Themes that pervade my Sci-Fi novels.

Posted on by Opher

All my writing has purpose. I like to base my work on sound science, social and environmental reality, human psychology and philosophy.

I am intrigued by the concept of infinity, by quantum theory, string theory, black holes and quasars.

As a biologist I studied genetics and have kept up with the developments in genetic engineering. I am intrigued with the idea of how this could impact on human development and that of all other living creatures and plants. We now have the power to change, improve or create both ourselves and the plants and animals we share this planet with. We can create different human beings, different species and a different world.

I studied psychology as part of my degree and found this incredibly useful in education. I also apply it to my writing. It is useful to build characters around psychological traits and personality types.

Living through the twentieth century has provided me with a great perspective on social change. I doubt any other century has seen such a degree of transformation. Science propelled a social revolution that changed the world. That is a useful element to draw into my writing. What changes are going to shape our progress? What will a future world look like?

As a biologist I have been greatly distressed by the impact mankind has been having on the environment. Extinction rates have soared as humans destroy habitat and pollute ecosystems. Our sheer numbers are swamping nature. Once the world was considered infinite and nature something to be exploited without thought. We now realize this is not the case. Even our primitive hunter/gatherer ancestors greatly impacted on the environment. Now we have the capacity to destroy it to a far greater extent. If our numbers and activities are not regulated we may well ruin the very life-support system that sustains us. It is a theme that occurs in most of my work.

What is the purpose of life? It is a question most of us ask at some point and it is one that has a basis in my writing. Whether it be spirituality or creativity, accruing material wealth or power, or seeking truth, wisdom, happiness or fulfilment, it is one of the factors that drives human beings. It is a theme worth developing. It brings people into conflict.

Whether setting the action in the future, in a different dimension or an alien world, these are themes that I tend to enjoy exploring.

Inventing aliens

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Inventing aliens is exceedingly difficult.

In the course of reading sci-fi over many decades, I have encountered many different varieties.

I have seen intelligent life on other planets represented as gas, slime, blobs, mechanised beings, shape changers or humanoids.

The humanoids usually have big heads, slender bodies, huge eyes and elongated tapering limbs. Some have tentacles, others hands and feet.

It is possible that through the zillions of planets in the universe that we are the only intelligent life. The Earth may be an oasis in a vast desert.

On the other hand it is also possible that life may be a common occurrence.

As a biologist I am intrigued.

The earth has existed for a little over 4.5 billion years. It took just short of 2 billion years for the first life to evolve. For the next 2 billion life was merely a bacterial slime. All life on the planet probably evolved from one single instance – a protein/RNA combination. DNA would probably have evolved later.

2.4 billion years ago these bacteria started forming oxygen as a bi-product and transformed the atmosphere so that aerobic respiration could occur and organisms become more efficient and more complex. 2 billion years ago the first complex cells developed.

530 million years ago the first vertebrates appeared.

4 million years ago hominids appeared on the scene.

1.8 million years ago Homo sapiens evolved.

Of course, we are not the only intelligent creatures on the planet. Intelligence is hard to define and we tend to anthropomorphise it.

If we replace intelligence with consciousness then we are inundated. It is even possible that plants have consciousness.

When I look at a human being I see this strange evolution reflected in their morphology. We are modified fish.

But what if RNA had never interacted with protein? Is it possible for some other form of life to have developed? Does it have to be based around carbon?

I have seen theories of other elements but carbon is very useful.

Even if life developed in a similar way does it have to have a four-base DNA code? Could it be six?

When it reached the multicellular stage, did it have to develop into a fish? Could it have gone down another route?

If it was a fish did that have to evolve into a quadruped and then a biped?

Evolution is a blind process – which is why our bodies are stuck with so many faults. Those faults – things like our single airway, our fragile necks and exposed brain, our digestive tract confused with our airway at one end and reproductive organs at the other – all could have evolved differently to create more efficient bodies. They didn’t. But perhaps elsewhere in the universe, they did.

Perhaps aliens do not have their brains stuck out on a fragile neck? Perhaps they are not based on the pentadactyl limb – formed from fins? Perhaps their reproductive system is separate from their excretory system and they have multiple airways?

I do not believe that ‘real’ alien life would be found in amorphous clouds of particles or slime. I think it would have a body and organs. But as to whether that body would resemble human beings? That I doubt very much.

It makes it fun to design an intelligent animal that evolved in a totally different way. That allows the imagination to work on what it might look like.

Poetry – Leaves

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Leaves

Descending in technicolour glory,

Laid out in their finery,

In full regal costume.

Leaving behind skeletons

Of black silhouettes

To stand stark

Against the graphite skies

And crimson sunsets

Of winter.

Congregating in orange drifts

To whisper together in the breeze,

To cavort as whirling dervishes

In one last orgy of delight

Before subsiding

Into final rest

To give their strength back

To the soil.

