MY TWO NEW FAVOURITE SCIENCE BOOKS

As a writer of science fiction and a de facto ambassador for science, I consider it a duty to share my discoveries when I come across must-read books about science. And two of my newest favourites come from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong. Yong has written science articles for top magazines for years, but then put his gifts and experience to work on book-length projects beginning in 2016 with I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life followed in 2022 by An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Both are remarkable achievements.

Since I Contain Multitudes has been included on more than a dozen prominent “notable books” or “best of the year” lists, my opinion may not mean a great deal, but I still want to encourage lovers of science as strongly as I can to read this book. First, it’s written the way I wish all popular science books were written: with terrific enthusiasm, unimpeachable diligence and scholarship, impeccable balance, and humour. Second, it’s collection of scientific findings is mind-blowing—you’ll learn not only that bacteria, viruses, and archaea colonize every square centimeter of our planet (and ourselves) in unimaginable numbers, but also that bacteria are brilliantly effective in producing antibacterial agents. You’ll discover wasps that spread an antibiotic paste over the eggs they lay; how mammalian mothers (including humans) provide lifetime protection to their babies via natural births and breast milk; how much we need good bacteria to help our bodies function normally, and why; and how pests like wasps and mosquitoes can be used as disease-fighters thanks to their microbiome (the collection of microbes living on and within them).

To me, two of the most important takeaways of I Contain Multitudes are that 1) microbes don’t automatically mean disease—there are many more necessary or neutral microbes than there are pathogens that do us harm; and 2) when we wipe out existing colonies of (mostly harmless) microbes with antibiotics and antimicrobial chemicals, we’re opening up niches for the nearest opportunistic microbes to take their place, very likely harmful ones (in hospitals, that’s almost a certainty). So, over-sterilizing ourselves and our environments is a bad strategy.

If you’re easily grossed-out, there is a significant “ick” factor in much of what Yong relates, but it’s information very much worth knowing. And I think it’s safe to say that you’ll never look at the world and the people around you in the same way again!

As outstanding as I Contain Mutitudes is, I like An Immense World even better ( I read it first and recently read it a second time).

What an astonishing book! This time Ed Yong takes us on a tour of the senses—not just the five we usually experience, but all the incredible ways animals, fish, birds, and insects perceive the world around us. With notes and a bibliography that runs to dozens of pages, it’s clear how Yong spent the Covid pandemic! Yet he delivers these reams of research in prose that’s always clear and easy to digest, leading the reader from one amazing discovery to another with the flow of a compelling novel. You’ll be gobsmacked by all the things you never knew about vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. But then there’s echolocation, electrolocation, magnetic fields and more.

There are startling revelations on every page—so much so that you’ll feel compelled to share them (my wife insists I’ll be the ‘pride of the old folks home’ passing on bits of trivia. I can only wish I could retain half of all the fascinating stuff to be found here.)

Bravo, Ed Yong! Thanks for helping to illuminate the world.

Why My Next Novel Is Important

Although I’ve mostly stopped writing regular blog posts, it’s still the best way to describe the next novel of mine to reach publication. And I truly believe this novel will be important.

Why?

Well, because Augment Nation takes place in the near future—probably during your lifetime—when projects like Elon Musk’s Neuralink will expand from addressing the needs of those with neurological impairments to the consumer population at large. I think implanted (or closely connected) brain-computer interfaces will become the next smartphones: devices that will provide such extensive augmentation of our information gathering and processing abilities that we’ll wonder what we ever did without them.

But a future like that is not without serious risks. Here’s the novel’s back cover blurb:

This is your brain on silicon.

The mid-21st Century:

Computerized brain augments are the newest “must-have” consumer product. They make smartphones look like a rock and a chisel.

But there is a dark side.

Governments dream of compliant sheep.

Corporations see a marketing El Dorado.

When consumerism rages unchecked, the human race needs a leader to save us from ourselves.

Damon Leiter has had a brain-computer interface since he was 14. It gives him extraordinary abilities; he may be the next step in human evolution.

But Damon can’t be sure he isn’t playing into the hands of the rich and powerful.

They might even be right:

Maybe the real threat to humanity is Damon himself.

Sound scary? It could be, at least if we allow free markets to make all the important decisions and continue to let laws and regulations fall woefully far behind advances in technology. Don’t get me wrong—I think technology is great. I’m a science fiction writer! But I also recognize that it has its pitfalls, and the sooner we see them, the better we can correct them.

Augment Nation is about a young man who comes to realize that, not only is a groundbreaking technology going awry, but he may be the only person uniquely equipped to raise awareness of the problem before it’s too late. It’s a cautionary story (think Fahrenheit 451, or even 1984) but also a deeply human one, and an exciting thriller as well.

There are a number of reasons that a date for the publication hasn’t been finalized, but look for Augment Nation everywhere you buy books this Fall of 2022. I invite you to read the opening of the novel here.

It’s important.

ARE SPACE JOYRIDES JUSTIFIABLE?

Courtesy of Blue Origin

Space tourism is an expensive game, the playing field of billionaires. We witnessed the proof of that in recent weeks as first Richard Branson rode his Virgin Galactic space plane VSS Unity to the edge of space, 53 miles (85 km.) above the Earth on July 11th, and then Amazon’s Jeff Bezos traveled 66 miles up (106 km.) on July 20th in the first of his Blue Origin company’s New Shepard spacecraft to carry humans. The fact that both billionaires traveled aboard the first flights of their respective craft to such heights is either an exceptional testimony to their faith in their companies’ technology or, if you’re a cynic, a powerhouse marketing ploy. Now Virgin Galactic is selling seats aboard future flights at a quarter million dollars each, while Blue Origin may send up two more tourist trips this year at an unspecified price tag (but there are reports of tickets auctioned off at $28 million).

