Blastocysts Feel No Pain

March 14th, 2011

In 2010, the recipient for the Medicine Nobel was Robert Edwards, who perfected in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques for human eggs in partnership with George Steptoe. Their efforts culminated with the conception of Louise Brown in 1978, followed by several million such births since. The choice was somewhat peculiar, because this was an important technical advance but not an increase in basic understanding (which also highlights the oddity of not having a Nobel in Biology). That said, the gap between the achievement and its recognition was unusually long. This has been true of others who defied some kind of orthodoxy – Barbara McClintock is a poster case.

In Edwards’ case, the orthodoxy barrier was conventional. Namely, IVF separates sex from procreation as decisively as contraception does. Whereas contraception allows sex without procreation (as do masturbation and most lovemaking permutations), IVF allows conception minus orgasms and also decouples ejaculation from fatherhood. Sure enough, a Vatican representative voiced his institution’s categorical disapproval for this particular bestowal. However, IVF has detractors even among the non-rabidly religious. The major reason is its residue: unused blastocysts, which are routinely discarded unless they’re used as a source for embryonic stem cells.

Around the same time that Edwards received the Nobel, US opponents of embryonic stem cell research filed a lawsuit contending that this “so far fruitless” research siphoned off funds from “productive” adult stem cell research. The judge in the case handed down a decision that amounted to a ban of all embryonic stem cell work and the case has been a legal and political football ever since. The brouhaha has highlighted two questions: what good are stem cells? And what is the standing of blastocysts?

Let me get the latter out of the way first. Since IVF blastocysts are eventually discarded if not used, most dilemmas associated with them reek with hypocrisy and the transparent desire to curtail women’s autonomy. A 5-day blastocyst consists of 200 cells arising from a zygote that has not yet implanted. If it implants, 50 of these eventually become the embryo; the rest turn into the placenta. A blastocyst is a potential human as much as an acorn is a potential oak – perhaps even less, given how much it needs to attain viability. Equally importantly, blastocysts don’t feel pain. For that you need to have a nervous system that can process sensory input. In humans, this happens roughly near the end of the second trimester – which is one reason why extremely premature babies have severe neurological defects.

This won’t change the mind of anyone who believes that a zygote is “ensouled” at conception, but if we continue along this axis (very similar to much punitive fundamentalist reasoning) we will end up declaring miscarriage a crime. This is precisely what several US state legislatures are currently attempting to do, with the “Protect Life Act” riding pillion, bringing us squarely into Handmaid’s Tale territory. It is well known by now that something like forty percent of all conceptions end in early miscarriages, many of them unnoticed or noticed only as heavier than usual monthly bleeding. A miscarriage almost invariably means there is something seriously wrong with the embryo or the embryo/placenta interaction. Forcing such pregnancies to continue would result in significant increase of deaths and permanent disabilities of both women and children.

The “instant ensoulment” stance is equivalent to the theories that postulated a fully formed homunculus inside each sperm and deemed women passive yet culpable vessels. It is also noteworthy that the concern of compulsory-pregnancy advocates stops at the moment of birth. Across eras, girls have been routinely killed at all ages by exposure, starvation, poisoning, beatings; boys suffered this fate only if they were badly deformed in cultures or castes that demanded physical perfection.

Let’s now focus on the scientific side. By definition, stem cells must have the capacity to propagate indefinitely in an undifferentiated state and the potential to become most cell types (pluripotent). Only embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have these attributes. Somatic adult stem cells (ASCs), usually derived from skin or bone marrow, are few, cannot divide indefinitely and can only differentiate into subtypes of their original cellular family (multipotent). In particular, it’s virtually impossible to turn them into neurons, a crucial requirement if we are to face the steadily growing specter of neurodegenerative diseases and brain or spinal cord damage from accidents and strokes.

Biologists have discovered yet another way to create quasi-ESCs: reprogrammed adult cells, aka induced pluripotent cells (iPS). However, it comes as no surprise that iPS have recently been found to harbor far larger numbers of mutations than ESCs. To generate iPS, you need to jangle differentiated cells into de-differentiating and resuming division. The chemical path is brute-force – think chemotherapy for cells and you get an inkling. The alternative is to introduce an activated oncogene, usually via a viral vector. By definition, oncogenes promote cell division which raises the very real prospect of tumors. Too, viral vectors introduce a host of uncontrolled variables that have so far precluded fine control.

ESCs are not tampered with in this fashion, although long-term propagation can cause epi/genetic changes on its own. Additionally, recent advances have allowed researchers to dispense with mouse feeder cells for culturing ESCs. These carried the danger of transmitting undesirable entities, from inappropriate transcription factors to viruses. On the other hand, ASC grafts from one’s own tissues are less likely to be rejected (though xeno-ASCs are even likelier than ESCs to be tagged as foreign and destroyed by the recipient’s immune system).

Studies of all three kinds of stem cells have helped us decipher mechanisms of both development and disease. This research allowed us to discover how to enable cells to remain undifferentiated and how to coax them toward a desired differentiation path. Stem cells can also be used to test drugs (human lines are better indicators of outcomes than mice) and eventually generate tissue for cell-based therapies of birth defects, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, ALS, spinal cord injury, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, burns, arthritis… the list is long. Cell-based therapies have advantages over “naked” gene delivery, because genes delivered in cells retain the regulatory signals and larger epi/genetic contexts crucial for long-term survival, integration and function.

People argue that ASCs (particularly hematopoetic precursors used in bone marrow transplants) have been far more useful than ESCs, whose use is still potential. However, they usually fail to note that ASCs have been in clinical use since the late fifties, whereas human ESCs were first isolated in 1998 by James Thomson’s group in Wisconsin. Add to that the various politically or religiously motivated embargoes, and it’s a wonder that our understanding of ESCs has advanced as much as it has.

Despite fulminations to the contrary, women never make reproductive decisions lightly since their repercussions are irreversible, life-long and often determine their fate. Becoming a human is a process that is incomplete even at birth, since most brain wiring happens postnatally. Demagoguery may be useful to lawyers, politicians and control-obsessed fanatics. But in the end, two things are true: actual humans are (should be) much more important than potential ones – and this includes women, not just the children they bear and rear; and embryonic stem cells, because of their unique properties, may be the only path to alleviating enormous amounts of suffering for actual humans.

Best FAQ source: NIH stem cell page

Posted in Biology & Culture, History, Science | 13 Comments »

Alien Life in Chondritic Meteorites (Not)

March 6th, 2011

I received word of yet another NASA-funded claim of “alien lifeforms”: one more case of shadowy squiggles in a meteorite, it appeared in the Journal of Cosmology (JoC). Rosie Redfield dissecta this in detail, but essentially we have a recap of the “arsenic bacterium” debacle minus (thankfully) the NASA-directed media blitz. Briefly:

1. The author, Richard B. Hoover, has been presenting the same evidence without change since 1997.
2. The only CV I can find for Richard Hoover does not list a PhD in anything (it does say “he authored four species of bacteria” which gives new meaning to the term “conjuring”). [Update: NASA confirms that Hoover has a BSc, not in biology.]
3. The evidence itself is so weak, stale, shoehorned and artifact-prone as to be non-existent. The presentation is also misleading: it juxtaposes suggestive pictures at different scales. It doesn’t meet the criteria for publication in a reputable journal, let alone the justifiably high bar for such claims — which may explain why the author approached Fox News instead.
4. The editors of JoC say that the paper will be peer-reviewed post-publication (file this under “unclear on the concept”).
5. The executive editor of JoC for Astrobiology is Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Hoyle and Wickramasinghe “viruses from space” panspermia theories – enough said.

Memo to NASA: hire bona-fide biologists who can conduct solid research or shut down the Astrobiology division.

Update: NASA has stated that the Hoover paper was published without the required internal NASA critique and approval; it also failed external peer review three years ago.

Posted in Science, Space Exploration | 27 Comments »

“As Weak as Women’s Magic”

March 1st, 2011

Ursula Le Guin is one of the speculative fiction authors I respect and admire. Her imagination seems endless, her capacity enormous. I’ve read her novels, her stories, her essays — even her poems. I’ve written reviews of her books and she’s the SF/F author I most often reference and hold up as an example in my essays.

However, some of her stances make me uneasy as a woman, a feminist and a scientist. One of them is her insistence that magic must be gender-specific. When she recently reiterated this credo (in the context of ridiculing the idea of a female Prospero or Lear), my views on this aspect of her outlook crystallized.

The result of these reflections just appeared in Crossed Genres: “As Weak as Women’s Magic”.

Image: Cover of Tombs of Atuan: Yvonne Gilbert/Gail Garraty.

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writing & Literature | 20 Comments »

A Plague on Both Your Houses

February 25th, 2011

Dwellers of the SF/F community may be aware of the recent debate about contemporary fantasy between Leo Grin and Joe Abercrombie.  They and their followers argue over fantasy as art, social construct and moral fable totally oblivious to the relevant achievements of half of humanity -– closer to ninety percent, actually, when you take into account the settings of the works they discuss.  I wrote an article about the topic which just appeared at the Apex blog [update note: the Apex site was hacked, so I reprised the essay here.]