Opher 9.11.2018

The remembrance services make me reflect on the futility of life. We are born, live our lives in a brief burst of colour and are recycled back to the soil from where we drew our strength.

Men in those trenches, a hundred years ago, were still green. They never had their chance to rustle in the summer breeze or feel the sun. Their autumn came sudden and returned them to the ground too early.

Yet there is such beauty in the autumn leaves, resplendent in their colours, and the skeletal trees stripped of their clothes. There is wonder in life, no matter how brief.

Poetry – Complex

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Complex

I am complex.

Out of the simple

I select and combine

To refine

A being who is me.

I am sophisticated.

In a universe of simplicity,

Where basic is the rule,

My cells reflect

A more learned school.

I have structure

Beyond the crystalline;

A fluidity

Of biology

Incorporating chemistry divine.

In a world of laws

I buck the trend,

Initiating change,

Creating giants of order

In full organic range.

Out of this new chemistry

I am full of sparks,

Evolving spontaneously,

Awareness of planets,

Energy and quarks.

There is nothing simple

About me

Or my complexity –

But I think,

And that is still a mystery.

For me life is not divine –

Not constructed to a plan.

Life is self-perpetuating change,

Creating consciousness,

Just because we can.

Opher 31.12.2015

Complex

It is not because I am a biologist that I find the phenomenon of life, consciousness and the wonders of biological chemistry an amazing mystery; it is because I find these things marvellous that I am a biologist.

We do not have all the answers to the creation of life and its evolution into conscious beings. We may never have. But I like to think that one day we will; we will pierce all those mysteries and decipher the truth. Science is still in the dawn of its discoveries. A century or two ago we could not dream of understanding so much as we presently do. If anyone had suggested back a hundred years ago that we might one day know the operations of DNA, genetics, black holes, quasars, quantum mechanics or subatomic particles, they would have been considered mad. Most of those things were not even known.

Now we understand so much and are on the brink of so much more. Exciting times! In the next hundred years we may understand how consciousness works. We may understand the Big Bang and what lies beyond – beyond both the Big Bang and the event horizon.

I do not need divine intrusions of deities to explain the mysteries. That idea is, for me, mere human fantasy – an attempt to explain what we do not understand by imagining further layers of enigma. Many mysteries of the past have been fully explained, the rest, I believe, will follow. We have the intelligence and ingenuity. The world has been proved not to be flat. There are no angels in the heavens. There is no hell below the earth. These were myths. They have been dispelled.

Humans love to track down our mysteries and shackle them with explanations – no matter how bizarre.

Nowadays it is the religious fundamentalists who are still the apes. The rest of us have evolved into rational beings.

Perhaps there is a mystical dimension? But I believe that all scriptures, the works of men, contain little of it. The mystic buzz of the atom has no purpose for human beings. We are merely part of its flow.

Life and the universe are mysteries. The wonder is in the probing. The wonder is in the experiencing. The wonder is all around us. Science releases the wonder.

Poetry – The Magic Strand

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The Magic Strand

A rollercoaster ride down the magic strand,

Through aeons,

Traversing a billion forms

All from the same,

Spiralling through time.

Replicating,

                Mutating,

                                Innovating.

Making carbon think.

Careering through genetic codes,

Through eras,

Creating myriad varieties,

The forms of life.

Reproducing,

                Generating,

                                Propagating,

Another living link.

Opher – 18.10.2020

There is magic going on in front of our very eyes. It’s called life.

It began through some amazing set of chance three billion years ago. Randomly. Just once.

We are surrounded by it and take it all for granted.

We are part of something stupendous.

It is time we realised what a wonder it is.

Poetry – The River

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The River

It flows continuously,

Always different

Yet the same.

We grow continuously,

Always different

Yet the same.

Molecules flow through.

Replacing all,

Yet we remain.

Every three months,

New bodies,

The smile the same.

The river of the cosmos

Flows through,

An endless game.

Opher – 17.10.2020

For us the changes of age come slowly even though the changes are much faster. Cells die and are replaced. Every three months we have a new body, yet it is built to the same plan.

The molecules flow in and the molecules flow out like water flowing down a river.

We look the same but we are always different.

Poetry – The River

Posted on by Opher

The River

It flows continuously,

Always different

Yet the same.

We grow continuously,

Always different

Yet the same.

Molecules flow through.

Replacing all,

Yet we remain.

Every three months,

New bodies,

The smile the same.

The river of the cosmos

Flows through,

An endless game.

Opher – 17.10.2020

For us the changes of age come slowly even though the changes are much faster. Cells die and are replaced. Every three months we have a new body, yet it is built to the same plan.

The molecules flow in and the molecules flow out like water flowing down a river.