Were Branson and Bezos hailed as heroes? Maybe by some, but there was also immediate loud and high-profile criticism of the joyrides with the predictable message that the money could be better spent helping to fight climate change or any of the other serious environmental or humanitarian crises you could name. And Bezos bombed big-time with his remark before his flight thanking Amazon customers and his (reportedly badly underpaid) Amazon employees for making his flight possible.

So, the question is, are such joyrides by the world’s wealthiest justified?

First of all, as long as capitalism remains our predominant financial system, we’ll have billionaires. In fact, the gap between the planet’s richest and poorest citizens continues to grow. And if money burns a hole in the pockets of anybody who has it, how much more true is that of those who have more than they could ever possibly need? So billionaires will blow big money on big toys and projects that many will consider foolish. If you don’t like billionaires and their lavish spending habits, you’ll have to change the system.

Having said that, is space travel a boondoggle, wasteful and worthless?

Well, the benefits of space tourism might not be immediately apparent (though its supporters hope it will inspire future generations), but it is a means to fund other, more productive, space-related efforts. Branson hopes Virgin Galactic’s spaceplanes can develop into an alternate form of high-speed business travel. Bezos is a proponent of moving polluting industries like chemical manufacturing and energy production off the planet. We already know that many manufacturing processes, including the making of pharmaceutical products, can be done with much greater efficiency in the low gravity of Earth orbit with its abundance of solar energy. That list of potential space industries will grow exponentially as the cost of lifting materiel and personnel out of Earth’s gravity well decreases. And that decrease in cost is why Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX company have put so much effort into developing reusable rocket boosters that can land safely and reliably.

As I’ve mentioned more than once, we need to explore and exploit space beyond Earth.

We owe it to our planet: The more we can move polluting industries out of our fragile ecosystem, and the less we have to ravage the Earth’s surface for diminishing mineral and other resources, the better.

We owe it to our fellow Earth-life: Every day there’s a new story about a species extinction or an environmental disaster caused by humans’ rapacious industrial and agricultural practices. Whatever we can shift out into space, including meaningful numbers of human beings, will reduce the terrible cost being paid by wildlife and vegetation.

We owe it to our fellow humans: Wild animals aren’t the only ones who suffer when climate is altered and green spaces and clean water are depleted. If we could create attractive human habitats in orbit, in outer space, or on other planets, we could make living conditions better for every human being.

We owe it to Life itself: We still have no evidence that life exists anywhere else in the universe. Until we do, we must act as if Earth is the only cradle of life, and right now that cradle is incredibly fragile. Even if we don’t render the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland like Venus through irreversible climate warming, or irradiate the whole surface by nuclear war, life here could still be wiped out by a cosmic collision, a nearby supernova, or a catastrophic event within our own Sun. We have a responsibility to make sure that all of Life’s “eggs” don’t remain in just one basket.

Do these lofty space dreams really begin with billionaires and their expensive toys? The jury is out on that one, but let’s face it, government bureaucracies aren’t the most efficient way to get things done, whereas corporate for-profit approaches do seem to be more productive (provided that meaningful safety regulations are in place).

(If we look to science fiction, especially the so-called “Golden Era” of the early 20th Century, it’s not uncommon to find millionaires and billionaires as the driving force behind space ventures, some of which save humanity. One that springs to mind is When Worlds Collide in which millionaires fund the spacecraft that carries survivors from a doomed Earth when governments refuse to act. Of course, SF probably features an even larger number of billionaires who want to rule the world and wreck the planet, so….)

My own view is that, regrettably, government-driven space ventures can’t be counted on to save us from the threats mentioned above, not just because their bureaucracies are inefficient, but even more so because their funding (and therefore their very existence) is subject to political whims, about the most unreliable force in the universe! If that means our only alternative is to endure the grandstanding of billionaires as a step toward more meaningful progress, I can live with that.

STARLINK VS. STARGAZERS

I suppose the course of progress has never run smoothly. Just look at the myriad ways we’ve screwed up our planet and all of its living species while trying to improve the lot of our own.

One of the newest examples is SpaceX’s ambitious plans for their Starlink internet service, intended to bring affordable high-speed satellite internet to even the most remote parts of our nations. As someone who lives in a rural area, poorly served by internet providers, this seemed like a great step forward to me. It didn’t cross my mind that it would conflict with my love of gazing into the night-time sky.

So far, SpaceX has launched more than 700 of their small Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, has permission to launch 12,000, and plans to launch a total of 30,000. That’s a lot of metallic objects whizzing overhead! They call it a “mega-constellation”, and that cutesy name probably fits better than they intended because, just like the original constellations, the Starlink satellites can be seen, thanks to the solar panels they depend on for energy.