Given the readership of much so-called “heroic” fantasy, I expect a larger than usual troll crop.  In connection with that, I recently read an interesting review of books about the Internet in the New Yorker.  Adam Gopnik posits that the Internet does not necessarily promote loud aggressiveness — it just removes the inhibitions made necessary by face-to-face interactions that go beyond hacking at each other with blunt or sharp implements.  In other words, the Internet shows our true selves devoid of trappings, the mighty Id included.

Posted in History, Writing & Literature | Comments Off on A Plague on Both Your Houses

Science Fiction, Science and Society

February 21st, 2011

by Laura J. Mixon; originally posted on Feral Sapient.

Athena’s note: In September of 2008 I participated in the Viable Paradise workshop. The experience was lukewarm at best. Laura J. Mixon was the major exception: she gave me the sole critique of my submission I value and has since become a friend.

Laura is a working scientist who writes space opera of the highest quality. Her works brim with those beasties presumably lacking in women’s writing: ideas that are imaginative yet grounded. But unlike the “authors of ideas” who cannot write their way out of a wet paper bag, Laura also has writing chops. Her plots are intricate, her characters vivid, her worldbuilding meticulous.

Next month Tor is bringing out Laura’s new space opera, Up Against It. I was lucky enough to see the novel in draft (and opine about it at length, as is my wont when works engage me). It’s a great story and, like all of Laura’s works, it pushes all kinds of boundaries. My one complaint is that Laura’s publishers gave her a gender-obscuring pen-name for her new work. I understand the need to sell books but such practices obscure the large number of women who yes, Virginia, do write hard SF.

My publicist put together some questions for me to answer to promote the upcoming release of Up Against It, and some of my writeup ended up on the cutting room floor. I wanted to share those thoughts here.

The driving force in the book is a resource crisis. Abruptly and unexpectedly, the Phocaeans lose nearly all their energy, water, and clean air. Their own little ecosystem — Kukuyoshi, the arboretum that meanders through their living space — is under threat. They are utterly dependent on technology: the nanomachines that produce their clean air and water, their computer systems and robotics. And now, suddenly, all that is endangered. And they only have this narrow window of opportunity to act.

If you squint at it at the right angle, isn’t that similar to what we are facing here and now on planet Earth? Are we not dependent on our technology to survive? What would we do if suddenly we had no fuel for our cars and our buildings, and to produce our food and clothes and medicines? What if our own air and water were turning to poison? Do we not also have only this narrow opportunity to act?

When I was seven, I first looked through the business end of a telescope. A father of a friend of mine took us out to a park one night for some star- and planet-gazing. He showed us Saturn, Mars, Venus, and the moon, along with a couple of nebulae and galaxies (the latter of which I found rather boring: they were very faint and hard to see. Thank you, Hubble, for transforming that faint trickle of photons from the cosmos into all those amazing images for us to gape at).

I remember looking at Saturn and then Mars, first through the scope and then with my unaugmented gaze, over and over. Saturn had rings! Mars had ice caps! I had this thrill of joy and awe as the reality settled in. Those little specks of light were other worlds, and science was putting them within reach.

I had a similar reaction to the Apollo 11 landing in 1969. I was twelve. That day my family raced down to Alamogordo to watch with our cousins as Neil Armstrong hopped down off the Eagle’s ladder and said his famous words: one small step. It felt as if the whole world was holding its breath in that instant before his boots touched the dust. The scene is so familiar now that it’s hard to describe just how important it was. Here we all were, many millions of people from all over the world, watching transfixed as these two guys hopped around. In spacesuits! On another world! In sixty-six years, we had gone being land-bound, to first powered air flight, to leaving our planet’s atmosphere and landing on its moon. Holy apes in space, Batman!

Our ability to think things through, figure things out, and make things go has enabled us to launch ourselves far, far beyond our origins. Ten thousand years ago, there were about ten million of us, living in small clans dotted around the globe. Now the world supports seven billion souls. Technology has saved countless lives. It brings us fulfillment on so many levels, enabling, quite literally, a real-time conversation between people on different continents, in different cultures, who even a hundred years ago would not have been able to communicate.

And our advances in medicine are nothing short of miraculous. At the turn of the 20th century in the U.S., nearly one in 100 women died in childbirth, and one in ten infants died. Stop and think for a moment about that. My own grandmother lost her mother to childbirth. My mother required emergency abdomenal surgery in her sixth month of pregnancy with me. Fifty years earlier, she and I both would almost certainly have died.

In the fourteenth century, one third of the population of Europe died of bubonic plague. Today, bubonic plague is exceedingly rare, and of those who contract it, over nine in ten who receive treatment survive. In 1918, the Spanish flu killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. There are still risks of deadly new viral mutations, such as a new avian or swine flu, which could cause widespread serious illness and death. But unlike our ancestors, we have an international network that tracks flu mutations and prepares vaccines and other measures to protect us. Odds of survival are better for most of us than they ever were before.

In short, I feel very blessed to live in this time and place. And yet, we have paid a high price for that success. Consider how time and again our technology has threatened rather than rescued us.

Sixteen million people died in World War I. More than sixty million in World War II. We saw the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can’t help but wonder in the back of our minds how easy it would be for someone somewhere to trigger a nuclear war that would kill many millions more. We have watched Challenger explode, the twin towers go down, New Orleans drown, and Port au Prince collapse into rubble. These tech failures, and tech abuses, have caused so much anguish and harm to so many.

And we live with other fears as well, fears large and small: of terrorist attacks and genetically modified foods; of global warming, famine, and super-bugs like MRSA; of mass extinctions; contaminants in our food and water supply; pedophiles stalking our kids on the internet. The list goes on and on. And technology certainly hasn’t solved the problems of uneven distribution of the resources we take from the Earth. Many, many children go to bed hungry every night. It isn’t right.

As I write this, the world’s sixth great extinction event is well underway and human growth and consumption are the cause. Three entire species die off each hour—irrevocably lost. We have loaded the atmosphere with sufficient carbon to continue heating the world for another thirty to forty years, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow. We humans are, bluntly, racing toward a cliff edge and seem unable to find a way to put on the brakes. If we don’t do it, soon, nature will do it for us.

I became an environmental engineer because I wanted to put my own passion for science and technology to work to help steer us toward that better future, in some small way. For the same reason, I wanted to write novels that cast light on some of these issues in a more personal way. I want readers to feel the same love for Phocaea and its people that I do for this world, and on some deep personal level, to have hope that if we work hard enough and work together, we might find a way through our own twin crises of resource loss and technology out of control.

To find a way through to a solution, one first has to be able to imagine it. One of the things I love most about science fiction is how it permits us to imagine what might be.

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Space Exploration, Writing & Literature | 10 Comments »

The Multi-Chambered Nautilus

February 14th, 2011

How well like a man fought the Rani of Jhansi,
How valiantly and well!
— Indian ballad

My opinion of steampunk is low. However, last week’s lovely Google doodle by Jennifer Hom reminded me that I like at least one steampunk work. After I wrote my Star Trek book, I was asked why I did so. My reply was The Double Helix: Why Science Needs Science Fiction. Here is its opening paragraph:

The first book that I clearly remember reading is the unexpurgated version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Had I been superstitious, I would have taken it for an omen, since the book contains just about everything that has shaped my life and personality since then. For me, the major wonder of the book was that Captain Nemo was both a scientist and an adventurer, a swashbuckler in a lab coat, a profile I imagined myself fulfilling one day.

I was five when I first read the novel. Unlike Anglophone readers, I was lucky enough to have the complete version rather than the bowdlerized thin gruel that resulted in Verne being consigned to the category of “children’s author”. Of course, 20,000 Leagues set me up for the inevitable fall. It prompted me to read most of Verne’s other works, in which he’s as guilty of infodumps, cardboard characters and tone-deaf dialogue as most “authors of ideas”. Too, his books are boys’ treehouses: I can recall two women in those I read, both as lively as wooden idols. Even so, Captain Nemo stands apart among Verne’s characters, both in his depth and in the messages he carries.

Verne has Aronnax describe Nemo at length when he first sees him. It takes up more than a page — but even now I remember my frustration when I reached the end and found out Verne says exactly nothing about Nemo’s build, hue, eye and hair color or shape. All he has told, in excruciating detail, is that Nemo looks extraordinarily intelligent and has a formidable presence.

However, my book copy contained several sepia-tinted plates from Disney’s film version of the book (in lieu of Édouard Riou’s engravings that accompanied the original editions). I had no idea who the actors were – I discovered that James Mason was British in my early twenties. On the other hand, several hints in the book, including the “liquid vowel-filled” language spoken by his multinational crew, coded the captain of the Nautilus as different. So in my mind Nemo was olive-skinned, black-haired. He looked like my father the engineer, like my father’s seacaptain father and brothers, like the andártes of the Greek resistance. He looked like me.

He acted like the andártes, as well. He sided with the downtrodden, from helping a Ceylonese pearl diver to giving guns to the Cretans risen against the Turks. And when he lost companions, he wept. Yet he was not merely a warrior; he was also a polymath. Besides being a crack engineer, a marine biology expert and an intrepid explorer, he spoke half a dozen languages, kept a huge library, and was a discerning art collector and a talented musician. The Nautilus is the precursor of Star Trek’s Enterprise: a ship of science and culture that can also wage war. Too, Nemo’s conversations bespoke someone from an old civilization tempered by melancholic wisdom – not an insouciant triumphalist.

