The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Genetic Engineering

I'm going to call The Island of Doctor Moreau the first instance of genetic engineering in fiction. It's not really presented as such, because DNA research was still in its infancy. Understand what I'm saying here, the book by H. G. Wells came out in 1896, and DNA research was in its infancy... first discovered in 1869; although, no one really knew what it was. Yet. Still, there is no other real explanation for what Moreau is doing in the book, even if that wasn't Wells' point with the novel. Really, he was making a statement against certain types of medical research (specifically, vivisection) which were somewhat horrific and accompanied by great amounts of pain by the "patient." Wells seems to have opened the door to the idea of genetic engineering, at any rate, as fiction throughout the 20th century has been filled with all sorts of genetic engineering and enhancements. The book itself has had many, many adaptations and spin offs.

Genetics and genetic engineering have become one of our modern bogey men, so much of the fiction surrounding genetic engineering has to do with how "playing God," how messing with the natural order of things, will lead to our eventual downfall. Or to a world we don't want to live in. Examples:

Gattaca: A society that revolves around the genetically engineered. Genetic discrimination is pervasive. Valids, those that were born through genetic manipulation to be superior, are the only ones that can qualify for professional positions in society. The in-valids, those born through traditional means, are seen as weaker in all ways and are relegated to menial positions.

Resident Evil: Genetic engineering leads to a zombie apocalypse.

Brave New World: Well, I'll get to this one, later (in a separate post), but this is a book tightly wrapped up in genetic engineering while claiming not be genetic engineering (because it wasn't known, yet, as with Moreau; however, it's clear in concept what is happening).

Of course, the other major example of genetic engineering is in super hero stories and super soldier stories. I'm not even going to bother listing these as there are so, so many. Let's just say they are rampant. Even the clones in Star Wars are genetically engineered.

The first real bit of genetic engineering happened in 1973 with some bacteria. But it was followed up in 1974 with mice. Since then, we've engineered all sorts of things. The food industry does extensive research in genetic engineering; although, people aren't, yet, mostly, at a point where they want to eat food that they know has been altered. However, we tend to have no problem eating, say, cows that have been fed genetically altered corn.

It's even hypothetically possible, at this point, that we could start doing things like choosing the eye color of a baby before it's born. Of course, that's wrapped up in all kinds of ethical arguments, but "they" do think they can do it. If they were allowed. Or, maybe, they have done it, and no one is saying anything about it.

The big thing for me, though, and why I'm taking this back to The Island of Doctor Moreau is that we can do things like

Those are zebrafish. Normally, they look like

They've had genes from coral introduced, and they are commercially available as pets and have been since 2003.

Malaria resistant mosquitoes have also been developed and could prove a huge boon in areas of the world where malaria is a leading cause of death. Trials have shown a reduction of malaria by 80%.

We also have glowing cats:

But these aren't yet available as pets.

Other significant plants and animals that have been genetically engineered:

Venomous cabbage: It's been engineered with scorpion venom in its leaves as a defense against caterpillars, but it harmless to humans.

Goats with spider silk milk: Yes, these goats produce spider silk in their milk which can be used to produced bio-steel. Did you know that spider silk is one of the strongest substances we know of? Stronger than Kevlar. We just can't get enough of it from spiders, but we might be able to from these goats. Or, maybe, we'll end up with Spider-Goat!

Cows that fart less: Why? Because cows are one of the world's leading producers of methane gas, a major cause of global warming. If we can make cows that fart less, we can reduce methane emissions.

I could go on, but there's no need. This stuff is real, but it all started in the pages of a book by H.G. Wells at the end of the 19th century.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Flying Cars

There may be no better indication that the future has arrived (when it does arrive) than that there will be flying cars sitting in people's driveways. As with driverless cars, the idea of cars that can fly has been around almost as long as cars have been around. But, then, the desire for flight goes back thousands of years. All you have to do is flip through Greek mythology to find stories of Man riding flying horses or Man making wings from feathers and wax to know that man has always wanted to fly. It's no surprise that we want our cars to fly, too.

It may have been The Jetsons, though, that really embedded the idea of the future and flying cars into our psyches.

What kid growing up watching this cartoon didn't want one of these? Well, maybe not precisely one of these, but a car that flew, nonetheless.
George Lucas didn't help when he created this

even if it doesn't quite fly.
And we can't forget

However, it was probably the movie Blade Runner that really sealed the deal and presented us a future vision, even if it was a bleak future vision, of a world with cars that fly:

It's been a while since I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but I'm pretty sure the flying cars are in the novel, too. Almost positive.

