Is Science Fiction Dying?

Some time last week I stumbled on a post somewhere about science fiction dieing out. I immediately wanted to post a response, but couldn't find the words. Today, I found a post on New Scientist entitled, "Is science fiction dying?" by Marcus Chown. I won't say that my response was the most eloquent I could have posted, but I think it pretty much expresses my opinion on the subject:

Science Fiction won't die because it's fiction. The reason it feels that way now is because of the speed at which science is advancing. Back in the 50s and 60s, what was seen as sci-fi (space ships, small computers, androids, etc) was so far out of reach that if kept it's allure for a long time. Nowadays, all that is quaint.

Another problem with sci-fi is that elements of sci-fi are creeping into a lot of non-sci-fi media and diluting the WOW factor. Sci-fi now has to go that extra mile to keep from seeming quaint.

Sci-Fi needs to move from the realm of cyberpunk to biopunk since bioengineering is more the area of where science is going to be making slower progress than computers and robots and space ships.

Well, maybe not the space ships...

I do think that sci-fi in a lot of respects is already moving into the realm of biopunk with speculation on cloning, genetically modified plants and animals, drugs, etc. Stories about people who have been genetically altered to have gills or wings, evolved anthropomorphic animals, epidermal computers, and bioroids are where Science Fiction will continue to keep it's edge.

Science fiction won't die. At least not until science does.

Awsomest DNA Science Video

BioWare

One of the projects I've been trying to find time and inspiration to work on is the idea of the "Body Shop" from the pre-Crash period of AtB. In an article I found today, "The Wicked Side of Cyberpunk", Earl S. Wynn talks about the staples of Cyberpunk sci-fi and their Bioware (Biopunk?) equivalents:

One of the defining factors of Cyberpunk is cybernetic implants, but circuitboards and clunky metal bits aren't the end all and be all of implanted augmentations for the human body. Consider the lab-grown skingrafts that worked as experimental insulin patches in the early nineties, and now take it a step further. Imagine a full recoating of the dermal surface with a graft or a "skinweave" of engineered cells that can do anything from filling the body with specially-tailored chemicals to generating it's own exterior coating of poison, color-changing pigment, or even organic superlubricant. Improved organs are a possibility too- imagine a digestive tract upgrade that allows for the digestion of things like gasoline and broken glass (Hey, with the right culture of microbes, anything is possible) or lungs that can glean air from water or nerve gas without any ill effects. But lets take it a step further even than that- imagine being able to get anything you wanted in a body, and then imagine the cosmetic and fashion fads that would start. That's right. Think tails, bizarre-colored eyes, lavender skin, reculturing of the bacteria in sweat to produce a specific scent instead of the dreaded sour tang of B.O. Going into a bar in the city would be like walking into a scene from Star Wars- we'd have all the aliens we'd ever need right here on earth.

Wynn goes on to talk about Brain Mods, Subdermal implants, Brain Hacking, and other topics that could have been present in the golden age before the Big Death.

I'm hoping that maybe I can take and use this to inspire me to get back to work on the Body Shop article. I think it would be an interesting addition to both AtB and Heroes Unlimited.

Frank The Duck

Found this interesting news story of a truck driver and his... pet duck, Frank. I'll have to make a character based on Frank. :)

AtB Politics

This past election season it struck me that President Thana has technically been in power for over twenty years (AtB first published in 1986). Does Cardania have Presidential term limits? Does she have a VP? Who is the Secretary of State? How closely does Cardania's government mirror the modern United States?

We know that while Cardania based it's government on the Constitution of the United States, they most likely scraped, or re-wrote, the amendments to the Bill of Right to suit the fact that theirs was a solitary state (not a "United States") - I patched this by dividing Cardania into eight counties, each governed by elected Governor and Councilors (similar to the U.S. Governor and Senate), and each county having a two Senators in the Cardanian Senate. I dropped the House of Representatives to streamline the Legislative branch in the game, going for a more Roman Senate structure (as best I understand it). Cardania has five appointed Supreme Court Justices.

While we know the governing styles of the main AtB states (Empire of Humanity, Cardania, and Gatorland), and have a vague idea of their political interactions (The Empire and Cardania's Cold War), the book (understandably) doesn't go into the diplomatic side of things, even though such a topic would have been really helpful in understanding how these two keep from going for the others throat. We are told that it is merely a matter of numbers - a few thousand pure humans versus millions of mutant animals on all sides - that keeps the Empire from instigating to all out war with Cardania, and the threat of the Empires high-tech weapons that keeps the mutant animals from invading, but are there other mechanisms in place to keep them from "pushing the button"? Could the two have some sort of diplomatic presence in the "Contested Land"? Could Gatorland be pulling some strings from the shadows? Does the Empire and/or Cardania hold a "wild card" (nuke or bio-weapon) that scares the bejesus out of the other?

Food for thought...

Bart's Demise

I have decided to try, once again, writing some AtB based flash fiction. I'd really like to try and work my way up to an actual short story, but as they say... 'You must crawl before you walk, walk before you run...'

- - - - - - -

Bart had waited for hours in the snow covered branches of the pine; waiting for a courier to pass by on the road below. The mutant squirrel had been given the unenviable task of making sure that documents bound for the Empires capitol did not reach their destination. He died quickly from a snipers bullet.

Anthro Humor

More Bizarro humor can be found at Bizarro.com and BizarroComic.blogspot.com

[IN THE NEWS] Back From The Dead

No, this isn't an article about Zombies in After the Bomb. Instead, we're talking about bringing extinct species back into the world.

We know that in the 2nd Edition reboot of AtB, the world had entered a Golden Age of Bio-Engineering and that a few mutant "throwback" species had been brought back from extinction (ie. Passenger Pigeons, Egyptian Cats, etc.). While many of these throwbacks in the game were not necessarily pure blood reincarnations of the extinct species, a new article was posted on NewScientist.com yesterday, Ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again, suggests that it may be possible to bring back those species for which we are able to sequence their DNA:

"THE recipe for making any creature is written in its DNA. So last November, when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, there was much speculation about whether we could bring this behemoth back to life.

Creating a living, breathing creature from a genome sequence that exists only in a computer's memory is not possible right now. But someone someday is sure to try it, predicts Stephan Schuster, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and a driving force behind the mammoth genome project."

With the EGG's described in 2nd Edition AtB it is most likely that a wolly mammoth would have been, if they had an EGG large enough, brought back from extinction, and that they may, in the game, be roaming the northern wilderness as the glaciers slowly make their way south.

There are so many other extinct species that people have wanted to bring back, not to mention that there are so many species that go extinct every year and others that are dangerously near the edge. Luckly, in the realm of RPG's, we are not limited to those considerations (land, money, and ethics) that would limit what we can do in real life, so let your imagination run wild and bring back something extinct in your next game.