Then there was the Lucifer strain that appealed to me just as much, coming as I did from a clan of resistance fighters. Nemo embodies the motto by which I have come to live my life: Never complain, never explain. He’s an evolved incarnation of the Byronic hero. His name is not only the Latin version of Outis (Noone) that Odysseus gave to Polyphemus; it is also a cognate of Nemesis (Vengeance). Today’s security agencies would call Nemo a terrorist, even though he fights in self-defense and retribution after invaders massacre his family and occupy his homeland.

Since victors write history, the losers’ freedom fighters become the winners’ murderers. Beyond that, there’s a fundamental difference between Nemo and fanatics like bin Laden: Nemo is not fighting to establish an Ummah, an Empire, a Utopia, not for power, riches, or glory. He’s not a fundamentalist secure in celestial approval of his actions. He is deeply conflicted and feels grief and guilt whenever he exacts revenge.

In this, Nemo shares his creator’s determined Enlightenment outlook. Verne was never apologetic about his heroes’ secularism or love of political freedom. However, Pierre-Julien Hetzel, Verne’s excessively hands-on editor, was acutely mindful of social and political conventions. As a result, Verne has Nemo go through a deathbed act of contrition in the vastly inferior Mysterious Island – something totally at odds with his character in 20,000 Leagues. Left to himself, Verne might have given a far darker ending to the first novel, as Disney did in his film version and as Verne later did with Robur, a coarsened power-obsessed Nemo clone.

Verne had originally conceived Nemo as a Polish scientist fighting against Russian oppressors. Hetzel did not want to alienate the lucrative Russian market. Also, neither Poland nor Russia are known for their naval prowess: a Russian-hating Nemo would put a serious crimp on the sea battle drama in 20,000 Leagues. So when Verne reveals Nemo’s provenance in The Mysterious Island, he makes him an Indian prince, son of the Rajah of Bundelkhand. Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi (a region of Bundelkhand), was one of the leaders of the Sepoy Uprising, the same uprising that cost Nemo his family and home. It makes me glad to think Captain Nemo, Prince Dakkar, may have been Lakshmi Bai’s cousin – that they grew up together, friends and like-minded companions. I’m equally glad Nemo is free of the poisonous concepts of caste purity.

Who could animate Captain Nemo’s complexities and dilemmas onscreen? Mason may have been ethnically incorrect, but he truly captured Nemo – both his torment and his charisma. The incarnations since Mason have been anemic and/or off-key. In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Naseeruddin Shah did his best with the paper-thin material he was given, but the film was so unremittingly awful that I’ve wiped it from long-term memory. Besides him, I have a few other possibles in mind and I’m open to additional suggestions:

Jean Reno, real name Juan Moreno, the stoic ronin whose Andalusian parents had to leave Cadiz during Franco’s regime; Ghassan Massoud, who wiped the floor with the other actors (except Edward Norton as the uncredited Baldwin) as Saladin in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; Ken Watanabe, who left Tom Cruise in the dust in The Last Samurai; Oded Fehr, who made the screen shimmer as the paladin Ardeth Bey in The Mummy; in a decade or so, Ioan Gruffudd, whom Guinevere should have taken as a co-husband in Antoine Fuqua’s Arthur; also in about a decade (provided he keeps lean), Naveen Andrews, the soulful Kip in The English Patient.

It goes without saying that I have an equally long list of candidates who could embody Captain Nemo as a woman – but I’ll keep these names for that never-never time when this becomes possible without the venomous ad feminem criticisms (some from prominent women) that greeted Helen Mirren as Prospero. Because gender essentialism aside, Captain Nemo was not someone I wanted to fall in love with, but someone I wanted to become: a warrior wizard, a creator, a firebringer.

Addendum 1: I received excellent additions to the Nemo candidate list. Calvin Johnson suggested Ben Kingsley, real name Krishna Pandit Bhanji, who needs no further introduction (Calvin and I also agreed that Laurence Fishburne in Morpheus mode would be great for the part). Anil Menon proposed the equally formidable Gabriel Byrne. Eloise Lanouette brought up Alexander (endless full name) Siddig who keeps getting better, like fine wine.

I also received a palpitation-inducing… er, tantalizing thought-experiment from Kay Holt; namely, a film in which each of my candidate Nemos inhabits a parallel reality. Ok, I’ll stop grinning widely now.

Addendum 2: I got e-mails expressing curiosity about my female Nemo candidates. So here’s the list.  Again, I welcome suggestions:

Julia Ormond, who radiates intelligence and made a tough-as-nails underdog hero in Smilla’s Sense of Snow; Karina Lombard, who brought tormented Bertha Mason to vivid life in The Wide Sargasso Sea; Salma Hayek, the firebrand of Frida; Michelle Yeoh, who bested everyone (including Chow Yun Fat) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Angela Bassett, who wore kickass Lornette “Mace” Mason like a second skin in Strange Days; last but decidedly not least, Anjelica Huston — enough said!

Great additional suggestions have come for this half as well: Lena Headey who made a terrific Sarah Connor, Indira Varma of Kama Sutra — both in about ten years’ time.  Sotiría Leonárdhou, who set the world on fire in Rembetiko. And, of course, Sigourney Weaver, the one and only Ellen Ripley.

Images: 1st, the Nautilus as envisioned by Tom Scherman; 2nd, Captain Nemo (original illustration by Édouard Riou; detail); 3rd, James Mason as Nemo; 4th and 5th, my Nemo candidates, left to right; 4th, the men — top, Jean Reno (France/Spain), Ghassan Massoud (Syria), Ken Watanabe (Japan); bottom, Oded Fehr (Israel), Ioan Gruffudd (Wales), Naveen Andrews (India/UK); 5th, the women — top, Julia Ormond (UK), Karina Lombard (Lakota/US), Salma Hayek (Mexico); bottom, Michelle Yeoh (Hong Kong), Angela Bassett (US), Anjelica Huston (US).

Posted in History, Science, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writing & Literature | 45 Comments »

Though the Moon Be Still as Bright

January 31st, 2011

My brief, stark story, Though the Moon Be Still as Bright, is the lead in the latest issue of Cabinet des Fées, Erzebet Yellowboy’s labor of skill and love. Better yet, immediately following it is Christine Lucas’ On Marble Threshing Floors, a story of the Byzantine Amazon Maximó whom I mentioned in my essay about the Akritiká folksongs.

Erzebet discusses these connections in her introductory editorial to the issue. And wonderfully perceptive reviews have appeared for my essays and poetry in Stone Telling.

From Jessica Wick, co-editor of Goblin Fruit, in her review of Stone Telling 1:

“By far and away my favourite nonfiction piece was “A (Mail)coat of Many Colors: The Songs of the Byzantine Border Guards.” I can’t even pretend detachment. It was just cool. Athena Andreadis places the area’s folk-songs into regional context, history context, into context (again!) against similar Western traditions, and she ties the whole thing into the transformative (and preservative) nature of borderlands. My imagination — and my interest — are both certainly captive, and just as I reached the end of the article and was thinking, Man, I’d really like to hear some of this sung aloud, what should the article provide but some audio of Nikos Ksilouris singing a Cretan rendition of the Death of Diyenis. And, man, let me say again: Cool.“

From SF/F critic Sam “Eithin” in his review of Stone Telling 2:

“This poem calls up strong echoes of classical Greek hero tales, with its bitter, proud, bronze-voiced evocations of flame, ruin, and exile, but the issue’s focus on women and the ties between women makes it a particularly interesting read. It’s an away poem, looking back but resolutely orienting itself forward; remembering, but never regretting a choice.”

Even though I’m a feral loner, I’m not immune to the motivating power of recognition. Which brings me to my last piece of news: Two poems of mine were accepted in Bull Spec. They will appear in their summer and fall issue. Perhaps Rose Lemberg, the editor of Stone Telling, was right when she told me, “The wilderness is populated by nomads who happen to greatly enjoy your clanging cymbal.” Although I must put away my shaman’s drum for a while — grant deadlines are looming.

Images: 1st, Before the Desolation, by Heather D. Oliver — a portrayal that echoes in Though the Moon…. 2nd, small wooden ship, the Cyclades, Hellas.

Posted in Art, Poetry, Writing & Literature | 6 Comments »

Distant Celestial Fires

January 22nd, 2011

In line with end-of-the-world prophecies linked to Maya calendars, there’s sudden noise on the Internet that Betelgeuse (the bright red star that marks Orion’s left shoulder) will become a supernova in 2012. The segue is that this will first give us Tattooine-like sunsets, then singe earth and all upon it.

Betelgeuse is a gas-shrouded red supergiant of about 20 solar masses whose circumference would extend to Jupiter and whose hydrogen fuel has run out. This does mean that its days are numbered and its end will be spectacular: when it explodes, it will be visible in broad daylight and will cast shadows as strong as those of the full moon. However, it’s easy to find out that Betelgeuse is about 600 light years away. So it’s not close enough to harm us (the radius for harm is 25 ly or less).  Furthermore, if the explosion becomes visible to us in 2012, the event actually happened sometime around 1400 CE. A more in-depth search also reveals that the star’s axis does not point in the direction of Earth, precluding a potentially lethal directed gamma ray burst.