The thing is... flying cars are here. They sort of have a mythical quality to them, right now. You hear about this company or that company working on them, promising them, but they never seem to be quite available, so everyone seems to think it's just one big scam. I think it's really a matter of the government, though. And, probably, the airlines. I mean, if people can own flying cars, we won't really need airlines so much anymore, will we? Maybe for international travel. For a while. At any rate, several companies have fully functional flying cars ready to go, but there continue to be, and pardon the pun, roadblocks at every turn.

This is my favorite one:

That's the Moller Skycar M400. It has vertical take off and landing, can go 400mph, and has a 900 mile range. It even gets around 20 miles to the gallon, which isn't bad considering our old van barely got that. The real issue? The $1,000,000 eventual price tag. They do have a four-seat model, though.

A model more likely to be ready for the general public within a reasonable time frame is The Transition. I believe a pilot's license is required, though. You can find out more about it here.

This is a future I really expect to see in my life time. I hope. The whole flying car thing just seems to have gotten bogged down in government red tape. But they're real. They work. They just cost a lot of money. And, well, they're not really legal, yet.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Exo-suits

Exo-suit isn't really a very common term being tossed around these days, but it's a very exciting concept to me. Let's get you up to date. When you think of an exo-suit, you should think of

Or maybe

Iron man is probably the most famous fictional character to wear an exo-suit, and comics have been the genre where these things have been the most prevalent.

And I could just go on and on posting pictures from comics, but I'm sure you get the idea. Exo-suits have been working their way into movies, too.
From Alien:

And Avatar:

But, for me, it all really started with a game:

That's not what the game I started playing back in the '80s looked like, but it's pretty close. A (board)game where you get inside a big, robotic exo-suit and fight other guys in big, robotic exo-suits. There have been all kinds of video games based on the whome mechwarrior thing along with some tabletop miniature games. I'm still waiting for the MMO.

These things are already entering reality. Not the giant ones, but ones that look like

and

Hybrid Assistive Limb (or HAL)

The HAL is already commercially available in Japan. Currently, it's targeted at people with disabilities, but it allows the wearer, any wearer, to lift up to 5 times as much as they normally can. The newest model, the HAL-5, has a system that is integrated with the wearers nervous sytem, making it the world's first fully integrated cyborg system.

And this is what the US military is working on:

This particular model isn't available yet, but they've been working on prototypes for a while now.

At the moment, Iron Man is just entertainment. A comic book series. Some movies. But it won't be long until an iron man will be coming to a town near you!

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Driverless Cars

Cars able to drive themselves have been so pervasive in fiction that I'm not even going to try to figure out where the idea originated. It's like as soon as there was the idea of a car, there was also the idea of it driving itself. So, instead of exploring the origin of the idea, we're going to talk about some of my favorite examples.

First up is the movie Minority Report. Everything about transportation in this movie is interesting. The way the roads are built, everything. The cars, of course, are autonomous. You get in, set your destination, and do whatever you want to do while you get there. That's the kind of travel I want. Just think about all that extra time to read!

Probably the most famous car that could drive itself was KITT from the 1982 TV show Knight Rider. Of course, during the show, most of the driving was done by Michael Knight (played by David Hasselhoff), but KITT could drive itself if it needed to. And talk. And, even, because it had a laser, pop popcorn (no, this was never shown in the TV show, but I'm sure it was possible). I'm pretty sure there wasn't kid growing up in the 80s that didn't want a car like KITT. I mean, on top of everything else, it was a Trans Am, and it just looked cool.

But the car of my childhood, the bast car of all, was Speed Buggy. Speed Buggy was awesome. Not only could Speed Buggy drive itself, and talk, and had eyes, but it could do things like super inflate its tires so that it could drive on water. All in all, Speed Buggy was way cooler than Herbie. Herbie couldn't even talk. Well, okay, Herbie was brave (Speed Buggy was a scaredy cat), but he was also an annoying romantic and called The Love Bug. What boy wants to drive around in a car called The Love Bug? Speed Buggy wins.

Well, looking at my list and thinking back over some other cars that could drive themselves, it seems that a lot of these also had their own form of AI, which we already covered. Of course, the ability to have a car that can drive itself would imply, I suppose, some sort of AI to guide it. Probably, we'd rather driverless cars a la Minority Report than any of the other.

But are these real? Right now? Just last year, Nevada was the first state to pass a law making driverless cars road legal. Google, yes that Google, has been road testing them for years and has hundreds of thousands of miles of driving time. With no accidents. Okay, well, one accident, but the car was actually being driven by a human at the time and was also rear-ended, so no fault of the car.

