: “…we have become much more aware of what is not possible.” This places the future that we might have once imagined in a space confined by our present skepticism.
Also, I very much agree with your statement about speculators being afraid to cross the line over to science fiction. I’ve faced enough scrutiny about getting my own life “just right” in my books–and that’s just in non-fiction. Certainly, the pressure to get the facts straight weighs heavier now than ever.
-Watson
henryford said,
April 21, 2008 at 2:31 am
To Whom It May Concern:
Let me start off by saying that I do not read science fiction. Such things are irrelevant to me. Why would I concern myself with literary ruminations that combine the factual and the fictional? However, I wanted to respond to the video of the genetically modified mouse in the video. As soon as I saw that mouse, I wanted to snatch him out of his little plastic cage and patent him. But then I thought to myself: Wait, could I even patent him. Technically I can’t, he is one of God’s creatures. But then I smelled it. That mouse stank like he’d been rolling around in human production for decades. I had thought for a while that anything that came from human hands I could patent. That’s how I made all my money; I put my mark on everything I produced. No one had anything as quickly as I did. Now look at me, I’m the man. Anyway, I wanted to ask you all, could I patent that mouse?
HF
zacr12 said,
April 21, 2008 at 3:01 am
I say go for it Henry although your patent may be tied up in legislation for the next decade or two. As far as I know, living things can be patented as long as they aren’t a human. If I were you, I might try to compare patenting the mouse to genetically modified foods (GMOs) that are already in our grocery stores. GMOs or genetically modified organisms are also living things that have been genetically engineered so you may have a case. Anyway, good luck, but I hope you try to use the patent on the mouse for the good of science and/or humanity–not just to make money for yourself.