Betelgeuse is a runaway: it started life as a hot blue star in the prolific stellar nursery around Orion’s belt. This region, which includes the famous nebula that forms the middle “star” of Orion’s sword, is still giving birth to new stars. So after Betelgeuse has dwindled to a neutron cinder, it may have a successor. But its death will change the shape of perhaps the best-known constellation – a reminder that in our universe everything is born and will die.

Adrienne Rich wrote her elegiac poem Orion before many details about Betelgeuse became known. Yet she knew more and said it far better than the apocalypse pornographers of the Internets:

Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you’re young

my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won’t give over
though it weighs you down as you stride

and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
an old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.
//
Pity is not your forte.
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow’s nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back

it’s with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can do least damage.
Breathe deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.

Images: Top, data-congruent rendering of Betelgeuse (ESO, L. Calçada); Bottom, Orion (Hubble ESA, Akira Fujii)

Posted in History, Poetry, Science | 13 Comments »

The House with Many Doors (or: At the Caucasus, Hang a Right!)

January 18th, 2011

When people think of fiction that depicts human prehistory, Jean Auel’s Cave Bear books invariably poke up their woolly heads.  The SF-learned may also recall William Golding’s The Inheritors and two Poul Anderson stories dealing with Cro-Magnons; the literati may be aware of Björn Kurtén’s Dance of the Tiger.  But few have read what I deem the best entries in this group: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ Reindeer Moon and Animal Wife.  The riveting world she created in those novels is far closer to the truth than Auel’s sugar-coated anachronisms.

Recently I had yet another reason to think of Thomas’ works beyond their excellence as both science and fiction.  She set her universe in Siberia during a warmer spell when it was not tundra but a mixture of steppe and taiga alive with wolf packs, mammoths, herds of game animals – and the mighty Amur tigers, who leave an indelible pawprint in Animal Wife.  In the same story, her band of humans meets a band of others – different enough to awaken the fight-or-flight reflex, though not different enough to preclude progeny and with it, the tortured, conflicted love endemic in such circumstances.

Which brings us to the just-confirmed cousins in addition to the Neanderthals who walked the earth with us and mingled their genes with ours: the Denisovans.  Just like the people in Thomas’ stories, the Denisovans made their home in Siberia.  One of their homes, for they were wanderers like the rest of humanity until we were immobilized (in more ways than one) by agriculture.

The intertwined human family tree (from Nature)
[Click on the diagram to see a larger version]

Bones and artifacts can tell us much, but nucleic acids can tell us more.  Mitochondrial and Y DNA analyses have allowed us to map human migrations and group interactions, nuancing simplistic single-lineage theories.  The recent draft of the Neanderthal genome showed they still live in us, sharing 5% of the genome of non-Western Africans.  Their FOXP2 gene, which allows speech-enabling facial development, was identical to ours – and many were red-haired, making Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Quest for Fire eerily prescient on all these points.

Sequencing of DNA from two Denisovan bones, a tooth and a finger joint, showed they belonged to the Neanderthal clan and branched about 500,000 years ago, after an early exodus from Africa that predated that of Sapiens by nearly one million years.  Somewhere in Eurasia (probably around the Caucasus range which forms the first large obstacle), these early wanderers split into two streams.  The Neanderthals went west, the Denisovans headed east.  And like the Amur tigers, they roamed wide and were still around when Sapiens bands in their turn migrated east.  We know this because 5% of Melanesian DNA is derived from Denisovan ancestors.

There findings have caused a sea change in how we see ourselves and our predecessors.  Like all scientific findings, they can be (and have been) used to advance agendas.  Some argue that the lack of Neanderthal admixture makes sub-Saharan Africans the pure human strain, others that the Neanderthal input gave Europeans hybrid vigor.  Both choose to ignore inconvenient facts.  By the ironclad criterion of inter-fertility, Neanderthals and Denisovans were fully human.  On the other side, sub-Saharan Africans exhibit as much genetic diversity as most other human groups combined.  The take-home message is: we’re all mongrels and we do best when we acknowledge and celebrate this, instead of taking refuge in fallacious superiority fantasies.

Buddhist Monks from Central Asia (fresco, Kizil cave, ~900 CE; the one on the left is a Tocharian)

This split (as well as the agendas that attempt to harness it) has a later, equally fascinating echo.  Around 5000 BCE another migration wave broke on the Caucasus, splitting in two – the Indo-Europeans.  There’s consensus on that, even if the details are still hotly debated.  Less known is how far-flung were the travels of some of the Indo-Europeans who turned east.  The outliers were the Tocharians, a Silk Road culture that occupied the Tarim basin of Inner Mongolia from 2000 BCE to 1000 CE before being displaced and subsumed by the Uyghur.

For a long time, the Tocharian civilization was lost from sight as wars and the shifting sands of the Taklamakan desert destroyed them and most of their artifacts.  But they left behind items that are hard to ignore: a treasure trove of scrolls that include both texts and illustrations; several frescoes on cave walls; and the mummies of Ürümqi, preserved perfectly in the dry local climate.  The Tocharians were blue-eyed dolichocephalic redheads who wore garments of plaid wool and spoke a language whose closest relative appears to be Old Gaelic.  In short, the Tocharians were Celts and preliminary genetic analysis has confirmed the link.

Like Kennewick Man (who belonged to the Jomon people, the predecessors of the Ainu), the Ürümqi mummies have been used for politics: the Uyghur have adopted them as symbols in their struggle for independence, the Chinese have tried to suppress them by neglect and red tape in the way of scholars who want to analyze them in more detail.

Map of the Silk Road [Click on it for a larger version]

I don’t believe the presence of Celts in Mongolia threatens the achievements of those who succeeded them.  But I love to think of the strains mingling in that stark part of the world which nevertheless gave so much to human culture and acted as a thoroughfare between West and East.  And my heart is glad to contemplate that Alexander’s Roxanne, born in adjacent Sogdia, perhaps had hazel eyes and glints of auburn in her hair, a strand from a Tocharian grandparent woven into her tapestry.

Further reading:

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages
Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Mummies of Ürümchi
Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road
Kenneth Wimmel, The Alluring Target

Related articles:

Iskander, Khan Tengri
Neanderthal Genes: The Hidden Thread in Our Tapestry
A (Mail)coat of Many Colors: The Songs of the Byzantine Border Guards

Woolen fabric from a Tarim basin mummy (~1000 BCE).

Posted in Biology & Culture, History | 18 Comments »

At Long Last, Have You Left No Sense of Decency?

January 12th, 2011

— Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy

The Tuscon tragedy (with more like it almost certain to follow) has really been a matter of time, because the extreme right in the US has shifted the goalposts of discourse and legislation so far that a Taliban mindset passes as normal.  An amazing part of the aftermath is to hear people say “Both sides must moderate their rhetoric.”  This would be funny if it weren’t dangerous.  As for Teabagger messiahs — ignorant bigots with narcissistic personality disorder who don’t care to understand the real meaning of terms like treason, death panels and blood libel — Professor Anthea Butler said it best.  An excerpt from her essay:

“What matters is that people like Palin, Beck and others can’t take time to figure out that this time is not about them, but about those who have lost loved ones, and their incredible hubris in not owning up to their own sideshow of hate.”

Even as we speak, Republican Party functionaries in Arizona are resigning, having received death threats from Teabaggers and their ilk.  The Westboro Baptist cult intends to picket the funeral of the 9-year old shot during the Giffords assassination attempt. The Arizona legislature, instead of banning the carrying of concealed weapons, is dithering about how many feet must separate the Westboro cultists from their targets.  And other legislators are calling for involuntary incarceration of the mentally ill, rather than address the fact that anyone can buy a semi-automatic weapon from Walmart.

I have mentioned the Weimar Republic before in such discussions.  The downspiral to fascist theocracy is accelerating.  We’ve let it go too far.  All of us are guilty of accepting increasing extremism and curtailment of civil rights.  We will all pay the price of our aquiescence, while the extremists finally get their Rupture.

Update: I urge everyone to compare Obama’s speech to Palin’s video.

Cartoons by David Horsey (top), Monte Wolverton (bottom)

Posted in Biology & Culture, History | 15 Comments »

The Year of Few Reviews

January 9th, 2011

Today, SF Signal is hosting my review of Eight Against Reality, an anthology that showcases the members of the writing group Written in Blood. For those with limited time, here’s the capsule version: if only the stories had as much flair as the title (except for one, which was both thought-provoking and funny).

This year I must bear down on my research and my novel Shard Songs. So I won’t be reviewing for Rise Reviews, but I do have two reviews on my list. I promised one to my friend Sue Lange, the other to John DeNardo of SF Signal. They’ll get done, I just don’t know exactly when!

Posted in Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writing & Literature | 2 Comments »

Never Complain, Never Explain

December 27th, 2010

I’m the wall with the womanly swagger. – Judy Grahn, She Who

During Thanksgiving dinner at a dear friend’s house, another guest airily stated that climate change is a myth.  An environmental scientist and once a department chair in a well-known university, he now writes regularly for such venues as The Wall Street Journal using arguments along the lines of “There was radical climate change on earth way before humans came along.”  And like many self-satisfied self-promoters, he’s set on Transmit Only.