Are you ready for your Google car? I want to say I am, but I had this thought the other day... see, when I think of a car that can drive itself, I think of being able to read or sleep while the car does the work. However, I'm sure that that's not what most people would be doing. No, most people will be watching movies or being online or whatever. And, then, I realized! See, it's always seemed sort of weird that Google would be working on car that drives itself, but it all makes sense now! What did I say most people will be doing while the car drives around? Watching stuff. All powered by Google. Think of all the extra advertising time Google will get out of this. Not to mention all the new advertising powered GPS and stuff...
Makes you think, doesn't it?

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Cyborgs

Ah, cyborgs. If there's anything more terrifying than an apocalypse caused by an out-of-control AI, it's an apocalypse where we're all turned into some kind of cyborgs controlled by that out-of-control AI. Okay, I hear you zombie people out there, but don't get me started on zombies (I already did a post about that). Besides, I think we see a lot of similarities between the cyborg masses (like the Cybermen and the Borg) and zombies, and the cyborgs were here first. En masse, that is. In fiction. [The Cybermen pre-date Night of the Living Dead by two years.]

Anyway... this isn't meant to be a debate between cyborgs and zombies, so you zombie people shut it.

As with artificial intelligence, the concept pre-dates the word, which didn't come about until 1960 (in an article about human-machine systems in space). In the 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Man That Was Used Up" about a man that has been so damaged, has to use so many prostheses, that he has to be put together every morning before anyone can see him. "He's more machine, now, than man." (No, that's not from Poe's story for anyone that's wondering. It is, however, what immediately came to mind.) However, it was Jean de la Hire who is attributed to creating the first literary cyborg in 1908 with the character Nyctalope from The Man Who Can Live in the Water.

Edmond Hamilton may be more responsible for bringing cyborgs into fiction than anyone else, though. In his novel The Comet Doom (1928), he has characters that are a mesh of organic and machine parts which enable them to operate in outer space, the very thing that was cited in the scientific article in 1960 in which the term cyborg originates. He is also the first person to use the term in a piece of fiction in his 1962 short story "After a Judgment Day."

Possibly, the most famous (earthly (because, let's face it, it's hard to actually get more (in)famous than Darth Vader (yes, he's a cyborg))) individual cyborg (as opposed to a cyborg race like the Cybermen or the Borg) is Steve Austin from the novel, you guessed it, Cyborg from 1972 by sci-fi author Martin Caidin. The book was adapted into the television show The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin off The Bionic Woman. Several sequels to the book followed.

Cyborg systems are a thing of the now even if not in ways that would cause us to think of people as cyborgs. Our current emphasis is to use these systems to restore function to ailing body systems (as with artificial hearts) or replace lost limbs. Prosthetics are not so simples these days as they were when they amounted to just a hook or a peg. Many of these artificial limbs could be capable of enhanced performance; we just don't do that. Yet. I'm sure that day is coming.

As soon as it's shown to be profitable, that is.

But cyborgs aren't limited to people, even if that's what we think of when we think of cyborgs. We think of this:

But, really, this also counts:

Yes, that is a snail. A cyborg snail. Yes, it is real. And it's kind of scary. You can go read all about it here. It's scary because cyborg insects seem to be a big deal to the military. Yeah, you can step on them, but it will mean that anything could be a surveillance device. Anything. [And, since that article is about sustainable power, I also saw an article about robotic jelly fish (robojellies or something like that) that have sustainable power (but I didn't keep the link).]

All of that to say that cyborgs are here. Now. Maybe not all around you, but they could be. And sooner than you might think.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

Some ideas are so good they deserve to have a life outside of the pages in which they came to life. J. K. Rowling's Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean is one of those ideas.

I mean, I loved the chocolate frogs, but, really, it's still just chocolate. [yeah, yeah, I know... just chocolate... you know what I mean. The frog doesn't get up and walk around, so it's just chocolate.] And the trading cards with the moving pictures? Well, we sort of already have those. But Bertie Bott's... what a neat idea! It's the kind of idea I wish I had come up with. [Of course, Rowling had a lot of those ideas, clever ideas, that all of us wish we'd had.]

So, yeah, the actual candy treat that Jelly Belly came up with is not quite as good as the "real" thing, but it's as close as we're likely to get without real magic being involved. And you can't say they haven't come up with some interesting flavors.

Well, those are just some of the early flavors. Horseradish isn't on this list (and I like horseradish), but a horeseradish bean is one of the few things I've put in my mouth that caused me to run to the bathroom to spit and then want to scrub my tongue. Truly, truly nasty.

