Karen Sandler

Tag: science

  • When Fiction Becomes Future…or Present

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200pxScience fiction is a funny genre. There are those (like me) who devour it, who sometimes feel there’s something missing in a book that doesn’t include at least a little imagined science. Then there are those who just don’t get the genre, are completely alienated by it. To them, it’s weird and unreal.

    Yet in the best science fiction, there’s nothing more real. It looks ahead to what might be and extrapolates not just the science, but how people adapt to the science. It can show how one change, small or large, completely transforms a people, a society.

    The Green Movement in Iran and the more recent Arab Spring got me thinking about a Larry Niven story I read thirty or so years ago. “Flash Crowd” showed the impact of the transfer booth, an instantaneous, essentially free form of travel. You step into a transfer booth down on the corner near your house (like a way cooler bus stop) and in the next moment you’re downtown, or at the university or at the local mall.

    What happens in the story is that folks start hearing about something interesting going on at Santa Monica mall (a stretch of several pedestrian-only open air blocks in Santa Monica, CA) and all those people jump into transfer booths. This near immediate influx of people on the mall leads to a riot, something that never could have happened if folks had to climb into their cars, negotiate Los Angeles freeway traffic, find a place to park, etc. Easy availability of transfer booths = riot.

    Transfer booths haven’t been invented yet, but think about their virtual equivalent. The Internet. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. The demonstrators during the Arab Spring used those near instantaneous forms of communication to organize, to plan, to keep their compatriots and sympathizers and the outside world updated as to conditions on the ground. The protesters couldn’t instantaneously appear in the streets of Cairo or Damascus, but the Internet and cell phones have facilitated their movements.

    What Larry Niven predicted when he published “Flash Crowd” in 1973 didn’t come literally true. We still haven’t figured out how to instantaneously transport matter from point A to point B. But that phenomenon of informing the world in an instant has come to pass and in the case of the Arab Spring (despite the current state of affairs in Syria), I think that can be a good thing.

    Have you read a book or a short story that has projected a possible future? Have you seen that projected future become now? Leave a comment. Include the title and author if you have it.

  • Programming DNA

    In the world of my book Tankborn, Genetically Engineered Non-humans (GENs) are controlled via electronics installed in their nervous system and brain. I read an article this week which describes an intriguing study whose results I might just have to steal for a future book. The researchers have actually managed to program DNA itself.

    Stanford post-doc Jerome Bonnet worked with graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn and assistant professor Drew Endy to induce the DNA in microbes to switch direction so that they would glow a different color under an ultraviolet light. After three years of work getting the correct balance of enzymes which control the orientation of the DNA, they were able to create the equivalent of a bio data storage unit. They call the device used a “recombinase addressable data” module, or RAD. They’re only able to store one bit of “data,” but have plans to expand their research to an entire byte.

    While the scientists engaged in this study expect that this data storage ability would be used for worthy efforts such as studying cancer, my writer’s mind can’t seem to help going in an entirely different direction. If we could store data in DNA, couldn’t we pass ultra-secret messages that way? Or maybe it’s not just data, but actual programming in the brain that affects behavior. Maybe in a future world, it could heal a mental illness or something could go awry and the treatment would create someone with extraordinary mental powers.

    Okay, I’m letting my imagination get the best of me. These are all fictional scenarios. The actual science will take years to reach fruition. And in the real world, it will likely provide benefits, like to signal that cells are splitting too rapidly. Catch that early and we can prevent cancer.

    Still, it’s fun to take this intriguing study and run with it as an author. After all, who doesn’t want mental superpowers?

  • Brain-Digital Interface

    Sometimes science is stranger–and creepier–than fiction. In my young adult science fiction book, Tankborn, genetically engineered non-humans (GENs) are grown in a tank with circuitry implanted along their nervous systems, including within their brains. An interface installed on their cheek (in the form of a tattoo) allows a trueborn to upload data and programing into a GEN and download the contents of much of their brain.

    In the realm of actual science, author Jonathan D. Moreno discusses in his book Mind Wars potential use of using the human brain for military advantage. For instance, he ponders the ethics of using oxytocin to induce a sense of trust and well-being in someone to enhance interrogation. Or the use of an “anti-sleep” pill to allow soldiers to continue fighting without the need for sleep.

    But it was the discussion of the brain-digital interface that caught my eye. Science hasn’t advanced to Tankborn’s level of circuitry implanted within a subject’s nervous system. But scientists have already used the brain-digital interface for prosthetic limbs, and there’s even potential to allow paralyzed folks to control robotics with their minds. These are far more positive uses for the technology of interfacing with the brain than in Tankborn’s world.

    Moreno proposed two guiding principles for use of the brain-digital interface: “First, the individual should have control over the contents of his or her mind. Second, the individual gets to decide who gets access.” In my fictional world, GENs never have complete control over the contents of their minds, nor do they decide who gets access.

    But that’s part of what makes for an interesting story–characters with seemingly insurmountable obstacles (in this case, both physical and mental slavery) who fight against their oppressors. I have to hope that in the real world this type of technology will only be used for the best purposes, and will be beneficial to all.

  • Gender Bias in Children’s Books?

    There’s been some discussion on Twitter (and I imagine elsewhere) about a recently released study revealing gender inequality in children’s literature. The study looked at nearly 6000 children’s books published from 1900 to 2000. They discovered that even in children’s books featuring animals, a significant majority of the central characters are male. At most a third of the books contain female characters at all while 100% include male characters. Take a look at the article for more statistics.