I was spoiling to kick him in a tender spot of his anatomy and it was obvious the other guests shared my wish.  But then the visit would have revolved around him.  So I looked straight at him and said, “If you really believe this, go discuss it with the people of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives, who are watching their land go under water as we speak.”  We all essentially ignored him for the rest of the visit. We had a terrific time.

I thought of this incident during the Stone Telling 2 roundtable.  Among other questions, Julia Rios, the discussion moderator, asked me, “In your own life you’ve chosen to engage in battles, and to speak out against things you perceive as unjust. How do you reconcile those choices with the costs attached to them, and is there ever a time when you choose not to engage?”

After I had answered Julia’s question, it lingered in my thoughts.  I often say (only half in jest) that humanity consists of several subspecies which happen to be interfertile.  We’re far more hardwired culturally than we’d like to think.  Progressive notions notwithstanding, facts almost never change the minds of adult humans unless something happens to affect them concretely in their health, status or wallet.  Battles against injustice, vested interests, willful ignorance, complacency, cruelty never end.  Before this relentless flood, people like me are Dutch boys with fingers in the dam.

Halfway through my fifth decade, I still haven’t learned to leave well enough alone.  By deed and by word, I’m still fighting on many fronts.  I’ll go to my grave angry, though the waters of Lethe will close over my small efforts as if I’d never been.  Yet after a lifetime of battles, I don’t have even a partial answer about how to engage effectively — especially since anger is still a heavily punished transgression for women.

Naturally, intelligent fighters adjust their strategy and tactics to fit circumstances.  Sometimes you have to be Odysseus, sometimes Alexander.  But I think there are two powerful weapons tikkun paladins need to use more often.  One is laughter.  Another is celebration.  The two share a crucial attribute: they’re not defensive; they assume legitimacy.

Accusing someone of humorlessness is a standard bludgeon used by knuckle-draggers of all persuasions.  “Can’t you take a joke?” is the constant taunt to outsiders grudgingly allowed into previously exclusionary clubs.  In all fairness, much humor relies on Us-versus-Them distinctions.  What’s amazing, though, is how fast bullies crawl off (bawling “You’re mean to me!”) when you turn humor against them.  There’s a reason why satirists and cartoonists are among the first to be arrested in dictatorships.  Of course, this tactic can get you badly hurt or killed.  Men in particular grow furious when women laugh at them.

I once was at another party where the guests were finance professionals.  The host held forth about the deep wisdom of polygamy: it’s nature’s way, our ape cousins have harems (obviously he knew zilch about either bonobos or chimpanzees) and as a dominant male himself, etc.  The other women guests were fuming, but too polite to contradict him.  Finally, I smiled at him sweetly and said, “I agree with you.”  Into the dead silence that ensued, I dropped, “Personally, I could handle at least three husbands.”  The women burst out laughing.  Several of the men spent the rest of the evening huddled in the kitchen, muttering darkly into their drinks.

The other way to short circuit reactionaries is to celebrate.  When some dim bulb bleats “Diversity brings down quality,” my reflex reaction is to verbally rip them to shreds.  However, a far more satisfying response is to issue invitations to a feast and call the endless rosters of Others who excel in a specific domain or task.  Women don’t write space operas?  Andre Norton, Ursula Le Guin, Alice Sheldon (aka James Tiptree Jr.), Joanna Russ, Joan Vinge, C. J. Cherryh, C. S. Friedman, Joan Slonczewski, Octavia Butler, Melissa Scott, Laura Mixon, Sydney van Scyoc, Kristin Landon, Elizabeth Bear, Gwyneth Jones, Liz Williams… without pausing to think and listing just those whose works I’ve read.

Celebration serves a dual purpose.  Not only does it lift the morale of those who stand arrayed against oblivious idiocy; it also prevents (ab)use of the “tone” argument.  Celebration recognizes past achievements and encourages forging ahead, rather than stooping to pick up every piece of broken furniture flung in our path.  Let god-wannabes stew in their own toxic wastes.  We have worlds to build and sustain.

Here’s the small personal roster of worlds I’m part of and want to celebrate as loudly as possible: my modest contribution to alternative splicing regulation and dementia research; Crossed Genres, Science in My Fiction, Stone Telling; my slowly emerging fictional universe, and the artists who depicted it so beautifully: Heather D. Oliver, Kathryn Bragg-Stella; and this site, now starting its fourth year, whose blog portion consistently hovers at high positions in Technorati rankings.

“Well we made a promise we swore we’d always remember,
No retreat, baby, no surrender.
Like soldiers in the winter’s night with a vow to defend,
No retreat, baby, no surrender.”

Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender

Images: 1st, Pict warrior Guinevere (Keira Knightley) in Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur; 2nd, andártissa (resistance fighter) in WWII Greece (national historical archives); 3rd, Haldír of Lórien (Craig Parker) in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.

Posted in Art, Biology & Culture, History, Science | 14 Comments »

Yes, Virginia, Hellenes Have Christmas Traditions

December 25th, 2010

Two decades ago, Ann Landers did a column about how various cultures celebrate Christmas.  Halfway down her list was this gem: “If you are Greek Orthodox, your sect celebrates Christmas on January 7.”  Several people wrote back that 1) the Orthodox church is not a sect – it is the original church from which the Catholic one split after the Schism of 1054 and 2) only the so-called Old Believers track Christmas by the Julian calendar.

I was reminded of this when I was leaving work two days ago, and a colleague asked, “Should I wish you Merry Christmas?  I heard you Greeks don’t celebrate it like we do.”  As readers of this blog know, I’m an atheist who misses many of my culture’s old customs, particularly those that thrum with pagan echoes. So I’m going to put my tour guide’s hat briefly on, and tell you what we Hellenes do around the time of the winter solstice.

The holiday lasts two weeks, from December 25 to January 6.  At the three punctuation points (Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany) children make the rounds of the neighborhood houses, singing songs called kálanda.  These remain unchanged from the Byzantine era; they’re different for each of the three days and the kids sing them to the accompaniment of hand-held metal triangles – and more rarely, small bodhrán drums.  During these two weeks, people thought that mischievous spirits (kallikántzaroi) prowled the dark.  These obvious descendants of fauns and satyrs take a solstice break from trying to cut down the world tree that holds up the earth.  During the interruption the tree heals, leading to infinite annual repetitions.

People decorate their homes and start the feast preparations on Christmas Eve – and the original focus of the activities was not a pine or fir tree (a recent import from Northern Europe) but a small ship.  After all, we were seafarers even before Iáson sailed Arghó to the Sea of Azov in search of the Golden Fleece.  The main dishes vary regionally, but ham is not on the list.  Piglet, kid and lamb on the spit are, as is hen stuffed with chestnuts and raisins – turkey is too bland for Hellenic palates. The ubiquitous sweets are finger-sized melomakárona (honey macaroons) and kourabiédhes (butter almond cookies).

On December 31, families gather for the countdown, nibbling finger food – and at midnight, the ship horns can be heard from harbors and seashores, ushering in the new year.  Presents are put under the ship or tree when it is decorated but they get opened on January 1, either right after midnight strikes or in the morning.  The gifts are not brought by Santa Claus (Nicholas) who in the Hellenic hagiology is the patron saint of sailors.  Our giftbearer is Saint Basil, based on a real person: Vasílios the Great Hierarch, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in the 4th century.  From a wealthy and influential family, he took time between arguments about dogma to succor the poor and needy, spending his entire inheritance on charity.

On the night of December 31, a candle is left burning next to a goblet of wine and a small plate that holds a golden coin (flourí).  On New Year’s Day the coin, presumably touched by Saint Vasílios, is baked into a rich bread pudding (vasilópita), which is later cut into named sections.  Whoever gets the coin will have an exceptionally good year.  On the same day, the youngest child of the family is the first to walk through the front door for good luck – often bearing a just-budding wild onion bulb, or cracking open a pomegranate… old, old symbols of wealth and fertility from the time when the virgins giving birth were called Isis, Astarte, Pótnia.

Epiphany, which rounds out the holiday, is also called The Lights.  On that day the priests go to each house, blessing it with a sprig of basil dipped in water.  Afterward, the priests from every coastal city, town or village throw a cross into the sea.  Young men dive to retrieve it, and whoever brings it back is blessed.  Just so did priests and priestesses of other religions also appease the oldest goddess of all – Tiamat, Thálassa – by offering her rings and other treasure instead of crosses.  The custom was retained by the Doges of Venice, the city state that owed its existence to the sea.

A few years ago Mr. Snacho and I found ourselves in Tarpon Springs, Florida, at the turn of the year.  The city was founded by sponge divers from the island of Kálymnos.  They still throw the cross into the sea.  Young men still compete for the honor of retrieving it.  And I, an exile by choice who’s often homesick for the place I left almost forty years ago, wept at the sight.

Images: 1st, Eiríni Vasileíou, cover for her The Christmas Ship; 2nd, kids singing kálanda; 3rd, photo by Mithymnaíos.

Posted in Biology & Culture, History | 19 Comments »

Stone Telling Issue 2: Generations

December 20th, 2010

Stone Telling Issue 2 went live this morning. As I said in an earlier entry, this magazine is the brain- and heart-child of Rose Lemberg who wished to elicit and showcase poetry that crosses boundaries. I’m triply represented in the latest issue by a poem, an essay and participation to the contributor round-table.