Have you ever watched a satellite speed overhead while you’re stargazing on a clear night? It’s interesting—not really an impediment. But what if you were seeing dozens of them like beads on a string? That could get annoying. Now imagine you’re a professional astronomer taking long-exposure pictures of the night sky in hopes of discovering new space objects like asteroids or comets, or learning new information about other star systems. Annoying doesn’t cover it. Infuriating maybe. And that’s exactly what astronomers have been facing since the Starlink launches began. In fact, the disruption may not affect only optical astronomy; the creators of a new radio-telescope array in South Africa complain that the Starlink satellites will broadcast on one of the frequencies they hope to survey in the search for organic molecules elsewhere in the galaxy.

Now, I’m sure none of this was ever intended by SpaceX engineers—the satellites are brighter than expected—and the company is trying some things to remedy the problem. They’ve made the satellites much darker and less reflective (I’ve never seen one, but apparently the first few hundred are visible to the naked eye) and added visors to block the most reflective components, but scientists say these measures aren’t nearly enough. Other possible solutions are being discussed. Meantime the satellites keep going up. And at least two other companies plan to launch large numbers of similar satellites in the coming years.

I’m sure that every satellite ever launched has interfered with some astronomer’s observations, but the Starlink plans elevate the problem to a whole new scale, and it will only get worse. Why? Because now that private industries like SpaceX, Blue Origin (owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos), and others are gaining a foothold in space, Low Earth Orbit will become the new frontier of manufacturing and even tourism. As I’ve said many times, as soon as the cost of launching materials beyond the atmosphere drops below a certain threshold, any number of space-based industries will become profitable, and private companies are steadily bringing that cost down. Everything from pharmaceutical laboratories and medical treatment facilities to hotels and habitats for the aged (and very wealthy!) will be put up there. There will be orbiting factories to produce super-conductive fibreoptic cable, semi-conductors, replacement human organs, exotic alloys and metallic glasses for a huge variety of applications, and who knows what else?

The next step will be staging platforms for deeper space travel, whether to the Moon, the asteroids, Mars, or beyond, since long-range spacecraft will be assembled in orbit and begin their journeys there. Traffic like that will steadily increase, leaving trails of ionized gases across the sky.

Precision optical astronomy based on the surface of the Earth is probably doomed. The writing is already on the wall.

That doesn’t mean the end of astronomy, of course. It will be a case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. We already know that telescopes and other scientific instruments can view the heavens with vastly improved precision once beyond the pesky interference of the Earth’s atmosphere. For now, the choice of whether to observe from a mountaintop or high above the ocean of air comes down to cost (and maybe convenience), but before much longer, there won’t be a choice. The sky near Earth will simply be too crowded.

I hope these changes won’t entirely spoil the pleasure of lying on your back under the sky on a summer night and wondering at a billion blazing points of light. There are few experiences more glorious.

Astronomers, I feel your pain.

PREDICT THE FUTURE? FOLLOW THE MONEY

Can we predict the future by studying the past?

Some insist that history is bound to repeat itself (especially if we don’t learn from it). It also teaches us a lot about human nature, which we can use to extrapolate future behaviour. But sometimes developments come along that really shake things up and send us off on a whole new tangent.

One of my summer reads, a book called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, is a real eye-opener. It’s a hugely ambitious history of the human race from our beginning to the present day, but not a list of dates and facts. Instead it seeks to explain why homo sapiens rose to prominence instead of other human species like Neanderthals, and how we got to where we are from our humble origins. It especially charts the most significant changes in our history, and analyses their impact, from the births of spoken and written language to the rise of modern thought, the Agricultural Revolution, Scientific Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and more.

One of Harari’s key assertions that had never occurred to me is that, before the rise of modern science in the 1500’s, most people on the planet were encouraged to believe that all significant knowledge was contained in the foundational books of the main religions and the teachings of the ancients. What wasn’t revealed in those just wasn’t important to know. The findings of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and many others changed that, especially when they led to improvements in technology. It gradually became accepted that learning about how the universe works wasn’t just worthwhile, it could make life better for humans. Similarly, most people had believed that the human condition was stagnant, or even declining, including the distribution of wealth. The size of the world’s “pie” didn’t change, so for you to get a bigger slice you had to take it from someone else. Then came the “discovery” of the American continents and many other previously unknown lands offering huge wealth in conjunction with still more technological improvements, and suddenly there appeared the concept of progress: that the world pie could actually grow and benefit everyone (except the native people of those places, of course).

Enter capitalism. After all, scientific research and exploration are expensive. Those with the capital to pay for it want to see concrete (ie. profitable) benefits. That will continue to be true in centuries to come. Which means that science will advance in areas where there’s money to be made.

We’re already seeing the space travel business pass from the hands of governments to private industry because companies like SpaceX can profit by providing space delivery services not only to NASA but also to everyone who wants to put a satellite, or anything else, into orbit. Since many chemical processes can be easier to carry out under zero gravity and with extremes of heat or cold (or are much safer accomplished far from human populations!), expect to see laboratories and chemical factories in space. The availability of abundant raw solar energy outside the atmosphere is another plus (and a potential industry of its own once it can be safely beamed to receivers on Earth). Future mining of the Moon, the asteroids, and the moons of other planets is something we’ve long assumed will happen. Entrepreneurs eager to carry out such developments are only waiting for the cost of space launches to drop below a certain level, to make the ventures profitable.

Space tourism is a fairly safe bet as a coming attraction, but also expect orbital or Moon-based health spas and retirement homes for those to whom gravity, weather, or unfiltered air have become undesirable. For those of us with insufficient incomes for an actual presence in space, there will at least be a lot of virtual experiences available, driving moon buggies, skating across planet-size ice rinks, or surfing Saturn’s rings. In fact, painstakingly accurate virtual experiences of every kind imaginable will be a growth industry for many decades to come.

