john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

science fiction

  • The Neandertal treatment

    Thu, 2013-03-07 10:55 -- John Hawks

    Virginia Hughes, in National Geographic News, takes on the subject of whether we will someday clone Neandertals: "Return of the Neanderthals". She gets into the technical issues a bit and discusses George Church's book Regenesis, which touched off the Neandertal cloning discussion earlier this year.

    Toward the end of the article, I get to share some of my own thinking about the utility of Neandertal biological discoveries:

    Neanderthals' climate, diet, and disease exposures were not the same as those of our ancestors, and left different adaptive marks on their genome. And yet Neanderthals are far more similar to modern humans than the animals commonly used to study disease, such as fruit flies and rodents.

    "There are issues that humans have now, where it's very plausible that Neanderthal biology might actually show us something," Hawks says. "Our knowledge of the evolutionary process could guide us toward possible treatments."

    This is a message I've been sharing with public audiences for the last year. Our knowledge about human evolution is now shaping the way we approach medicine and health in ways we never could have imagined ten years ago. It's inspiring to know that paleoanthropology has begun to really matter in human biology.

    Tags: 
    cloning
    ethics
    Neandertal DNA
    science fiction

  • Quote: Heinlein on specialization

    Sun, 2012-12-09 21:30 -- John Hawks

    Robert A. Heinlein, in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

    Tags: 
    quotes
    Robert A. Heinlein
    science fiction

  • Unexpected "Radium Age" stories

    Sun, 2012-09-23 14:55 -- John Hawks

    I was enjoying a Nature discussion of "radium age" sci-fi literature, when this line caught me by surprise:

    In Jack London's post-apocalyptic The Scarlet Plague (1912), a race of barbarians descended from San Francisco's brutalized underclass roam the city's devastated remains after the fatal pandemic of 2013.

    Wait a minute, Jack London wrote a zombie story?

    Well, it's more Postman than zombies, but it's available on the Kindle for 99 cents: The Scarlet Plague (Annotated - Includes Essay and Biography). (UPDATE 2012-09-23: A reader notes that the story is also available for free from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21970).

    Here's the description:

    The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of the few survivors of the pre-plague era left alive in the San Francisco area, and as he realizes his time grows short, he tries to impart the value of knowledge and wisdom to his grandsons.

    They've apparently reverted to a Stone Age lifestyle, which does explain the Jack London element. I also love discovering that When the World Shook was written by H. Rider Haggard, better known for King Solomon's Mines.

    Tags: 
    science fiction
    books
    history

  • Special effects

    Tue, 2011-12-06 01:10 -- John Hawks

    The day has come when you can raise money for a movie by subscription, and here's an interesting article profiling a project that's trying to put old-style FX back to work: "Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi With Lights, Miniatures, and Imagination". I like their attitude.

    “Advanced civilizations have descended into dark ages before, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. So keeping that in mind, I think if you make science-fiction films today, you have an obligation to inspire people to think about exploration and progress and the beauty of scientific pursuits,” they said.

    The problem with many science-fiction films today, according to Van Gorder and Stockmeier, is they fail to address mankind regaining control of its technology when technology reaches highly-advanced levels.

    As they say, almost all the sci-fi plots these days are about humans losing control of technology, or unintended consequences. I like the idea of the unintended consequence being someone taking control of her potential.

    Tags: 
    movies
    science fiction

  • Quote: Ellison on posthumous work

    Tue, 2010-09-28 13:10 -- John Hawks

    Writer Harlan Ellison has been saying goodbye to fans, according to the Madison independent paper, Isthmus. The interview is interesting, including this part about unfinished work and posthumous publication:

    "My wife has instructions that the instant I die, she has to burn all the unfinished stories. And there may be a hundred unfinished stories in this house, maybe more than that. There's three quarters of a novel. No, these things are not to be finished by other writers, no matter how good they are. It could be Paul Di Filippo, who is just about the best writer in America, as far as I'm concerned. Or God forbid, James Patterson or Judith Krantz should get a hold of The Man Who Looked for Sweetness, which is sitting up on my desk, and try to finish it, anticipating what Ellison was thinking -- no! Goddammit. If Fred Pohl wants to finish all of C.M. Kornbluth's stories, that's his business. If somebody wants to take the unfinished Edgar Allan Poe story, which has now gone into the public domain, and write an ending that is not as good as Poe would have written, let 'em do whatever they want! But not with my shit, Jack. When I'm gone, that's it. What's down on the paper, it says 'The End,' that's it. 'Cause right now I'm busy writing the end of the longest story I've ever written, which is me."

    Tags: 
    writing
    science fiction
    quotes

  • Flaws from far far away

    Sat, 2009-08-29 10:20 -- John Hawks

    John Scalzi snarks out the design flaws of science fiction movies this week. First Star Wars:

    That Asteroid Worm Thing in Empire Strikes Back

    So, large space worm lives in asteroid, disguises itself as a cave and waits for unwary spaceships to fly by so it can eat them? Makes the Sarlaac look like a marvel of natural selection, it does.

    Then Star Trek:

    The Borg

    Featured in First Contact, these are the most fearsome aliens in the galaxy, and look like the Tin Man on Goth Night at the local leather bar.

    UPDATE (2009-08-29): Oh, and there's this.

    Tags: 
    science fiction
    movies
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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.