The focus of issue 2 is the chains that sustain us even as they bind us.  My dear friend Francesca Forrest has a deeply affecting poem in it, The Old Clothes Golem, amid a dozen equally stunning others.

I originally wrote my poem, Mid-Journey, in Greek. It is about feral loners like me who walk between worlds. The Greek text is there alongside my English translation, and there is also an mp3 file of me reciting it in the original.

My essay is about Sapfó, the Tenth Muse, the Blackbird of Lésvos. She has been different things to different people, so I thought I’d write about who she really was — and why she deserves her immortality.

Posted in Art, History, Poetry, Writing & Literature | 19 Comments »

Footprints on Two Shores

December 13th, 2010

A lengthy quote from my article The Agency That Cried “Awesome!” appeared in today’s Guardian on a page that tracks the NASA debacle.  Another chunk appeared on Futurismic (thank you, Mr. Raven!).  The post itself showed up on the front page of The Huffington Post.

Also, L. Timmel Duchamp, author of the Marq’ssan Cycle and founder of Aqueduct Press, invited me to the year’s-end roundup she hosts at her blog, Ambling Along the Aqueduct. My list of books, albums and films, with commentary, appeared today.

Image: Cool Cat, Ali Spagnola

Posted in Art, Biology & Culture, Science, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Space Exploration, Writing & Literature | 10 Comments »

The Agency That Cried “Awesome!”

December 12th, 2010

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” – Anonymous ancient proverb

In the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone, Greek resistance fighters and Allied demolition experts set out to destroy a nest of large cannons so that a rescue convoy can go through the straits the guns overlook.  A young Greek who’s part of the mission goes after a group of Germans gunslinger-style, jeopardizing the venture.  The Germans cut him to ribbons.  When the mission members meet at their rendezvous point, his sister María (Iríni Pappás) says to his partner Andréas (Anthony Quinn, obligatory at that time whenever swarthy ethnics were required): “Tell me what happened.”  Andréas replies: “He forgot why we came.”

Last week, NASA administrators forgot why we came.  They forgot the agency’s mission, they forgot science, they forgot their responsibility to their own people and to the public.  Instead, they apparently decided that all publicity is good, as long as they don’t misspell your name.

Ever since I became fully conscious, I’ve dreamed of humanity exploring the stars.  These dreams were part of the reason I left my culture, my country, my family and came over here, determined to do research.  Every launch made my heart leap.  I wept when I saw the images sent by the Voyagers, Sojourner negotiating Martian rocks.  I kept thinking that perhaps in my lifetime we might find an unambiguous independent life sample.  Then, at long last, astrobiology would lift off and whole new scientific domains would unfurl and soar with it.

Instead of that, last week we got bacterial isolate GFAJ-1.  We got an agency which appears so desperate that it shoved experiments with inadequate controls into a high profile journal and then shouted from the rooftops that its researchers had discovered a new form of life (de facto false, even if the results of the increasingly beleaguered Science paper stand).

This is not the first or only time NASA administrators have been callously cavalier.  Yet even though the latest debacle didn’t claim lives like the Challenger incident did, it was just as damaging in every other way.  And whereas the Challenger disaster was partly instigated by pressure from the White House (Reagan needed an exclamation point for his State of the Union address), this time the hole in NASA’s credibility is entirely self-inflicted.  Something went wrong in the process, and all the gatekeeping functions failed disastrously.

Let’s investigate a major claim in the Science paper: that GFAJ-1 bacteria incorporate arsenic in their DNA, making them novel, unique, a paradigm shift.  Others have discussed the instability of the arsenate intermediates and of any resulting backbone.  Three more points are crucial:

1.  This uniqueness (not yet proved) has come about by non-stop selection pressure in the laboratory, not by intrinsic biochemistry: the parent bacterium in its normal environment uses garden-variety pathways and reverts to them as soon as the pressure is lifted.  This makes the “novel life” claim patently incorrect and the isolate no more exotic than the various metallophores and metallovores that many groups in that domain (Penny Boston, Ken Nealson) have been studying for decades.

2.  The arsenic-for-phosphorus substitution in the DNA is circumstantial at best.  The paper contained no sequencing, no autoradiography, no cesium chloride density gradients.  These are low-tech routine methods that nevertheless would give far more direct support to the authors’ claims.  Density gradients are what Meselson and Stahl used in 1958 to demonstrate that DNA replication was semi-conservative.  Instead, Wolfe-Simon et al. used highly complex techniques that gave inconclusive answers.

The reagents for the methods I just listed would cost less than $1,000 (total, not each). A round of sequencing costs $10 – the price of a Starbucks latte. In a subsequent interview, Oremland (the paper’s senior author) said that they did not have enough money to do more experiments. This is like saying that you hired the Good Year blimp to take you downtown but didn’t have enough money for a taxi back home.

3.  Even if some of the bacteria incorporate arsenic in their DNA, it means nothing if they cannot propagate.  Essentially, they can linger as poison-filled zombies that will nonetheless register as “alive” through such tests as culture turbidity and even sluggish metabolism.

NASA spokespeople, as well as Wolfe-Simon and Oremland, have stated that the only legitimate and acceptable critiques are those that will appear in peer-reviewed venues – and that others are welcome to do experiments to confirm or disprove their findings.

The former statement is remarkably arrogant and hypocritical, given the NASA publicity hyperdrive around the paper: embargoes, synchronized watches, melodramatic hints of “new life”, of a discovery with “major impact on astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life”.  This is called leading with your chin.  And if you live by PR, you cannot act shocked and dismayed when you die by PR.

As for duplicating the group’s experiments, the burden of proof lies with the original researchers. This burden increases if their claims are extraordinary.  The team that published the paper was being paid to do the work by a grant (or, possibly, by earmarked NASA money, which implies much less competition). For anyone else to confirm or disprove their findings, they will have to carve effort, time and money out of already committed funds — or apply for a grant specifically geared to this, and wait for at least a year (usually more) for the money to be awarded.  It’s essentially having to clean up someone else’s mess on your own time and dime.

Peer review is like democracy: it’s the worst method, except for all others.  It cannot avoid agendas, vendettas, pet theories or hierarchies.  But at least it does attempt judgment by one’s peers.  Given the kernel of this paper, its reviewers should have been gathered from several disciplines.  I count at least four: a microbiologist with expertise in extremophiles, a molecular biologist specializing in nucleic acids, a biochemist studying protein and/or lipid metabolism and a biophysicist versed in crystallography and spectrometry.

Some journals have started to name reviewers; Science does not, and “astrobiology” is a murky domain.  If the scientific community discovers that the reviewers for the GFAJ-1 paper were physicists who write sciency SF and had put on the astrobio hat for amusement and/or convenience, Lake Mono will look mild and hospitable compared to the climate that such news will create.

Because of the way scientific publishing works, a lot of shaky papers appear that never get corrected or retracted.  As a dodge, authors routinely state that “more needs to be done to definitively prove X.”  Even if later findings of other labs completely contradict their conclusions, they can argue that the experiments were correct, if not their interpretation.  Colleagues within each narrow domain know these papers and/or labs – and quietly discount them. But if such results get media attention (which NASA courted for this paper), the damage is irreversible.

People will argue that science is self-correcting.  This is true in the long run – and as long as science is given money to conduct research.  However, the publication of that paper in Science was a very public slap in the face of scientists who take time and effort to test their theories.  NASA’s contempt for the scientific process (and for basic intelligence) during this jaw-dropping spectacle was palpable.  It blatantly endorsed perceived “sexiness” and fast returns at the expense of careful experimentation. This is the equivalent of rewarding the mindset and habits of hedge fund managers who walk away with other people’s lifelong savings.

By disbursing hype, NASA administrators handed ready-made ammunition to the already strong and growing anti-intellectual, anti-scientific groups in US society: to creationists and proponents of (un)intelligent design; to climate change denialists and young-earth biblical fundamentalists; to politicians who have been slashing everything “non-essential” (except, of course, war spending and capital gains income).  It jeopardized the still-struggling discipline of astrobiology.  And it jeopardized the future of a young scientist who is at least enthusiastic about her research even if her critical thinking needs a booster shot – or a more rigorous mentor.

Perhaps NASA’s administrators were under pressure to deliver something, anything to stave off further decrease of already tight funds.  I understand their position – and even more, that of their scientists.  NIH and NSF are in the same tightening vise, and the US has lost several generations of working scientists in the last two decades.  Everyone is looking for brass rings because it’s Winner Take All – and “all” is pennies.  We have become beggars scrambling for coins tossed out of rich people’s carriages, buskers and dancing bears, lobsters in a slowly heating pot.

NASA should not have to resort to circus acts as the price for doing science.  It’s in such circumstances that violence is done to process, to rigor, to integrity.  We are human.  We have mortgages and doctors’ bills and children to send to college, yes.  But we are scientists, first and foremost.  We are – must be – more than court jesters or technicians for the powerful.  If we don’t hold the line, no one else will.

The paper: Wolfe-Simon F, Blum JS, Kulp TR, Gordon GW, Hoeft SE, Pett-Ridge J, Stolz JF, Webb SM, Weber PK, Davies PCW, Anbar AD, Oremland RS (2010) A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus. DOI: 10.1126/science.1197258.