The transportation industry has hit a speed bump with Covid-19 (and future pandemics) making it unwise to pack large numbers of people together, but new solutions will be found, and soon the race toward ever faster and pervasive travel will resume. Maybe it’ll be with individual pods linked like train cars travelling in vacuum tunnels. Or drones big enough to carry a human. Or maybe I’m wrong, and only goods will be transported over long distances while humans become accustomed to increasingly realistic virtual travel and social interactions.

Scientific progress isn’t only about space or speed, either. Genetic engineering has already made vast amounts of money for drug and chemical companies, and will only get bigger. Progress in medical science affects everyone, curing diseases, chronic illnesses, and hereditary health problems until life expectancy soars toward immortality. And there’s no question that drug and medical care can be very profitable (note that it will not be profitable for anyone to discover a permanent cure for anything, so don’t expect it. Profit lies in making customers pay for ongoing treatments!) And, like it or not, genetic modification will extend to humans, first for medical reasons but eventually for fashion and entertainment, because there is money to be made. Giant corporations will keep lobbying governments to relax rules against gene editing, cloning, transformative surgeries and the like, while aggressively persuading the masses that it’s what they want. From picking the characteristics of your children, to enhancing your physique with artificial muscle or mechanical accessories, to making you look (and smell) like your favourite celebrity or animal, it’s only a matter of time.

There’s another commodity side to genetic engineering: creating made-to-order creatures. Scientists have already been working to recreate extinct species like woolly mammoths, but you just know that mini-dinosaurs would be big sellers, and the new creations won’t be confined to real species. Chimeras out of legend, or pure fantasy, will be brought to life. Imagine the smile on your daughter’s face when you give her a real unicorn for her birthday!

(As for how we’ll treat the life forms we create, or any alien forms we might encounter, just remember the millions of Africans once condemned to lives of slavery, the billions of animals treated like mere raw materials by agribusinesses today, and the wild species we’re driving to extinction. Everything will depend on which is more profitable: cruelty or kindness. Humankind has a long history of turning a blind eye to the plight of others if that suffering benefits us.)

Don’t forget that profit can also include political advantage and power. The exploitation of the Americas and elsewhere led to European empires that soon surpassed the largest economies of their time, in India and China. It’s also important to remember that much of the wealth of recent centuries came from the discovery of wholly new materials like aluminum and plastics, and new technologies like electrical generation and global communication. The parade of new discoveries will continue as humankind reaches outward and more money is pumped into the science pipeline. Money will be made from things we don’t even know exist yet.

All in all, science fiction writers will be well-advised to plan out our imaginary worlds and empires based on a clearly established framework of trade goods and profit margins. Science depends on investment, which depends on capitalism, which depends on consumers who buy goods and services. (Although it’s also true that, where there’s no existing market, advertising will create one!)

In closing, I’m compelled to point out one more thing to the capitalists reading this:

Saving the planet can be a money maker too! Think of it as “preserving your capital”, “protecting your market”, or just “ensuring future growth”.

Right now, that’s the most important investment of all.

COMET NEOWISE: PAST AND FUTURE VISITOR

Even if the Covid-19 crisis didn’t have everyone in lockdown desperately looking for distractions, Comet NEOWISE would have captured a lot of attention because it’s the first easily seen comet since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. You may have made the effort to see it yourself if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, most recently a little after sunset in the northwestern sky below the Big Dipper. The comet itself is a small smudge and to the naked eye the tail is actually easier to detect if you’re not looking straight at it. The view is a lot more impressive through binoculars or a small telescope, although what really makes the whole thing noteworthy is knowing that what we’re seeing is a 5 km-diameter ball of slush trailing a plume of gases that extends millions of kilometers through space. Its orbit takes it more than a hundred billion kilometers from the sun and requires 6800 years to complete. So it’s the scale of the thing that’s mind-boggling, rather than the actual visuals themselves.

With the huge span of time involved in NEOWISE’s relentless course through the cosmos, it’s impossible to resist thinking about conditions on Earth when the comet last passed our way, and what our little blue planet will be like when it returns about the year 8863 CE.

Humans of circa 4800 BC didn’t know anything about the physics of astronomy, but they would have been much more familiar than we are with the stars in the night sky. The appearance of a comet would have been big news, and could have been seen as a portent to any number of events (disastrous or auspicious, depending on the needs of the local astrologer). But the entire human population at the time was probably less than forty million. The first Agricultural Revolution was in its late stages, meaning that tribes of hunter-gatherers had largely turned to living in small villages in set locations rather than roaming the countryside, raising a few domesticated animals and crops like millet and spelt. In China, people had begun to fire pottery in kilns and may just have begun experimenting with metals like bronze. It would be another few hundred years before the predecessor of Indo-European languages began to be spoken, and nearly a millennium before the Sumerian culture developed the first written language.

Advances in technology, language, and social organization occurred gradually over the next four thousand years until the Industrial Revolution brought an explosion of change in the late 1700’s CE. The last 2 ½ centuries have seen much greater change than the 6 ½ millennia before them. With that in mind, is it possible to forecast what our planet and our race will be like the next time Comet NEOWISE streaks through the night skies?