    Assuming there’s no funny business in the counting of characters’ genders, it seems indisputable that there are more male characters than female in children’s literature. Where I think the study gets mushy is in the conclusions the authors say that the data led them to. For instance, they point out that mothers and children read gender into even gender neutral animal characters. The article mentions “research on reader interpretations” to support readers’ gender assignment of gender-neutral characters, but nothing is cited. So I do wonder about that.

    The other issue that raised a red flag for me was the conclusion drawn by the authors as to the impact of this gender inequality in children’s books. They state that this will lead to a presumption that “women and girls occupy a less important role in society than men or boys” and that it amounts to the “symbolic annihilation of women disguised through animal imagery.” That second statement in particular sounds like an overly dramatic leap too far to me. In any case, I’d like to see other studies that support their contention.

    I’m no scientist (although I like to write about them). I didn’t do the study, haven’t read it in its entirety. I know often what appears in a short article such as the one I’ve linked to includes material taken out of context and the issues I have with the conclusions may be explored in greater depth in the original study.

    And although I can’t speak for every little girl out there, I can speak for myself. As a kid in the ’60s and ’70s, I probably read some very gender biased books. Did I feel that women had a less important role in society as a consequence? Did I feel symbolically annihilated? Hell, no.

    If I read a book that featured a boy as the main character, that omitted female characters entirely even, I don’t know that I ever even noticed. I became that main character anyway, lived his adventure, imagined myself as him. I was Tom Sawyer, not Becky Thatcher. I was Black Beauty, not poor doomed Ginger.

    Later, in my late teens when I started noticing women’s minuscule roles in books (mainly science fiction by that point), I was irritated and ticked off that the author either omitted or limited their female characters. I certainly wasn’t traumatized by it. It’s one reason I have almost entirely stopped reading adult SF written by men. Because the women authors know how to create worlds with as many interesting powerful women as men.

    I know there are certainly girls/women out there who felt different than I did growing up. Who read those male-dominated books and felt smaller. But I bet there are others like me who don’t give a damn if the author wrote the character as male. They see themselves in that story, doing all those fun and exciting things that boy/male character is doing. They’re strong girls, they’re smart girls, they’re adventurous girls. And if the character doesn’t look like them, they will damn well just re-write the story so they do.

  • The Second Thing to Go

    The memory, they say, is the second thing to go as you get older. And I don’t remember the first thing.

    My memory is pretty average. I’m quick to come up with the stuff I use/interact with on a regular basis. Some phone numbers. Functions in Word that would cause most people’s eyes to cross or glaze over. I have a mental block about names, but always have. Bizarrely, I will remember everything else about a person–the name of their horse, where they went to school, what kind of work they do. But ask me their name and I draw a complete blank.

    After years of feeling like an idiot, I finally started using the trick of finding a word that rhymes with the person’s name. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with them (like Melanie, who as far as I know never committed a felony). But like all those other attributes about them, I’ll remember that rhyming word first, then that gets me to their name.

    The strength of my memory is a bit of an obsession of mine because my dad has Alzheimer’s. Mind you, he’s 84 years old. But even still, every time I can’t come up with a word while I’m writing, or when I run downstairs for something and go back up without it because I got distracted by moving the laundry to the dryer, I freak out just a bit. I know that my memory lapses have nothing to do with Alzheimer’s. But I worry nonetheless.

    I’ve mostly accepted my father’s disease and the fact that he no longer knows me by name. He still recognizes me as his daughter most of the time, but I don’t know that he’s aware of which of his four daughters I am. Since I live five minutes away from his care home, he sees me more than the other three. But I wonder sometimes if in his mind I’m a stand-in for all four of us, which is fine by me. He smiles when he sees me, is so happy that I’m visiting and that’s all that matters.

    I keep an eagle eye out for any scientific studies about Alzheimer’s, even though it’s too late to do my dad any good. Two that were reported recently in the New York Times are quite intriguing. They’re related to testing for Alzheimer’s rather than treatment of the disease, but of course it’s necessary to know the condition before treating it.

    One test uses a special dye that allows the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s to be visible via a PET scan. Living Alzheimer’s patients agreed to have their brains scanned using the technique and to allow scientists to examine their brains after they died. Of the 29 who have died and been autopsied, 28 were accurately diagnosed as to whether or not they had Alzheimer’s.

    The second procedure tests the level of beta amyloid in the blood. Amyloid is present in both the brain and spinal fluid in a healthy person. But when amyloid accumulates in plaque in the brain (which increases the risk for Alzheimer’s) less of it will be found in the spinal fluid. The theory is, amyloid will also decrease in the blood, and that is what this study is testing. Blood tests are a lot easier to perform on a large number of people than PET scans, which is why the success of this study would be a good thing.

    Of course once a practical test exists, there’s still the little issue of finding a way of reversing the course of the disease. Drugs are being developed to remove amyloid from the brain, which I presume you’d only want to do if there’s too much there to begin with.

    While contemplating all this, I got a mini-brainstorm that became a germ of a story. What if a near fail-safe treatment for Alzheimer’s were developed? A drug is created that will restore the brain to healthy normalcy. Except there’s a drawback–the drug wipes the brain clean of memories. The person treated would have to re-learn everything. He would not remember anyone from his previous life, including loved ones.

    Would you say yes for the treatment for your mother, father, sister or brother? For my own self, for my dad, I’d say YES in a heartbeat. It’s a terrible disease and nothing would make me happier than to see my dad cured, no matter what the stakes. But wow, what a choice to make.

    So what if you’re the one making the decision in this hypothetical story? That is, you’re the one with Alzheimer’s, still with enough function to make the choice for yourself. What would you choose?

    Not sure if I can make that choice myself.