Of course, that was years and years ago, and I haven't had any of these since then (being a sugar-free (mostly) house tends to diminsh the opportunities for tasting vile candies). I looked over a list of current flavors, and a few really stood out:
bacon bagel, baking soda, caterpillar (How did they determine the flavor of caterpillar? Do caterpillars all taste the same or is it dependent upon what kind of butterfly they'll be? If so, what kind of caterpillar is the Bertie Bott bean?), copper, glue (every child's favorite), lucozade (because I have no idea what this is), mayonnaise, mucous, rotten egg (because smelling them isn't bad enough), sulfur (because it smells like rotten eggs, so what does it taste like?), and toe nails.
If you want to see a full list, you can go here. Well, I don't actually know if it's a full list, but it's the best list I could find.

I'll just leave you with this:
"Ah! Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans! I was unfortunate enough in my youth to come across a vomit-flavored one, and since then I'm afraid I've rather lost my liking for them -- but I think I'll be safe with a nice toffee, don't you?"

He smiled and popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. Then he choked and said, "Alas! Ear wax!"

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Artificial Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence," as a term, was not invented until 1956, but, as a concept, it goes back much further. As a term, it means the science and engineering of making intelligent machines; as a concept, it means man, through science, creating intelligence where there was none.

Generally speaking, when we think of artificial intelligence, which I will just call AI, we think of computers. Past that, we think of robots. Computers, games in particular, have gotten sophisticated enough that the term AI is already being applied to them even if it's not precisely correct. The thing is is that computers are capable of learning. Adapting. The only real issue is that we're not quite sure, yet, how to determine at what point something becomes capable of thought. Independent thought. Pondering. And how does something become self-aware, which is a component we seem to believe is necessary for intelligence.

At any rate, the idea that computers will achieve the ability to think and become self-aware has been a huge focus of science fiction since before computers were actually a thing. Let's just pretend that that part where humans are trying to build machines that have legitimate intelligence isn't really happening. Or has happened?

Anyway...

Although, Isaac Asimov was not the first person to write about robots, he was the first person to write about them extensively, and his robot stories and novels laid the foundation for all future robot literature. His work is so fundamental, in fact, that people sometimes refer to his Three Laws of Robotics as if they were an actual, real thing, not something from a short story.

I remember the first time I heard of the three laws. It was an episode of Buck Rogers. I was 10 or so. The robot Twiki had had some sort of problem and was being re-booted. He quoted the laws, and the doctor/scientist guy got all excited and commented in awe about how they were hearing (for what sounded like the first time ever) Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

All of that to say, that Asimov has been instrumental in our cultural understanding of what artificial intelligence is even though he was first writing his robots stories at least 70 years before artificial intelligence would exist. His ability to see the possibilities of what could be were extraordinary.

Why has Asimov become such a central figure in the foundation of literature involving artificial intelligence? Well, I think I have an explanation for this. Robots, machine men, were commonly being used as the symbol for how technology and the pursuit of knowledge would destroy mankind. Yes, this is in the 1930s. But, then, if you look at what was going on in Germany and what would happen in World War II, this is somewhat understandable. Basically, robots were only used as an example of the Frankenstein complex: the creation rising up and destroying the creator. Asimov wanted to change this. He felt it was a tired cliche and supported the view that knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge is bad or wrong. First and foremost a scientist, Asimov believed in  the pursuit of knowledge, so he sought to make robots into something more realistic in his writing, not just a symbol of technology leading to our downfall. Not that that is not still a common symbol and fear, but he broadened our horizons on the subject and set the foundation for modern artificial intelligence in fiction.

Just as an aside, the character Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz is probably the first significant use of a robot with its own intelligence in fiction. The term "robot" hadn't even been invented yet. There are a couple of other earlier mechanical men in fiction, but those works have mostly faded with time, while Baum's Oz books are still read and enjoyed today. That makes Tik-Tok the first (significant) artificially intelligent machine in literature.

But speaking of the Frankenstein complex...

I'm going to make a leap here and say that Frankenstein is really the first source of artificial intelligence in literature and fiction. There are often earlier sources cited, but they involve the use of magic, and I want to confine this to intelligence created through scientific means. Of course, the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein was a human machine, but the intelligence created, the mind created, was new and unique. Shelley's novel may be the first example of technology, of man's creation, rising up against him. As mentioned, it is the name that has come to be applied to those types of stories.

I'm not going to say that we, as a race, are striving toward the creation of artificial intelligence because of fiction, but fiction writers certainly saw it coming long before science did. Because our cultural awareness is so influenced by what has gone before, I would find it difficult to believe that whatever is coming in the realms of artificial intelligence will not have fantasy and science fiction at its roots. It will not surprise me at all to find one day that Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have, indeed, become reality.