Climate modelling tells us that if we humans hadn’t interfered by pouring megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Earth would have begun to slowly cool on its way toward the next ice age. The human race has survived a number of ice ages in the past, though with a much smaller population to feed. But now that ice age has been diverted or postponed. In fact, the coming centuries will be a very difficult time because of too much heat, with melting ice caps, rising sea levels, expanding deserts, and seriously acidified oceans. The climate changes we’ve triggered will force us to adapt in order to survive, and that adaptation could take many forms. We might need to biologically engineer our bodies to store and use water more efficiently, withstand higher heat, and digest more hardy forms of food plants (cactus burgers anyone?) Or we might need to move underground and inhabit colonies in vast caverns or silos (like in Hugh Howey’s Wool stories). There’s not enough water in Earth’s ice caps to flood the whole planet as portrayed in the 1995 Kevin Costner movie Waterworld, but we might still choose to live on the oceans where we could produce lots of food via algae farms enriched by cool, nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths. Or we might even be forced to leave our home planet and either exist in giant space habitats in orbit, on the Moon, or within hollowed out asteroids (none of them likely to support large numbers of people), or set out to find other habitable worlds around other stars (Mars is the best option for a colony within our solar system and it’s not a good one—the technology to make it human-friendly within a reasonable timeframe would be better put to use in mitigating the effects of climate change on Earth). Who knows where the human race will live by the year 8863?

Potential futures are not all gloom and doom by any means. Consider the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek universe, to be founded in the year 2161, and the multi-species habitats of Babylon 5 in the 2250’s. These include (mostly) peaceful coexistence with alien species too. Mind you, as much as I’m a devoted fan of Star Trek and heartily approve of its generally positive outlook (dependent on advanced technology, especially reliably fast space travel) there are a lot of other elements to take into consideration when predicting the path that the human race will take.

In just one generation, we’ve seen incredible progress in communications and information technology that results in new social challenges every day. The Covid crisis itself is an example—a sudden shift toward self-isolation creating social interaction that’s (for now) almost exclusively online. Back in the 1950’s SF writers like Arthur C. Clarke and others depicted future societies in which people rarely left their homes and only interacted remotely via holographs or ubiquitous wall displays. For all we know, the coronavirus may have triggered a wholesale change that will only accelerate.

Then there’s bio-engineering: within the coming century, we’ll have the ability to preselect almost every characteristic of our offspring and make any number of radical changes to our own bodies. Whether out of necessity, or at the whim of fashion, the physical form of humanity will change, and by 8863 it could change a lot.

And that’s if we still inhabit a physical form at all. If futurists like Ray Kurzweil are right, within the next few centuries we’ll find ways to transfer our consciousness into digital form, and either inhabit mechanical bodies, or choose to live in entirely virtual worlds within ultra-powerful computer networks. By the 89th Century we will have left silicon circuitry far behind and discovered how to use the atomic structure of any ordinary matter as digital media—we could inhabit the very rocks, trees, and grasses that make up our planet.

And don’t even get me started on Time Travel!

So when you go out tonight looking for Comet NEOWISE, think about the stories it could tell about the last time it toured through the inner solar system, and take a moment to imagine what our world could be like the next time it comes. Earth and its neighbourhood might be a very different place.

IS COVID-19 A SCIENCE FICTION SCENARIO?

The quick answer to the title of this post is: of course!

Science fiction doesn’t try to predict individual events. It looks at societal trends and tries to envision the implications of those trends. Epidemics and pandemics have happened many times in human history, but the more we improved our means of traveling from place to place, and the more interconnected our global society became, the more we increased the potential of a disease outbreak affecting every human on the planet. As this trend became apparent, fiction writers took to it like a virus to a growth culture. So there have been lots of stories featuring pandemics although, to my recollection, not as many that take place during the spread of the infection. Movies seem to have dipped into that well more often, including some nail-biting examples like 1995’s Outbreak and the one everyone’s watching on Netflix lately, the 2011 film Contagion. A much larger number of novels take place before or after the pandemic. The “befores” range from vintage thriller The Satan Bug by Alistair MacLean to one of the first great technothrillers, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. “Afters” are too numerous to mention, but some standouts include Stephen King’s The Stand, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. A fictional pandemic is a convenient way of creating a post-apocalyptic setting with a drastically reduced human population and a devastated social infrastructure—a perfect environment for lots of gritty and emotional drama.

It’s a little harder to understand why so much of pandemic fiction involves plagues that turn people into zombies. Examples include I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s a sub-genre in itself, but aren’t real pandemics scary enough?

It can be fun imagining the chills and challenges such a bleak setting can provide. It’s no fun at all actually living through a scenario like that. Like Covid-19.

Every story’s a little different, but it’s possible to list some of the things that pandemic fiction predicts will happen, and compare them to what we’re really seeing:

People will flee the cities: There’s been no mass exodus yet. However, where I live in Ontario, Canada, many people have left their city homes to isolate themselves at their vacation properties. Sensible, at first glance, except if they do get sick or injured, the health care facilities in such places will be overwhelmed.

Governments will be unprepared: Real examples are everywhere. Most are just from a lack of foresight, but some responses, like from the Trump White House, look more like criminal negligence.

Food and other essential supplies will quickly become scarce: So far only toilet paper! (What in hell is that about anyway???) Supply chains are holding up well to this point, except for critical medical supplies like masks and ventilators, but if the crisis is prolonged and even more stringent lockdowns are necessary, some rationing might become necessary.

