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PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/122772 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-01 and may be subject to change. Transmutations Bio-sf, nomad science, and the future of humanity TOM IDEMA TRANSMUTATIONS BIO-SF, NOMAD SCIENCE, AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY TRANSMUTATIONS BIO-SF, NOMAD SCIENCE, AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 18 december 2013 om 16:30 precies door Tom Joeri Idema geboren op 24 februari 1980 te Amersfoort isbn 978-90-821318-0-2 Layout and Cover design by Atelier van Wageningen, Amsterdam Printed by GVO Drukkers en Vormgevers b.v. CONTENTS AcknowledgEments? Promotor Acknowledgments 9 Prof. Dr. H.A.E. Zwart 1. Introductions 11 Copromotor Dr. B.M. Kaiser (Universiteit Utrecht) PART 1 — THE PROBLEM OF LIFE 2. Vital experiments: sf, science, and the shock of the biophysical 33 Manuscriptcommissie 3. Thinking a life: nomadism as a challenge for (post-)genomics 51 Prof. Dr. A. Smelik Prof. Dr. R. ten Bos PART 2 — TALES OF TRANSMUTATION Prof. Dr. Ir. P.P. Verbeek (Universiteit Twente) 4. Infected genomes: symbiogenesis in Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio 73 5. Trading traits: species encounters in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood 89 6. “Terrain is powerful genetic engineer”: constructive interaction in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy 109 PART 3 — A NEW PEOPLE AND A NEW EARTH 7. Nomad science and cosmic life 129 8. Bringing science to life 149 Notes 157 References 181 Summary 205 Nederlandse samenvatting 211 Curriculum vitae 217 AcknowledgEments? ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The PhD project from which this dissertation has resulted was kindly funded by the Centre for Society and the Life Sciences (CSG). During my time as a PhD candidate, the Department of Philosophy and Science Studies (ISIS, Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen), the Onderzoekschool literatuurstud- ies (OSL), and Wetenschap, technologie en moderne cultuur (WTMC) have provided excellent academic training grounds. Thanks to Radboud University for allowing me to take various di- dactics courses as part of the BKO program. Thanks to Robert Mitchell and the English Department at Duke University for having me as a visiting scholar in the Fall of 2011 and helping me with my project. I would like to thank the Wellcome Trust for funding my participation in a summer school on the history of the biosciences in Ischia, Italy, June 2009; the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University for funding my attendance of the conference “Changing Cultures, Cultures of Change” at the University of Barcelona in December 2010; the Fulbright Center for fund- ing my stay at Duke University in the fall of 2011; and the OSL for funding my attendance of the conference “New Worlds, New Literatures, New Critiques,” at the University of Madison- Wisconsin in June 2013. Hub and Birgit, dear advisors, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your openness, kindness, enthusiasm, dedication, and trust. Working with you has been a privilege. Finally, I would like to send shout outs to Nadine, my family, friends, teachers, and col- leagues, at home and abroad, who supported me over the years. — 1 — INTRODUCTIONS He has gone through a tremendous transformation, from a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid, then coming out, becoming an air-breathing mammal that ultimately will be self-standing. It’s an enormous transformation; it is a heroic act, also on the mother’s part for bringing it about. — Joseph Campbell — All life starts and ends in a fuzz. The human embryo is a vague assemblage that, if all goes right, grows into a more or less discrete body, which at some point dies, dissolving into soil, water and air. On another scale, astrobiology traces the origins of terrestrial organic life all the way back to a pre-biotic soup in and from which it was ostensibly created, predicting that ap- proximately 2.8 billion of years from now, all life on earth will have perished due the increase of the sun’s luminosity (O’Malley-James et. al). Science explores the evolutionary adventures of organisms, space ship Earth, and even the universe itself, adventures in which order emerges from and inevitably returns to chaos (Prigogyne and Stengers; Kauffman, The Origins). Natural- ly, what goes for the universe also goes for the realm of words and thoughts, which assemble, combine, proliferate, transform and disappear. For example, the term “introduction” has found a specific niche in the discourse of biology, where it refers to the reallocation by humans of a species into an environment foreign to that species. The term “migration” has followed a dif- ferent trajectory: first used to describe the cross-territorial movements of animals, this term was then applied to the journeys of insects, plants1, trees, cells, genes, and even planets, while in every-day social discourse it usually applies to human beings. I present these particular ety- mologies because they convey something essential about life: each migration means a new beginning and each introduction must come from somewhere. In other words, there is no such 12 — introductions introductions — 13 thing as a pure species, a natural habitat, or an original meaning. From the start, life means unpredictable ways. Their view is vindicated when the project of terraformation, partly due to moving to another world, a world that will not leave any body unmarked. political rivalry, spins out of control: transformations in the atmosphere, soil and ecosystems This thesis aims to contribute to science studies2, as well as to the allied fields of literature are no longer guided by scientists. The advent of a new world and a new people becomes even and science3 and science fiction studies, by examining strange events of the above-mentioned more apparent when second and third generation humans on Mars turn out to be physiologi- kind: introductions into foreign environments as a result of which species transform. The spec- cally adapted to Martian gravity from birth–taller, more slender, and more able to navigate the ulative element is that human beings are as much the “objects” as the “subjects” of these in- Martian landscape. troductions. Not only are humans themselves experimentally introduced into new (fictional) Rather than being mere fiction, the idea of permanent human settlement on Mars is a plan worlds, but human bodies are also reconceptualized as habitats for microorganisms, reminding that has been scientifically developed by NASA and may become reality soon.7 Regardless of us that our bodies contain “a greater number of bacterial than human cells” (Margulis, “Preju- whether such a project will actually take place, what makes Robinson’s scenario significant dice” 37). Analogous to these evolutionary adventures, this thesis introduces different species is that it teaches us a great deal about the science and politics of the planetary dynamics of of text–literary, scientific and philosophical–into one-another. Thus literature becomes a stage atmosphere, soil, weather systems, ecosystems, and so on. As contemporary history demon- on which the dramas of science and philosophy are performed; philosophical concepts are en- strates, humans do not need to travel in space to arrive at new worlds: in a relatively short riched by adding literary and scientific ingredients; and science is revitalized by the philosophical amount of time they have transformed the earth itself in dramatic ways, so that we now live conceptualization and literary “imagineering” of futures (Rossini, “Figurations”). Such epistemo- in the world-historical era of the “anthroposcene” (Crutzen).8 Historians like Rosalind Williams logical encounters in foreign territory, often leading to symbiotic relations and triggering un- and David Nye have documented the construction of industrial habitats in the US, into which expected changes in each species, can be theorized as components of what philosophers Gilles people from across the globe have been “introduced”–habitats that look, sound, smell, and feel Deleuze and Félix Guattari4 call “nomadic thought” (A Thousand 320). But before moving into different than previous (but relatively recent) environments. Moreover, not only have humans philosophy, I will first sketch the theme of this thesis in broad strokes on the basis of examples radically altered their habitats, they have also changed their behaviors and bodies through from contemporary science fiction (sf) and bioscience. new forms of medicine, food, cosmetics, media, transport and household appliances. In a way, In many sf narratives, humans migrate to (or find themselves introduced into) strange we are still catching up with these transformations. For example, new technologies require worlds, and in some cases, such journeys trigger transformations in human beings. In Kim adapted cognitive and sensorimotor skills, and modern diets are out of sync with our genomes, Stanley Robinson’s critically-acclaimed Mars trilogy,5 for example, a group of one-hundred sci- thus challenging our digestive systems (Zwart, “Biotechnology”). All of this shows that the an- entists establishes a new society on Mars, using drugs and gene therapy to enhance them-