My early summation of this paper: Arsenic and Odd Lace

Images: Top, María tries to keep her brother focused on the mission in The Guns of Navarone; middle, the Meselson and Stahl experiment; bottom, Quiros circus, Spain, 2007.

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science, Space Exploration | 40 Comments »

Perhaps I Should Be Called Cassandra

December 9th, 2010

A colleague once called me a hopeful romantic. There’s more than a grain of truth to that. So it’s ironic that the two Wikipedia entries which quote me are linked to my critiques of extraordinary claims that did not provide even ordinary evidence.

The first was my review of Ward and Brownlee’s Rare Earth, in which I pointed out errors that cast serious doubts on their hypothesis. When I wrote the review, I didn’t know that one of their major advisors was Guillermo Gonzalez, an unabashed creationist who made his science fit his philosophy. A few things from my review must have registered, since subsequent editions corrected at least some of these errors (for example, their initial statement that both Mars and Venus are tidally locked).

Yesterday I discovered that I appear in a second Wikipedia entry about “arsenic DNA” — the purported genetic material of the fabulous beastie that NASA announced last Friday during its science-by-press-conference. This entry is fluctuating right now, as people are editing it back and forth (plus they incorrectly call me a microbiologist).  Those of you who are keeping track may know I was an early pebble in the avalanche of criticism that has since fallen on that work, led by Dr. Rosemary Redfield of UBC and summarized by Carl Zimmer in Slate.

I have more to say about the Science paper but first I must meet immovable looming deadlines. For now I will only say that I wish the work had been as exciting as its hype promised. Because I’m an old-fashioned scientist — and a hopeless romantic.

Images: 1st, Stick in the Mud, Steve Jurvetson; 2nd, Outlier, Ben Shabad.

Update: More, as promised, in The Agency That Cried “Awesome!”

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science, Space Exploration | 4 Comments »

Arsenic and Odd Lace

December 2nd, 2010

When you hear about lots of cherries, bring a small basket. — Greek proverb

About a week ago, I started receiving a steady and progressively swelling stream of e-mails, asking me if I knew anything about the hush-hush “amazing astrobiology discovery” that NASA would announce on December 2. I replied I would opine when I read the associated paper, embargoed by Science until after the press conference. I also added that my bets were on a terrestrial extremophile that pushes the exotic envelope. Many bloggers and news sites disagreed, posting entries with titles and guesses taken straight from the pulp SF era.

Today NASA made its announcement and Science released the paper. To give you the punchline first, the results indeed concern a terrestrial extremophile and show that bacteria are very flexible and will adapt to suboptimal conditions. This is not exactly news, although the findings do push the envelope… slightly.

What the results decidedly do not show is a different biochemistry, an independent genesis or evidence for a shadow biosphere, contrary to co-author Paul Davies’ attempts to shoehorn that into the conclusions of an earlier (2008) related paper. It’s not arsenic-based life, it’s not an arsenic-eating bacterium and the biology textbooks don’t need to be rewritten.

The experiment is actually very clever in that it follows a given to its logical conclusion. The researchers took an inoculum from the hypersaline, alkaline Mono lake and grew it in serial dilutions so that the medium contained progressively increasing amounts of arsenic (As) substituting for phosphorus (P). Lake Mono has arsenic levels several orders of magnitude above the usual, so bacteria living in it have already adapted to tolerate it.

The bacteria that grew in severely P-depleted and As-enriched conditions were identified as members of a halophile (salt-loving) family already known to accumulate intracellular As. When deprived of P, they grew slowly and appeared bloated because they were full of structures that look like vacuoles, cellular organelles that manage waste and grow larger and more numerous when cells are under stress. Additionally, there was still some phosphorus in the growth medium (it’s almost impossible to leach it completely) and there is no direct proof that As was incorporated into the bacterial DNA [see addendum]. So essentially the bacteria were trying to do business as usual under trying circumstances.

Phosphorus means “lightbringer” because the element glows faintly under illumination, giving its name to Venus when it’s the Morning Star. It is deemed to be among the six elements vital for life (in alphabetical order: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur; often acronymed as CHNOPS, which sounds like the name of an Egyptian pharaoh). Indeed P appears in all three classes of biomolecules. It’s obligatory in nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) and phospholipids, the primary components of cell membranes; phosphate groups are crucial covalent additions to proteins, regulating their activity and ligand affinities; it’s also the energy currency of cells, primarily in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). On the scale of organisms, bones contain phosphorus in apatite form and it’s also an essential nutrient for plants, though P excess is as much a problem as its lack.

Arsenic is directly below phosphorus in the periodic table, just as silicon is directly below carbon. Arsenic is highly toxic to lifeforms precisely because it looks similar enough to phosphorus in terms of atomic radius and reactivity that it is occasionally incorporated in metabolic intermediates, short-circuiting later steps in cascades. [This, incidentally, is not true for silicon vis-à-vis carbon, for those who are contemplating welcoming silicon overlords. Silicon is even more inferior than arsenic in its relative attributes.] Arsenic was used in pesti-, herbi- and insecticides (and in stealth murders), until it became clear that even minute amounts leaching into the water table posed a serious health problem.

The tables in the Science paper are eloquent on how reluctant even hardy extremophiles are to use As instead of P. Under normal growth conditions, the As:P ratio in their biomass was 1:500. When P was rigorously excluded and As had been raised to three times the level in lake Mono, the As:P ratio remained at a measly 7:1. Furthermore, upon fractionation As segregated almost entirely into the organic phase. Very little was in the aqueous phase that contains the nucleic acids. This means that under extreme pressure the bacteria will harbor intracellular As, but they will do their utmost to exclude it from the vital chains of the genetic material.

As I wrote elsewhere, we biologists are limited in our forecasts by having a single life sample. So we don’t know what is universal and what is parochial and our searches are unavoidably biased in terms of their setup and possible interpretations. The results from this work do not extend the life sample number. Nor do they tell us anything about terrestrial evolution, because they showcase a context-driven re-adaptation, not a de novo alternative biochemistry. However, they hint that at least one of the CHNOPS brigade may be substitutable in truly extreme (by our circumscribed definition) conditions.

On the larger canvas, it was clever of NASA to disclose this right around budget (-cutting) time. But it would have been even cleverer if they had managed to calibrate the hype volume correctly — and kept squarely in their memory the tale of the boy who cried wolf.

Addendum 1: The paper has evidence that the DNA of the final isolate contains 11% of the total arsenic by incorporation of radioactivity and mass spectrometry comparison studies. However, important controls and/or purification steps seem to be missing. The crucial questions are: exactly where is arsenic located, how much substitution has occurred in the DNA, if any, and how does it affect the layers of DNA function (un/folding, replication, transcription, translation)? Definitive answers will require at minimum direct sequencing and/or crystallographic data. The leading author, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, said that this is fertile ground for thirty years of future work — and in that, at least, she’s right.

Addendum 2: Detailed devastating critiques and dissections are appearing.

The paper: Wolfe-Simon F, Blum JS, Kulp TR, Gordon GW, Hoeft SE, Pett-Ridge J, Stolz JF, Webb SM, Weber PK, Davies PCW, Anbar AD, Oremland RS (2010) A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1197258.

My extended analysis: The Agency That Cried “Awesome!”

Note for young(er) readers: the title is a take off on Arsenic and Old Lace, Joseph Kesselring’s black comedy about decorous yet murderous old ladies, later made into a film by Frank Capra starring Cary Grant.

Images: 1st, the vacuolated cells of the As-fed bacteria (Wolfe-Simon et al, Figure 2E); 2nd, the elements important to life; 3rd, Mono Lake (LA Times)

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science, Space Exploration | 28 Comments »

Harry Potter and the Two-Part Blog Post, Pt 2: the Films

December 1st, 2010

by Calvin Johnson (and a coda by Athena)

Previously: the books.

Translating a well-loved book into a movie is a tricky business. Translating a series of books into a series of movies is even harder.

Peter Jackson did it brilliantly for The Lord of the Rings, through a combination of breathtaking New Zealand landscapes, well-crafted digital special effects, and above all, allowing his actors to act.

Other series were not so lucky. The movie versions of both Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (drawn from three out of thirteen books) and Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass were badly received, especially at the box office, making sequels unlikely. And the Narnia movies are struggling despite a ready-made fan base.

The Harry Potter films, on the other hand, have been a phenomenal success. Last week I wrote about the book series; now, with the release of the penultimate movie, I’ll delve into Harry’s cinematic career.

How and why a movie succeeds or fails is a mystery. Often it’s a matter of a poor match to the strength of cinema, telling a story in images. The Lemony Snicket books were too metafictional to translate well to the big screen. The Narnia books, while bedecked with fantasy flourishes, are primarily about small, personal moral quandries, not a topic that leads to blockbuster multi-repeat viewings (I prefer the BBC Narnia series, with cheesy special effects but a tighter focus on the stories).

Rowling’s books, in contrast, were made for cinema, a criticism in fact leveled at her writing. Although she has her philosophy – that categorizing people by the circumstances of blood and birth is the root of evil – and although Harry has his internal debates, the conflicts in the novels are primarily visual: dramatic revelations, spectacular duels between wizards.