Looting becomes rampant: It’s easy to see why this would be expected, given that so many businesses are temporarily abandoned. But I haven’t heard about it going on. Maybe it’s low priority news, or perhaps police are keeping quiet about it, but really, who are thieves going to sell the stuff to? When so many people see themselves as potential victims of this, I think most folks will alert the police rather than rewarding lowlifes who take advantage of a pandemic to rob the unfortunate. Hopefully, too, governments’ support of people unable to work will keep them from having to steal out of necessity.

Powerful people will act like warlords, hoarding and creating their own fiefdoms: There is some hoarding going on, but mostly it seems to be misguided morons hoping to make money off people’s fears. Fortunately, governments are cracking down hard on these people (as they should) and there’s no need to take their bait. As to survivalist compounds and the like? The reality is that trying to hide from the infection as a group would not be smart. All it would take is one carrier to get in and suddenly your protected compound is like a cruise ship. Much better to isolate ourselves individually. Whether that value equation could change if food becomes more scarce is anybody’s guess.

It’s every man for himself: I guess we SF writers are a cynical lot, or maybe it’s just inherently more dramatic, but the greatest danger from a fictional pandemic (once the disease has run its course) is from other humans. People turn violent, fighting over every scrap—to hell with friendships and any sort of benevolence toward our fellow beings. Of course, the reality we’re seeing is the opposite of that. People are eager to help others, friends, family, and strangers, especially assisting the elderly with visits and deliveries. Not to mention the selflessness of front-line health care workers, first responders, and so many people in every kind of service industry doing their part. It’s truly heartwarming and inspiring and, believe me, we writers would love to continue to be proven wrong!

We’re also seeing a lot of things I’m not sure any writers predicted. The weird stuff includes a rise in street-racing (because traffic is so sparse), shoppers emptying the toilet paper aisles in grocery stores (you can’t eat toilet paper, people!!), and some misguided religious leaders blithely ignoring calls to avoid gathering in groups. Stupidity is not a blessing.

On the good side, who could have predicted how businesses like restaurants are adapting to lockdown restrictions? Or that manufacturers would re-tool their factories to produce ventilators and even invent better ones, while idled fabric workers sew masks for hospitals? Who would have thought that neighbours would do communal exercising in their front yards across from one another, or have parties by sitting alone on their front steps talking to each other on the phone? Who knew that artists and performers would offer free online concerts, readings, theatre shows; that experts would provide free lessons of every kind; that teachers would provide home schooling resources and parents so diligently share them? In fact, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the way online socializing and sharing has soared—it’s a new phenomenon peaking at just the right time. Ain’t human ingenuity a wonder? And kindness. Let’s not forget kindness.

There’s even some evidence that this unplanned wrench in our collective plans is giving our planet some much-needed relief from our constant abuse.

So while relatively few fictional pandemics turn out well, there’s good reason to hope that the real thing will have a much happier ending.

Do your part. Help where you can. Stay home as much as humanly possible.

After all, there are lots of great books to read!

(P.S. Here’s a Goodreads list of Popular Pandemic Books!)

SHOULD WE GET SERIOUS ABOUT THE SEARCH FOR E.T.?

Did our earliest human ancestors look up at the points of light in the night sky and wonder: are we alone in the universe?

Well, they certainly had no concept of stars or planets or evolution, but they saw patterns in those bright dots that spoke to them of strange beings and creatures. And there’s no doubt that once we did comprehend that some of those dots were planets like our own, we wondered if they could be inhabited.

The question has persisted, and though it might have been dampened a little once we learned how inhospitable our sister planets Mars and Venus are to life, there’s been a resurgence fuelled by our discovery of hundreds of planets circling other stars. Collectively, the pursuit of answers to such questions has become known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Although ‘outer space aliens’ would have to be awesomely powerful to create something we could see through optical telescopes, it was understood early on that an advanced civilization would very likely produce energy transmissions detectable on the radio bands. Scientific genius Nikola Tesla thought he’d detected a Martian signal in 1899, and in 1924, when Mars was at its closest distance to Earth in 80 years, the USA held a ‘Radio Silence Day’, halting radio transmissions for five minutes every hour to enable scientists to listen for possible signals from the red planet. Radio telescopes have been actively involved in SETI since the late 1950’s, and especially during the 1970’s and later, although US government funding of NASA’s SETI efforts was cut in 1981. The SETI@home project involves average people lending the processing power of their home computers to the search, analysing telescope data. After a bit of a slump in interest, in 2015 famed physicist Stephen Hawking and billionaire Yuri Milner announced a ten-year $100 million project called Breakthrough Listen that pays for dedicated telescope time. And now in 2020, on the heels of an announcement that the Very Large Array radio telescope in Mexico will join the search, the director of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Anthony Beasley has been quoted as saying that it’s "time for SETI to come in from the cold and be properly integrated to all other areas of astronomy". Beasley insists that governments should commit funding to SETI. Of course, the idea of using tax dollars to search for intelligent life in outer space has always been controversial.

Why is it so important to know if there are intelligent species out there?

