A man who wants the truth becomes a scientist; a man who wants to give free play to his subjectivity will become a writer; but what should a man do who wants something in between?
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Papilio Dardanus exhibit phenotypic polymorphism in their variation of wing pattern. The forms can be reproduced mathematically using a variation of Turing's reaction-diffusion model with a particular reaction kinetics (Sekimura et al).
Bruce Sterling's space adventure, Schismatrix, charts the break-up of humanity, first into factions, then into clades and finally into genetically engineered post-human species. The 'schismatrix' describes the totality of humanity in all its strands after this break-up. Set in a colonised solar system and beyond, the vivid descriptions of circumlunar colonies bring to mind 70s NASA space art on the subject. This is about as vital as SF gets.
Humanity is split into prosthetically enhanced Mechanists and genetically enhanced Shapers, all of whom manage to scrape at least a couple of hundred of years out of a lifetime. If you've got cash, multiple regenerations make it possible to stay alive longer (replacement organs, skin tissue treatments, psycho-kinetic training etc), into seeming immortality.
In here you'll find adaptive architecture - entire landscapes made of pheromone emitting skin tissue - observations on sustainable ecosystems, cultural heritage, new materials and forms. The derelict landscape of crippled space colonies and alien/human race relations provide a heavyweight SF backdrop, high on science, speculation and imagination. Sterling's observational powers & wit propel this above most other books in its category.
Our narrator ends the story by genetically engineering post-human species to live on a sunless planet he intends to colonise. He returns to an uninhabitable earth to recover genetic material from abyssal organisms still living in the depths of our oceans, the one niche of the planet's ecosystem untouched by humanity and independent of the Sun. He founds Circum Europa, a dark planet of underwater post-humans.
By avoiding the transcendent man/machine narrative of Neuromancer and focusing on materials, politics and (the right) technologies in a pragmatic manner, Schismatrix has aged slightly better than Gibson's creation. Written in 1985, Sterling did well to avoid the spectre of AI & VR and chase technological ideas that would truly alter the course of humanity in the coming decades, focusing on the genetic future of humanity (before the human genome project had even begun) and landscape/geo-engineering, still an emerging field. In particular sustainability, biological regeneration & GM humanity are issues to be dealt with in my lifetime, whereas the singularity, well, it still seems a bit abstract.
Best of all this is laid out in a concise book, not some sprawling multi-volume epic. Oddly, not that many people seem to have read it. So go get a copy.
At my company Synthetic Genomics, we have a major program underway in collaboration with BP to see if we can use naturally occurring microbes to metabolize coal into methane which can then be harvested as natural gas.
- Dr J. Craig Venter, The 32nd Richard Dimbleby Lecture - A DNA Driven World (full transcript, video)
Presentation of the year.