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Calculating the rise and fall of science fiction books, television shows, and movies, I've determined the obvious. Science fiction is no longer dismissed easily as distractions for geeky misfits or as fanciful tales for children, and that may be because the world's observed science fiction over the years become science fact.
So, here I am at 50, a Star-Trek-Twilight-Zone-Outer-Limits-Lost-in-Space-fed child of the 1960s. When I finished high school in the 70s, universities anxiously pitched computer science to graduates with the right test scores, hoping potentials could be drafted to the future. My generation may be part of the reason television's pushing out science fiction shows -- the retired Lost; Fox's Fringe; CBS's FlashForward, which has been cancelled; and the return of V and Battlestar Galactica. The last on the list has given birth to a prequel, Caprica.
My generation grew up on television, pressed the on-buttons of the first personal computers, made playing video games the cool thing to do as we nursed our Pac-Man addictions, and passed our growing dependence on technology onto our children who flock to movie theaters jonesing for special effects and silver screen spectacles that make them believe not only can Superman fly, but so can they. And they dream it into their visual arts, dance, music, and want so much more.
My daughter, 29, is working on a novel about a female general in a matriarchal society, and I am working on a novel about humans in peril on another planet. She and I had a discussion a few months ago about technology. I said, "I look at the world and see gadgets that 30 years ago would have been called impossible. We're seeing products and events today that were the stuff of science fiction in the fifties and sixties. I mean, I remember when the big deal was to have a car phone, a big clunky thing that cost too much and had to stay in the car. Here we are with cell phones almost anyone can purchase that are small enough to lose in a purse. Cell phones are like the size of Star Trek communicators."
She nodded. Living with me, she's watched me skip popular drama television to watch documentaries that plod along about evolution or mutation of the Y chromosome or the coming age of nanotechnology. She's joined her brother and me to watch films featuring Stephen Hawkings, not the popular stuff he's done lately, but the old stuff where a narrator's dry voice tells of black holes and Schrödinger's Cat and have interviewers with theoretical physicists who say Hawkings is not as bright as less popular physicists. She's been there when my son, now 19, has looked from the television to her to me to his own body and exclaimed, "OMG! We're a nerd herd."
Consequently, she was not surprised when I came home with a copy of the May 22-28 issue of The Economist with the cover "And Man Made Life: The first artificial organism and its consequences." Its editorial piece on that article is subtitled, "Artificial life, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, has arrived."
TO CREATE life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence. It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life.
Yes, my dear Virginia, humans are near designing artificial life on laptops from the comfort of their homes. As for the nightmare part, all I can say is think of the possibilities for larger creatures. Think of that movie Splice.
Science, Technology, and Bioethics
I talked to blogger Yvette Perry about this latest advance. In her own words, here's Yvette's background:
In my current job my research focus is research ethics, in particular how to educate and train graduate and undergraduate students in the responsible conduct of research. My educational background includes a graduate minor in Bioethics. In my PhD program I focused on the ethics of assisted reproductive technologies and adoption; my dissertation concerned the beliefs about genetics held by adoptive mothers.
Naturally,