Science fiction has gotten its teeth into the subject from the earliest days. H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds raised one of the most compelling reasons: what if a race of aliens came to Earth with hostile intentions? It’s a given that such invaders would be more technologically advanced than we are, or they wouldn’t be able to cross the enormous distances involved, and we know that the clash of unequal societies in human history has never gone well for the less advanced ones. Human explorers travelled to distant lands for specific reasons: to take resources from the new territory back home with them, to capture slaves, or to use the new lands strategically in their conflicts with others. A secondary motivation was to convert inhabitants of such places to their own belief systems. That motivator was outwardly characterized as altruistic benevolence—wanting to help the ‘less fortunate’—and there may have been benefits along the way, but few would argue that they’ve outweighed the harm done.

Of course, we can’t judge the motivations of alien species by human standards, can we? They may think in completely different ways with utterly different values.

Sure. Statistically, I suppose the spectrum ranges from species that would squash us like ants, to godlike races determined to bring peace and love to the galaxy. The thing is, we can’t afford to assume the latter, so every bit of warning we can get about who is out there is vital.

I want to make it clear that, while I do think we should search for signs of extraterrestrial life, I do not support sending out signals to attract attention. It’s just too risky. (Besides, with nearly a century of profligate radio and television transmissions, what’s the point of adding more?! That’d be like holding up a sandwich board in Times Square.)

And if all of the above has given you the impression that I expect hostility from non-terrestrials, in fact I don’t—I believe they would have good intentions. But you know what they say about the road to hell….

Even without the threat factor, there are other extremely valuable results that could come from  the confirmation of intelligent life around other stars.

We would know that intelligence/sentience is an integral part of the universe, and not just a fluke. That would open our eyes to seeing the potential for sentience among our fellow life forms on Earth, gaining a better appreciation of the other life that shares our planet. It would also force us to be more open-minded about the ways of those strange to us.

We would know that other places in the galaxy are inhabitable, motivating us to spread human life (and hopefully other Earth life) beyond our fragile globe, either because we need to, or just to ensure against a cosmic catastrophe.

We might gain clues that would help us advance our own science in unknowable ways, perhaps by whole new approaches that wouldn’t have occurred to us. We might even find ways to consult and partner with another species for our own betterment.

And one of the most important benefits of discovering a more advanced civilization: we could see proof that it’s possible to survive the enormous technological change we’re undergoing without rendering ourselves extinct. Not only survive, but thrive, perhaps with the kind of benevolent egalitarian society envisioned in our most optimistic imaginings, like the world of Star Trek.

Discovering intelligent life elsewhere in the universe could provide tangible hope for the whole human race.

Isn’t that worth a few million bucks?

WHERE WILL THE PAST DECADE'S DISCOVERIES LEAD US?

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

At the end of each year we humans love to take a look backward and review the changes that the passing year has brought. That urge is even stronger when we come to the end of a decade. The folks at National Geographic have provided a great overview of twenty of the key scientific advances of the 2010-2019 decade here, and there were some exciting ones: the discovery of thousands of planets around other stars, fantastic close-up views of Pluto, Vesta, and the Kuiper Belt object named Arrokoth, dramatic progress in rocket launching technology, the gene-splicing potential of Crispr-Cas9, and new insights into our ancient human ancestors. There was also one looming shadow over everything: the spectre of human-caused climate change.

For a refresher on the science, read the article and maybe follow the links or do research on your own to learn even more. But a science fiction writer can’t help but look at a list like this and wonder which of these developments will have the greatest impact on the human race in the years, decades, and centuries to come.

New knowledge about the ancient past of our species and others is fascinating, but barring major surprises (like finding out we’re descended from aliens) it probably won’t have much effect on how we move forward as a race. I believe that what we’re learning about the universe beyond our planet will have a bigger impact: not only knowing that there are potentially hundreds of habitable planets we might someday reach, but also that organic molecules—the building blocks of life—are present even on other planets and moons of our own solar system. Add to that the data we’re gathering about other celestial objects from asteroids, to comets, to dwarf planets, and recently two visitors from outside our solar system (the object Oumuamua and Comet Borisov), plus the rapid improvements in the technology we use to get beyond the atmosphere and function in outer space. These advancements all mean that the prospect of breaking out of our cradle Earth to other worlds is coming closer and closer to reality. I know that SF writers have often been overly optimistic on this subject, but I really do think it will happen within the lifetime of today’s children, and it will change everything.

Humans will live on other planets, maybe someday in other solar systems. There’s a good chance we’ll find life on those planets. We might even meet other thinking beings with advanced civilizations. All of those things are huge.

Sooner than space colonization, though, we’re going to witness the ramifications of gene-splicing technologies like Crispr-Cas9 along with rapidly advancing reproductive science. These things won’t just affect where we live, they will impact what we are as human beings. We could eliminate devastating genetic conditions, horrible diseases, and maybe even repair severe physical injuries. But we might also choose to “improve” the human body via cloning, tailored genes, and nanites (like microscopic repair robots in the human bloodstream), and those alterations could just as easily become driven by fashion as by medical necessity. Sure we’ll choose to bequeath our children with good genetic health. Will we also arrange for them to be born with cat’s eyes? Webbed fingers and toes? Genius IQs? We will link computer interfaces directly to our brains, and order replacement organs every few decades. The very definition of what it means to be human could change in ways we can’t even foresee now. I’d wager we’ll face some very challenging decisions on this front before the coming decade is through. The processes are already here, we’ve just been really lax about deciding how far they should go.

Yet even space travel and extreme human modification are a little ways off. The most imminent development we face as a race is global climate change.