We look the same but we are always different.

Poetry – Green

Posted on by Opher

Green

 

Cathedrals of light

Whose membranes

Play with photons,

Splitting water,

Releasing oxygen,

To give life.

 

Zillions of temples,

Worshipping the sun,

Whose excited electrons

Stream down gradients

Donating their energy

Freely.

 

Opher – 15.2020

Boobs – what are they about?

Posted on by Opher

Boobs – what are they about?

 

I was inspired to write a blog on boobs after reading a post by Jess from Half Girl Half Teacup.

Boobs – what a strange phenomenon or is it phenomena (there are usually two of them).

Everybody is obsessed with them.

boobs 2

Guys are nuts about them and can’t get enough.

Girls are worried about them all the time. They are either too big or too small. They pay billions for cosmetic implants. It’s the end of the world if they have to have a mastectomy. Young girls worry about not having any.

Boobs dominate everyone’s thoughts.

The Fugs

Boobs A Lot

Do you like boobs a lot?
(Yes, I like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.

(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Really like boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)
Boobs a lot, boobs a lot.
(You gotta like boobs a lot.)…

But why?

They are obviously not there for the feeding of babies. Gorillas and chimps (our very close cousins) don’t have them and they feed their babies perfectly OK. In fact only 10% of a boob is glandular. 90% is adipose tissue (fat). If girls have boobs that are too big they find it hard to breast feed – the smaller the better is the rule.

So what are they for?

They are simply a secondary sex characteristic to attract males. Males like boobs a lot.

The trouble is that they are a bloody nuisance that women have been saddled with for thousands of years. They cause nothing but trouble (oh I know that a lot of girls like to flaunt their boobs and love the effect they have on men – but that hardly compensates in my opinion). Boobs get in the way. They are not built for running. They are not built for fighting. They have a short life (they head south rapidly if unsupported). They are cumbersome (guys – trying strapping two big bags of sugar to the front of your chest and see if they slow you down and get in the way).

They probably stopped women competing on a level playing field in primitive times. They could not hunt so well.

Women athletes tend to reabsorb their breasts.

The firmness of breasts denote fertility. Young girls are fertile. Older women are less so. The more pert the breasts the more fertile the girl.

Of course with modern technology women have conspired to keep their breasts pert longer and support them so they appear more pert than they are in order to subvert male proclivities. Men are easily fooled.

So why did something so useless and detrimental evolve?

Well Desmond Morris postulates that it is all to do with our bipedal evolution.

With chimps, gorillas and early man the quadrupedal nature of ambulation meant that the male face was lower down and the main focus of male attention was on the rump of the female – hence her rounded buttocks and reddened labia. The buttocks and labia were the main attractants.

When we walked upright the buttocks were nowhere near so visible so substitutes were evolutionarily selected. The boobs and big red lips took on the role of the buttocks and labia.

Aaah!! What does it tell us?

Men are such fools.

A little bit of lipstick and a push-up bra will take all the blood away from their brains. All they see and think about is boobs (and lips, labia and buttocks of course).

Humans and why we’re not evolving.

Posted on by Opher

Humans and why we’re not evolving.

DSCF1549

Humans and why we’re not evolving.

It is unlikely that we are evolving much at present. We have removed most of the selection pressures that cause evolution. Our amazing brains have produced science and technology that have removed much of the Natural Selection that operated on our populations in the past – at least in the developed countries and increasingly in the undeveloped ones.

We have:

  • Killed off predators
  • Conquered most diseases that would previously have killed us off before we had a chance to breed
  • We have improved sanitation and clean water
  • We have gained a secure food supply.All that is killing us off early is war, accidents and selfish greed.However there is some evolution. The fact that some people choose not to have children while others have many will, in time, skew the numbers of genes in the population. Is it a worry that it is the least intelligent and least educated that are reproducing most? Probably in the long term, if it is a trend that continues. Education is probably the answer to that one.Overpopulation will lead to war, food shortage and disease. Probably a new virus will emerge to which we have no resistance. Only those with a mutation that provides immunity will survive – or maybe nobody.The only difference between all of them and us is that we will be the first to do it to ourselves through our own greed, arrogance and foolishness. So much for intelligence. Without other qualities it counts for little.Time will tell.
  • So will we evolve? Be a blip? A tiny layer in the strata of time?
  • Science has demonstrated that 99.9% of all animals that have evolved have passed into extinction.
  • But this state of affairs is a blip. It will not last. Soon the selection pressures will return with a vengeance. Our numbers have grown out of proportion and our intelligence will not outdo the threats.
  • 95% of us survive long enough to have children.

The most likely selection pressure will be a virus – though we could find ourselves victims of our own greed as we destroy the natural world on which we depend. We could precipitate a disastrous climatic change or even a radical change in our atmosphere.