Re: It is not just Physics that Should be Hard in Hard SF

Ahasuerus wrote:

Robert Woodward wrote:

I think authors mess up biology quite often in Science Fiction/Fantasy.
For example, IMHO, genetic engineering will be much more difficult than
some authors assume because an individual's DNA isn't the blueprint but
the assembly instructions.
>
Also, I have seen stories where advanced bio-technic civilizations use
bacteria (or multicellular organisms) to wreck havoc on our type of
technology. Essentially, they are speeding up rust and other forms of
degradation by one or more orders of magnitude. This, unfortunately,
requires one of more orders of magnitude more power at the cellular
level (probably greater amounts of stored energy as well).
>

The other day a PharmD wrote
(https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/1fj0aon/books_that_feature_speculative_but_accurate/):
>
science fiction ... is very sophisticated when it comes to
engineering, astronomy and physics, but when it comes to
biochemistry, medicine and pharmacology, I've yet to encounter
any fiction that gets it right.
>
My response was:
>
Are you, by chance, familiar with Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy
(https://effectiviology.com/knolls-law/):
>
everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for
the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge
>
or the similar Gell-Mann amnesia effect
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect)?

Robin Cook's mentioned at the reddit link. My followup pertains to Cook.

Edgar Allan Poe (EAP) invented the detective genre. EAP's sleuth took
the form of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, who triumphed through
thoughtfulness. Dupin believed the game of chess suitable for
developing mental prowess.

EAP nemesis Arthur Conan Doyle followed in Poe's footsteps. Doyle
projected his own drug use into Holmes to twist Poe's clear thinking
detective into mysticism. The Poe-Doyle nexus will be covered by me in
the future.

Agatha Christie restored Poe's idealized detective. Her character,
Hercule Poirot, also brings back the Francophilia found in Poe's Dupin.

Levinson and Link's Lieutenant Columbo closely follows formula. Is the
show's Peugeot 403 another nod to Poe's Dupin?

Robin Cook's _Critical_ (Cook, 2007) contains a Lieutenant strikingly
similar to Columbo. Cook's hard-science biology is about as good as it
gets these days. See what you think about this sample:

    Laurie sat down and explained the situation, which elicited
    from Agnes a mini-lecture on MRSA, including everything
    Besserman had to say and then some. She explained in detail
    how staphylococcus was such a pluripotent microbe, and
    perhaps the most adaptive and successful human pathogen.

    "When you think about it from the bacteria's point of view,"
    Agnes said, "it is truly a superbug, capable of killing
    someone in a frightfully short time while the same strain
    is able to merely colonize an individual, usually just
    within the nares. This is a convenient location for the
    bacteria, because every time the carrier puts his or her
    finger in their nose, their fingers are contaminated from
    where it can be spread to the next person."

    "Is there an estimate as to how many people are so colonized?"

    "Absolutely. At any given time, a third of the world's
    population carries staph; that's about two billion people."

    "Good Lord," Laurie said. "Are there many strains of MRSA
    besides the hospital-acquired and the community-acquired?"

    "Very many," Agnes said. "And they are evolving all the
    time in people's noses and elsewhere, like moist skin
    surfaces, where they exchange genetic material."

    "How are the strains differentiated in the laboratory?"

    "Many ways," Agnes said. "Antibiotic resistance is one."

    "But that's not particularly sensitive, considering
    everything you've said."

    "That's correct. The more sensitive methods are all
    genetics-based: the simplest and most commonly employed
    being pulse-field gel electrophoresis, and the most
    complete being full genotyping. In between, there are a
    number of other sequence typing techniques all based on
    PCR."

Danke,

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