We’ve had warnings about it since the 1970’s. Week after week we learn more. And even the frightening forecasts of climate scientists consistently turn out to be too conservative. Polar ice is melting, ocean levels are rising, coral is bleaching, extreme storms are increasing in frequency and strength. Our coastal communities will flood and dry regions will become full-blown deserts, forcing millions of refugees to flee across borders, sparking international conflicts. Food production will be threatened as weather ruins crops and fisheries are depleted.

That’s not being alarmist, that’s just science.

Bottom line? Climate change is, hands down, the most critical science story of the decade we’ve just lived through, and will have the biggest impact in the decade to come. If we can survive the mess we’ve made of our home planet, things could look very bright. We know that we can further reduce the suffering caused by disease and injury and continue to extend the human lifespan. We can find other places for us to live and ways to adapt ourselves to living there, which will relieve the population pressure that has caused so many of the current problems here on Earth.

2010-2019 has been a ground-breaking decade.

The decade to come just might be “make or break” for the human race.

PAINTING NEW SPOTS IN A SPOTLESS MIND

Some years ago, scientists successfully introduced a “memory” into a sea slug by implanting it with some ribonucleic acid (RNA) from another sea slug that had the original experience. The experiment illustrated one of several mechanisms involving memory in living organisms, though it’s still a long way from, say, the movie Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character buys an artificial memory of a vacation he can’t afford (Colin Farrell in the 2012 remake—both movies are adaptations of the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”).

However, recent research has brought a team of scientists closer to that capability. First, the researchers trained mice to associate an electric shock with a specific odour. They carefully observed which neurons in the mouse brain were stimulated by these activities. Then, using a technique called optogenetics, they used light to stimulate equivalent neurons in the brains of other mice, creating a “memory” in mice that had never experienced either the shock or the odour themselves.

Other research has shown that the most robust memories get their vividness and durability because they involve multiple neurons encoded the same way. You can easily see how this would happen when experiences are repeated lots of times, like when we practice skills to train ourselves, or actively memorize certain information. But particularly powerful experiences can produce a similar result. The more neurons involved in the memory, the better it’s able to withstand the loss of a neuron or two through aging or other malfunctions. Also, as with groups of former high school buddies who get together to reminisce, the slightly different information contributed by each of them produces a more accurate, fleshed-out whole. (Though we sometimes remember the same events very differently!)

The many processes involved in making, storing, and retrieving memories are still not well understood. Some neuroscientists will insist that memory storage in our brains is fairly nebulous, involving electrical potentials more than hard and fast artefacts of information. They’ll say that there’s no place in your brain where a picture of your first pet exists, although you can probably remember every line of its furry face (or think you can). Having been a radio broadcaster for decades, there are popular songs I’ve heard hundreds of times and, though I probably couldn’t recreate the recordings note for note, I can at least easily tell when I hear a remix or re-recording of a song even if it’s by the original artist. The singer holds a certain note a fraction longer, or the sax riff is played on an instrument with a slightly different tone than in the original. I have tunes playing in my head most of every day, no Spotify required. Maybe I don’t have a library of mp3s stuffed somewhere in my head, but the experience is pretty close to that. No wonder there’s no room in there for remembering to take out the garbage!

Because memory is such a critical part of our identities and how we perceive the world around us, the prospect of copying, erasing, altering, or replacing our memories is a disturbing one, which no doubt explains why the subject has appeared so often in science fiction. From the 1880’s when Edward Bellamy wrote Dr. Heidenhoff's Process about a doctor who could remove unwanted recollections, the subject of “memory editing” has been a staple of the genre. Getting rid of traumatic or otherwise unwanted memories is an obvious subject to explore, often used in military SF (the equivalent of joining the Foreign Legion) and, in the interest of an exciting plot, it usually goes wrong. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a great movie example. Erasing memories as a way of protecting secrets is especially common, utilized by the Mule in Asimov’s Foundation series, the Utopia-dwellers in Clarke’s The City and the Stars, the Strangers in the movie Dark City and the special agents of Men In Black, among many others. Memory erasure by aliens is an absolute given in UFO mythology!

Less common is the concept of actually inserting memories of experiences that never happened, like in Total Recall or the 2010 movie Inception (visually stunning and exciting, even if the science is non-existent)—this is more the territory of thrillers involving “brainwashing”, like The Manchurian Candidate. But the prospect of remembering things that may not have happened might be even more disturbing than losing memories. It not only calls our sense of identity into question, but the very knowledge of what is real and what isn’t.

A better understanding of how memory works could be a godsend to an aging population facing the increasing risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and offers hope for those suffering brain injuries. We can readily believe that removing, or at least weakening, traumatic memories could be therapeutic for many troubled people. And artificially “remembered” skills or knowledge could be genuinely useful and save a lot of time. But it’s just as easy to imagine the frightening misuses such technology could be put to, as often seen in dystopian stories about authoritarian governments seeking to control the minds of the masses. Innovators in business or technology could be tricked into revealing vital secrets to competitors, or national security operatives fooled by hostile nations. Political leaders could be manipulated by enemies, or even just suspected of being controlled—the results of either could be devastating.

On the individual level, a victim of a tragic life might be given an invented past of happiness and fulfillment instead, allowing them to live the rest of their lives in contentment. Yet every struggle they’ve undergone, every achievement they’ve made, would be rendered meaningless.

As with so many areas of scientific advancement, the knowledge we’re gaining can be invaluable, but its value is in how we make use of it. That’s also where the pitfalls lie. And they are many.