The first two movies were respectful to the point of being stiff. This is unsurprising, as they were directed by Chris Columbus, a protege of Steven Spielberg who learned Spielberg’s maudlin tendencies but none of his visual genius. The series got a real boost in the middle two movies, especially Alfonso Cuarón’s lyrical Prisoner of Azkaban. Leaping up from the best book in the series, Cuarón’s visual inventiveness matched the eccentricities of the Potterverse. Mike Newell managed to keep the spark alive for the magical tournament in The Goblet of Fire.

Alas, the flame guttered low in the remainder of the movies, directed by David Yates. Both The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince were grim, bloated, and not infrequently tedious books, and while Yates hacked out some of the extraneous material, what remained were grim, rushed, and above all obligatory summaries of the books. The Deathly Hallows is famously being broken into two films so it feels less rushed, but viewing Part I felt less like joy and more like an assignment.

Any story, be it book or movie, can be thought of as a tent, much like the wedding tent magically raised early on in The Deathly Hallows: Part I; the structure hangs supported from two or three poles. The problem with The Deathly Hallows is that there are far too many tentpoles and the movie must visit most of them. The flight of the Harry Potters. Dumbledore’s will. Bill and Fleur’s wedding. The escape and fight in the heart of London. Harry’s inherited house. Harry’s birthplace. Luna Lovegood’s home. The House of Malfoy. In between we camp in the wilderness. The book felt lost at this point, as if Rowling knew where she wanted to go but had no idea how to get there, and the feeling is reproduced all too accurately in the movie.

Indeed, although Yates is deft and visually more nimble than Columbus, the movie follows the book a little too faithfully. Part of the challenge of making a movie from a well-loved book is to both keep the uninitiated on board and to make those who have loved the book to tatters see it anew. Peter Jackson succeeded in The Lord of the Rings, allowing us to feel the burdens that Aragorn and Gandalf carry, helping us to see the tides of war rise and ebb in the chaos of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

Unfortunately, having to cover so much Yates can add little insight. The most moving scenes are the very beginning and the very end of Part I, as our no-longer-so-young protagonists suffer painful losses in their war against Voldemort.

So why have the Harry Potter movies succeeded? Again, there can be no simple answer, but the producers did have an advantage. For all her flaws, Rowling always understood the series to be Harry’s story, and she resisted having a plethora of viewpoint characters.

The trend in doorstopper fantasy and science fiction novels to have a large number of viewpoint characters is one I have come to loathe, because it makes it harder to emotionally engage with any of the characters. Peter Jackson (last time, I promise) succeeded with The Lord of the Rings because the first movie focused on Frodo’s journey.

By contrast, A Series of Unfortunate Events was more obsessed with Jim Carrey’s Count Olaf and his big eyebrows, and less with the hapless Baudelaire orphans. The Golden Compass would seem to have all the right elements for success: big name stars, dazzling visuals. But one of the joys of the novel is the rebellious, tart-tongued heroine Lyra; onscreen she got lost among the special effects, leaving a leaden, rudderless movie.

Harry Potter was different. J. K. Rowling, the screenwriter Steve Kloves, and the producers and the directors have none of them forgotten that the books and movies are all titled Harry Potter and the Something Something. With tiny exceptions, every frame of the movies is about Harry, and we see the other characters primarily through his eyes. So although the narratives have far too many plot tentpoles, there is one and only one character tentpole. Thus in retrospect having a pedestrian director for the first two movies may have been a wise move. Without this focus I don’t think the audience for the books or the movies would have been nearly as engaged.

Books and movies can both be magical, transcendent experiences that take us into new worlds, showing us new windows even on subjects we think we know intimately. If the Harry Potter films have not quite risen to that level, their popularity show a hunger for magic in our lives. And somewhere out there someone is writing or filming the next magical experience–not perfect, but a story that puts a wire to our hearts, a spark to our imaginations.

Athena’s coda: I haven’t read the Potter books, but I’ve seen all the films except for The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince. I greatly enjoyed the occasional inventive visual: the Lewis chess set brought to life-sized life in The Philosopher’s Stone; the hippogriff making itself comfortable, housecat-like, in The Prisoner of Azkaban; the final exit of the two guest schools’ conveyances in The Goblet of Fire. And I found some of the characters interesting: Snape, McGonagall, Lupin, Black (Dumbledore, not so much – enough lovably irascible father figures already).

However, my overall sense is of fatigued déjà vu, of bloated, plodding spectacles. The borrowings from the Arthurian cycle, the Brontë sisters, Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin’s Earthsea and the X-Men are obvious — and like a stew with clashing and stale ingredients, they leave me with a sour mind.

Having a single character peg may cover many sins but it uncovers others – especially because Harry’s character is tapioca-bland in the films. For one, it accentuates the fact that despite the sermons about loving everyone regardless of their “race”, this is a hierarchical universe where magic ability is genetically inherited, automatically creating castes (just like the infamous Star Wars midichlorians). Hell, Hagrid practically tugs his forelock. Even within the ranks of magic wielders, some lives are worth more than others: by the end, Harry has a long tally of sacrificed pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, queens… Even Neo’s body count was less in The Matrix trilogy.

For another, a Messianic avenger needs a worthy antagonist and, as Calvin mentioned in Part 1, Voldemort is a moldy caricature — not even a Sauron, let alone a Lucifer. Come to think of it, he looks like Gollum’s brother. Just as you wonder why the hordes of Janissary Pretorians… er, Jedi, cannot handle two Sith in Star Wars, so you wonder why the formidable lineup of white-hat wizards in the Potterverse cannot overcome that whiny slitherer.

Just as crucially, a hero needs a partner of equal stature. In the films, at least, it’s blindingly obvious that Harry’s true soulmate is Hermione (highlighted by the total lack of chemistry between the Hermione/Ron and Harry/Ginny dyads), just as in the X-Men films Wolverine’s true partner is Rogue. I can see Ron getting a consolation prize – but what does Hermione get, who is as good as Harry yet not the Chosen One because of the incorrect location of her body bulges and wrong family pedigree? I predict at least one divorce in the future Potterverse, when she gets tired of washing everyone’s socks. But that is another country.

Finally, the magic in Harry Potter is arbitrary, slaved to the plot twists. This makes it as interesting and attractive as an engine that keeps sputtering out at random moments. People hungering for magic deserve better than regurgitated, least-common-denominator myths.

Images: 1st, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) in that unexpected triumph, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings; 2nd, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) trying to protect his charges from more plodding Potter films; 3rd, pieces from the Lewis chess set (walrus ivory, 12th century); 4th, a far more effective guise for Ralph Fiennes to play an evil or ambiguous antagonist (here shown as Heathcliff in an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights).

Posted in Art, Writing & Literature | 5 Comments »

Rises and Falls

November 27th, 2010

As is common with me, things have once again come in groups.  In addition to the acceptance of The Wind Harp, a book has just come out with a tiny contribution from me.  It is The Rough Guide to the Future by biochemist, science historian and science writer Jon Turney.  The book surveys new technologies and their impact on humanity and the planet, and includes the hopes, fears and predictions of “fifty of the world’s leading futurologists and scientists” (blush!)  Here’s Jon’s introduction to it, and here’s my contribution:

Highest hopes: In decreasing order of likelihood, that we will conquer – or at least tame – dementia, which will make the increase in average life expectancy individually worthwhile and collectively feasible; that we will pick up an unambiguous SETI signal (search for extraterrestrial intelligence); and that we will decipher the ancient script Linear A and find out that the Minoans were indeed enlightened, if not matriarchal.

Worst fears: Most of our activities will devolve into inward navel-gazing (“social” Internet, virtual reality) rather than outward exploration, and our politics (broadly defined) will force all research into applied/profit mode, doomed to produce results and reagents that will make the long-term survival of the planet and all its species increasingly problematic.

Best bet: Barring a natural or human-created catastrophe, we’ll muddle along just as before and run out of resources and lebensraum before we’re able to establish either a sustainable terrestrial footprint or expand beyond Earth.

Additionally, I will be one of the reviewers of Rise Reviews, the brainchild of Bart Leib, the co-founder of Crossed Genres and Science in My Fiction.  As Bart said in his blog:

“I’m pleased to announce that I will soon be launching Rise Reviews, a site dedicated to reviewing quality speculative fiction that did not receive professional pay.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. See, most review sites either only review fiction from professional-paying markets, or take most of what they review from those markets. I don’t hold that against them – every review site receives FAR more review requests than it could possibly accomplish, and each one has to decide for itself how to narrow down the pile.

But the result is that, more often than not, smaller presses which don’t pay pro rates are the ones that get passed over. And that’s what Rise Reviews will cover. Many of these publishers produce excellent quality publications, and I hope that Rise will be able to help bring new writers and smaller presses to the attention of readers.”

Rise Reviews will be a partial corrective to those who think, à la Tangent, that only Leaden Era-style speculative fiction (aka boys and their toys) deserves to be read and reviewed.  And it may give an incentive to independents to start paying in more than copies, even if it’s the proverbial $5 — it will make the works eligible for reviewing in Rise.  The site will launch January 1, 2011 with a veritable avalanche of reviews across subgenres.

Images: The covers of The Rough Guide to the Future (by Tom Cabot/ketchup) and the 1st year anthology of Crossed Genres (by Nicc Balce).

Posted in Biology & Culture, Science, Science Fiction & Fantasy | 15 Comments »

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