THE ETHICS OF SCIENCE AND SF

I’ve been a science fiction fan all my life, and it seems to me that the very best science fiction makes us ask questions. SF stories very often start with a “what if?” kind of premise, making predictions about future technology, or turning a concept on its head and then seeing where the premise will lead. That’s the writer’s job: letting our inner prognosticator loose with a healthy dose of imagination. We say to the reader, “Here’s a direction this could go, and what I think things will be like if it does.” Then it becomes the reader’s job to decide whether or not the end result is really something we want.

The same thing could be true about developments in real science if we know they’re taking place. Did you know that scientists have produced monkeys that glow in the dark (and pigs, and kittens)? Genetically-engineered horse/zebra and lion/tiger cross breeds? Insects and rats that can be controlled like robots by remote control? A light-activated machine controlled by a disembodied eel’s brain? You’ve heard about Dolly the sheep, but did you know that many other animals have been successfully cloned, including wolves? You can see examples of all of these things and many more in a TED talk by bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe. Wolpe doesn’t give his own opinion about anything—that’s the point. These developments have the potential to affect all of us, and we all have a stake in the decisions made about them: the ethical and practical questions raised by the ability to create such things.

Wolpe says we’ve begun a third stage of evolution: directed evolution, or evolution by design. It’s not just the realm of science fiction anymore.

In our SF it’s OK to let our imagination run anywhere it has the ability to go.

Can we say the same thing about our science?

THE OLD AND THE NEW

I spent this past weekend in Niagara Falls, Ontario, participating in something called “New York Comes to Niagara” in the Algonkian series of conferences. If you’re an aspiring writer who takes your writing seriously as a profession, you’re probably hoping to get an agent and a publishing deal with one of the big New York-based publishers some day. The Algonkian conferences, led by author, editor and agent Michael Neff, are completely focused on making the perfect pitch to those powerful people, and how that pitch can also act as a diagnostic tool to make sure your novel has stayed on the track you meant for it. The approach worked for me: pitching the concept of a thriller novel of mine, I got interest from a major Canadian agent and two very high level New York editors. I still have to whip the manuscript into perfect shape and see how those leads pan out, but I could have spent years sending mail-out queries without getting that kind of response. You can find out more about Algonkian conferences here.

That’s the “old” part of my title: the publishing industry in its traditional form, focused on what a friend of mine calls “tree books” (as opposed to e-books). And I think that traditional industry still has a lot of life left in it, or I wouldn’t be pursuing it so hard.

But my most recently-published short story—my sixth—is my first that may never appear in print form. It’s called “Sand From A Broken Hourglass” and it’s included in the 2^nd issue of a brand new horror/SF magazine called Penumbra, available for download in .pdf format as of yesterday. An issue of Penumbra costs just $3.99 US and it’s a great looking magazine, with quality writing and top-notch art, too, as you can see from the cover. But it’s electronic only—no print. Penumbra was launched at the beginning of October along with the launch of its parent company Musa Publishing. Because Musa publishes in e-form it’s able to bring out new books at a mind-boggling rate, all with good cover art and at very affordable prices. They say it’s all about the story and the author.

Is this the “new” model of publishing? Well so far it’s one of many new models, but it does look promising.

And I guess my point is, each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, but there’s room for all. Just as long as people still love to read.