good biology sci-fi

[Avery louie]

Anybody have reading recommendations for good, biology inspired sci-fi?  I think people produce interesting things to read when they take\ a little bit of science fact and add a little bit of contemporary prejudice and thought.  Sometimes these stories can be good jumping off points for discussions.

I will start.  I read this a while back...I remember not totally liking how it was written, but it was interesting.

Calorie Man

[QDragon Leet]

I'm actually considering starting to write some sci-fi with biotech themes

don't suppose the group would mind my posting some for feedback?

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

I kinda like Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear - human endogenous retroviruses and their role in human evolution are a fascinating topic.

The movie Contagion is probably the strongest science-based disaster movie I've seen in a long while. They got input from the CDC and professional virus hunters like Ian Lipkin. We went to see it with some biosecurity experts from work...

Patrik

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 6:45:33 PM UTC-8, Avery wrote:

[Dakota Hamill]

This is a pretty neat short film made by Luke Scott, Riddley Scott's son. (Of Aliens, Blade-runner, Prometheus).  I'll try to think of some more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wcvSTk8M5qY

[Bryan Bishop]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
> I kinda like Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear - human endogenous retroviruses and
> their role in human evolution are a fascinating topic.

Greg Egan wrote some good things in Luminous (the collection).

Also, my absolute favorite scifi story of all time is Neverness.

http://heybryan.org/docs/Zindell,%20David%20-%20Neverness%20(v1.0).txt

But if you are into shorter things:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/shanidar.htm
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Jeswin]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Avery louie <inact...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anybody have reading recommendations for good, biology inspired sci-fi? I
> think people produce interesting things to read when they take\ a little bit
> of science fact and add a little bit of contemporary prejudice and thought.
> Sometimes these stories can be good jumping off points for discussions.
>

You won't believe it but HG Wells wrote about diyBio and terrorists
back in 1884! It's called "The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents"
and you can find it on Gutenberg.org

Premise is scientist culturing bacteria (at home too, not the
university) gets a visit from a layman showing interest in the
scientist's studies.

[Simon Quellen Field]

And I wrote A Twisted Garden, a novel about what it would be like to be the first genetically engineered person.

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On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Suddenly Aurora <jillia...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wrote a novel called The Colony. It is a love affair with genetic engineering: http://www.amazon.com/The-Colony-Jillian-Weise/dp/1593762674/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358917207&sr=8-1&keywords=jillian+weise+the+colony

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[leaking pen]

That beats me, I was going to mention Terminal Man by Michael Crichton 

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[leaking pen]

The mote in god's eye is good alternate evolution biology, lots of poul anderson had decent science in it. 

--

[Nathan McCorkle]

The movie 'Cloud Atlas' is probably going to become a cult classic,
since it's decently confusing (in a good, get's you thinking way)...
its story is sort of about karma/rebirth but happens over many
centuries or millenia, and includes a big section regarding cloned
humans. 'Prometheus' is another decent sci-fi movie, I think it's a
pre-quel to Aliens or Predator, but basically there is some
auto-evolving stem-cell-like sludge that is really an alien
bio-weapon.

Both of these movies made me think something like 'what if some other
sentient beings placed us on the earth like seeds in some experimental
terrarium'... intriguing but also a bit disconnecting :)

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[Cathal Garvey]

God, Prometheus made me laugh. Only then because I was warned in advance
about how silly it was; otherwise I'd have been mad.

I would consider Prometheus "future fantasy", not "science fiction",
because it appears in every respect to have been written by someone(s)
who neither like nor care to ask about basic science.

At one point, they decide (on "medical advice") to defibrillate a
disembodied ancient head with electricity. And it works. I actually felt
like someone had passed a high voltage through part of my own brain,
watching that.

[Erico Perrella]

One thing that bothered me on Prometheus was that the entire team seems to be constitued by people without basic survival training and without basic safety training. Who would spend U$1 trillion sending people without basic training to search for life in another planet?  

2013/1/23 Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me>

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

On Wednesday, January 23, 2013 12:26:53 PM UTC-8, Cathal Garvey wrote:

At one point, they decide (on "medical advice") to defibrillate a
disembodied ancient head with electricity. And it works. I actually felt
like someone had passed a high voltage through part of my own brain,
watching that.

On that note - would it be too "out there" to recommend 80's cult classic Re-Animator? Far better entertainment value, without the gut wrenching disappointment about how good an Alien prequel *could* have been...

Of course, we're drifting very, very far from actual science here! :-D

[shreyans chordia]

Robin Cook has written good medical related sci-fi stories..

And Prometheus was BAAAAD!  Plz dont watch it!

Btw the director of "Contagion" (Steven Soderburgh) is releasing another interestin movie called "Side effects" this March.. Must watch

[Joshua Valdés]

This sci-fi book is about the year 2033, released onto the world is a 'bootloader' for getting synthetic DNA into cells and executed, as easily as installing software on a computer. https://www.createspace.com/3619107

[Chris Templeman]

@Avery

If you like "Calorie Man", Paulo also wrote "The Wind Up Girl" which takes place in the same world.

http://www.amazon.com/Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/1597801585

I haven't finished it yet but you can borrow it if you like...a little busy as of late.

Chris

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 9:45:33 PM UTC-5, Avery wrote:

[cluckj]

Bruce Sterling has some pretty good ones, if you like his style. These two are his more bio-focused novels that I have read:

Holy Fire (Transhumanism themes -- life extension)

Distraction (Transhumanism themes -- neuro-enhancement)

 

Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series (now it's called Lilith's Brood, I think) is also interesting.

 

-Jon

 

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 9:45:33 PM UTC-5, Avery wrote:

[Jeswin]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:45 AM, cluckj <clu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Bruce Sterling has some pretty good ones, if you like his style. These two
> are his more bio-focused novels that I have read:
> Holy Fire (Transhumanism themes -- life extension)
> Distraction (Transhumanism themes -- neuro-enhancement)
>
> Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series (now it's called Lilith's Brood, I
> think) is also interesting.
>

How do all these new books stack up against the classic/popular sci-fi
like Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, John Brunner, Philip K Dick, etc? I
read through most of the top 100 and am looking for more.

[Dan]

Hey Avery,

We did a Genspace course on Biotech Sci-fi. Here's our reading list with PDFs. Note that it contains some journalism and philosophy of science texts too, all on GM:

http://gmstorytelling.wordpress.com/texts/

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 9:45:33 PM UTC-5, Avery wrote: