Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

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Sphinx And Medusa
Clark Ashton Smith

The old constraint of an essential bond
Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare,
Twin silences, that through Time’s Otherwhere,
The ruinous past, thus each to each respond,
One with mysterious gaze that sees beyond
The straining suns, calm as the voidness there;
And one with eyes like deserts of despair,
Flameless as granite, clear as diamond.

They gaze across the past… Yet thought must see
That eve of time when man no longer yearns,
Grown deaf before Life’s Sphinx, whose lips are barred;
When from the spaces of Eternity,
Silence, a rigorous Medusa, turns
On the lost world the stress of her regard.

And I did like this one when I found it at greybon.

What’s a book you most want to read again for the first time?:

Oh, that’s a tough one. I’d probably want to pick something that changed my head in some significant way, which biases the field in favour of things I read earlier in my life–the structures in my head are getting pretty ossified now, so it sadly takes a lot more for a book to change the structure these days. Many of those books, of course, didn’t have their full effect on the first read, at the time, but reading them for the first time now would likely be a very different experience.

With that in mind, I’m going to have to go with Gene Wolfe’s Book Of The New Sun¹, which was a tremendously fun read the first time I read it, but which I think I would get a lot more out of reading for the first time now than I did when I actually read it for the first time.

Runners up: Mindplayers, Valis, Darker Than Amber, The Conquest Of Happiness

What was one of your favourite childhood books?:

This would depend, of course, on what age we’re talking about.

In the single-digit-age I think my favourite was probably A Wrinkle In Time. This was actually something I was assigned to read in school in Grade 3–well, technically in a kind of enrichment program I was in then–and I loved it. I still do, you know. I am barely holding back from reading it to my daughter, because I want her to be able to read it to herself the first time.

Runners-up: By my early teens I had already discovered John D. MacDonald and would have cited him as a favourite, but I suspect that the individual books I actually talked the most about were Jhereg, When The Sacred Ginmill Closes, Ora:cle, and The Last Coin.

What’s a book that you were assigned in school that you were expecting to be bad, but that turned out to be really good?:

I could have said the above, I guess, except at the time I didn’t really expect anything from it.

I actually had this experience a lot of time in school. I think the most dramatic case was actually The Great Gatsby, which I not only expected to be bad, but actually thought was terrible for most of the time I was reading it. It was only in the last section of the book that things clicked into place for me, and I realized that I had been utterly wrong in my reactions to what I had been reading up to that point.

Runners up: Teahouse Of The Autumn Moon, Slaughterhouse 5, Walden

What’s your “guilty pleasure” read?:

I’m not going to admit to my actual most guilty pleasure reading–I would lose all my litcred immediately. Instead I’ll admit to number two: the works of Brian Lumley, particularly his Cthulhu mythos stuff and the “Necroscope” books. I have a disturbingly wide stretch of shelf full of his stuff, and have even splashed out for a fancy edition of the first Necroscope book.

I’m not defending this–I’ve enjoyed reading them all.

Runners up: All those really slim Barnum/Hellquad Ron Goulart space-pulp books, the thrillers of John Sandford

What’s a book you feel you should read, but haven’t yet?:

Right now the one I’m feeling the most peer pressure to read is probably The Windup Girl (which is on the shelf waiting), but since internal pressure is more important to me, I’m going to go with Hespira by Matthew Hughes, since I’ve loved all his previous books and I can’t figure out why I haven’t got around to reading this one yet.

1. Yeah, it’s kind of cheating to pick a series(back)

---

And the professor is back to lead us through the second in our series of posts looking at real, actual, modern science stories that illustrate the “we’re living in science fiction” notion. Last time we focused primarily on medicine, and specifically on different kinds of regeneration. We’re still working our way through modern mad medical science–I have a giant archive of these stories, and we’re still well in the past with this post–looking this time at some other aspects of the medical world.

Let’s start with a pleasantly gross story. You may know that throughout history both leeches and maggots have been used by different types of “physickers”. The historical idea of “bleeding” or “leeching” or blood-letting, whatever you want to call it is basically a bunch of bunk, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where modern medicine can use leeches–like using them to promote circulation in tissue reattachment surgery. Using maggots to remove necrotic tissue was actually never that bad of an idea, and in fact it’s something that’s coming back to the medical mainstream, albeit with a lot more disinfecting throughout the process than in ye olde days. I kind of love that they have come up with more patient-friendly names for this than “maggot therapy“, like “biosurgery”, or my personal favourite “biodebridement”. If you have a strong stomach, you can see some video about this here–it does come with that lovely Australian accent.

Well, you say, that’s cool–gross, but cool–but it doesn’t really count as “we live in science fiction”; this is stuff that’s been around for centuries. And that’s a legitimate point, but I’m actually only pointing out the use of biological wormy things in modern medicine to provide some context for a link to the use of nanoworms to find and treat tumours.

“When attached to drugs, these nanoworms could offer physicians the ability to increase the efficacy of drugs by allowing them to deliver them directly to the tumors,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a physician, bioengineer and a professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT who was part of the team. “They could decrease the side effects of toxic anti-cancer drugs by limiting their exposure of normal tissues and provide a better diagnosis of tumors and abnormal lymph nodes.”

The scientists constructed their nanoworms from spherical iron oxide nanoparticles that join together, like segments of an earthworm, to produce tiny gummy worm-like structures about 30 nanometers long—or about 3 million times smaller than an earthworm. Their iron-oxide composition allows the nanoworms to show up brightly in diagnostic devices, specifically the MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, machines that are used to find tumors.

Now, to be fair, the “nanoworms” in the article aren’t worm in any biological sense–they are essentially very simple nano-machines, but I figure if they’re going to call them nanoworms, then that’s an excuse for me to do the gross but cool worm medicine stuff. Stepping away from that gag for a moment, think about what that nanoworm story is saying–actual manufacturing of targeted nanomedical materials (which could have serious ramifications for cancer treatment), and this manufacturing is actually being done–and that was years ago already. If you don’t think that developing the delivery system is huge until you hear about it’s use in actual medicine, then you didn’t pay enough attention when Mr. Burke was trying to teach you something about how science happens.

(Now take a moment to think about the scary potential of targeted nanomaterials in the bloodstream that are undetectable to the immune system–bet you a dollar there’s military application research going on right now.)

Using surrogates to actually perform certain medical operations–whether it’s leeches circulating blood, maggots debriding necrotic tissue, or nanoworms tagging and delivering drugs to tumors–isn’t limited to just these cases, of course. The use of medical robots as the surrogate is something dramatically on the rise–and again, this isn’t Jetsons stuff, this is right now.

Many urologists performing prostate surgery view the precise, tremor-free movements of a robot as the best way to spare nerves crucial to bladder control and sexual potency. A robot’s ability to deftly handle small tools may lead to a less invasive procedure and faster recovery for a patient. Robots also can protect surgeons from physical stress and exposure to X-rays that may force them into premature retirement.

A generation ago, the debate in medicine was whether robotics would ever play a role. Today, robots are a fast-growing, diversifying $1 billion segment of the medical device industry

I might be showing my age, but I remember when waldoes were science fiction¹

You should read that entire robot article, for the discussion of applications not just to precise control, but also to remote cyber-surgery that might allow surgeons to ‘operate’ via robot at a distance. Also the discussion of whether this technology is being disseminated prematurely.

Of course research into ways to improve these robo-surrogates also continues. Take for instance incorporation of not just manual control by a surgeon, but also automatic tracking of the surgeon’s eye movements and attention:

The team has added a device which tracks the surgeon’s eye movements. By working out precisely where each eye is looking, software can build up a 3D map of the area of tissue the surgeon is looking at. “What that does is it uses the surgeon’s brain as a way in to calculating the depth of the tissue,” said the surgeon Lord Darzi, who heads the centre and is a government health minister responsible for improving patient care.

This 3D map is allows the software to stabilise the image of moving tissues such as a beating heart to make surgery easier. It means that what the surgeon sees in the viewer is stationary, while his or her instruments are in fact moving up and down in train with the organ.

Or the incorporation of augmented reality techniques into the surgeon’s display:

This allows the surgeons to see beyond the surface of the tissue to the structure they are operating on, for example a tumour or a blood vessel. The software does this by combining the image from the live tissue with scans taken before the operation of the area. The system’s computer graphics give the illusion of see-through live tissue, with the position of the tumour beneath.

“It shows you the tumour in relation to its anatomical structure,” Darzi said. That means the surgeon can be more precise and avoid cutting out large amounts of healthy tissue. “

(Now stop for a moment and think about all those augmented reality iPhone apps. In a few years does something like your personal pocket computer have the ability to do this kind of display? Hello medical tricorder.)

And, of course, the robot can also be used to reduce operator error:

The team is also working on setting up virtual “no-go zones” such as a healthy blood vessel, which the robot will not allow a surgeon to cut by mistake.

Some of the ideas here probably do seem science-fictiony–if your visual is a tiny robot doing heart surgery at the direction of a doctor working with a crazy 3D movie interface–but if you think about something like laser eye surgery, the notion of machine-surrogate delicate procedures suddenly seems very work-a-day. And that surgery might be the best example of just how much we live in science fiction and take it for granted. Robots fire precision LASERS into your eye! And it’s an outpatient procedure that miraculously fixes your vision. Think for a moment about how mad that really is.

1. Note: I am not in the least interested in arguing about whether or not that story is science fiction.or fantasy or some other genre label.(back)

Having just mentioned that I prefer transcript to video, let me cite another case where I would make an exception.

Here’s a quote from an IM chat I was having with a Boston pal last week:

(9:15:32 AM) Chris: Friday  7pm
The Singularity: An Appraisal
Alastair Reynolds
Karl Schroeder
Charles Stross
Vernor Vinge

Arguably the idea of the Singularity — a period where change happens so quickly that life afterwards is incomprehensible to people who lived before it — is one of the few entirely fresh ideas in SF in the last forty years.  Perhaps it is time for an appraisal. Has the idea of the Singularity been a good thing for SF, providing fresh ideas and stimulating great writing or has the notion that the comprehensibility of the future has a sharp (and near-term) limit diminished possibilities?  Has it been a good thing for *your* writing?  How about the Singularity in reality — after twenty years does it look more or less plausible that it is lurking in our own real-world future?  Discuss the interplay between the idea of the Singularity in SF and actual scientific research.  Where are the really exotic ideas coming from?

(9:16:13 AM) Chris: I am jealous that you can attend that this weekend.Man, I hope that panel ends up on YouTube

Well, it didn’t.

It ended up on Vimeo.

If you’re finding the sound a little low there… well, so did I.

So I did a little computer magic to pull out the audio and crank up the volume about 800%. Of course, at that point the audience laughter was annoyingly loud, so I did a bit of manual twiddling to turn down the most significant blocks of that laughter, and threw the whole thing through a bit of filtering to neaten it up.

What resulted was a nice little MP3 where the panel discussion is easily audible, which is suitable to listening to during your commute, or whatever.

You know the drill: links with pithy comments.

• Let’s start off this list with Jo Walton costing me a pile of money. I’ve mentioned before enjoying her Tor.com reviews, and finding significant alignment between her tastes and mine… so when she reviews a series of spy novels that I somehow have never even heard of, and makes them sound very interesting indeed, that’s going to get me interested in reading the books. Then when the comments support this almost universally, and include the fact that I’ll have to have read these in order to get all the in-jokes in the next of Charles Stross’ Laundry books… well, let’s just say I’m going to have to track down a set of these books. Fortunately a mission like that, which once would have been a noticeable effort, has been reduced to the work of but a few minutes at the keyboard. Although I might just wait, since it looks like Phoenix is starting to reprint them in July. (And how is it that I’ve not previously heard of Price–it seems rather unlikely.)
• Generally speaking, I prefer print interviews and transcripts to video and/or audio–I find I can take in the material faster, and in most cases that’s the key point. For some authors though, I like to try and get a better sense of their personality through the additional information you get via those other channels. This is generally why I enjoy Rick Kleffel’s interviews. Another example would be Peter Straub’s Youtube Q&A session. Or Lawrence Block doing a reading. I’ll take the time to watch those.
• I believe I have made my feelings on Fred Phelps and his brood pretty clear, so you can imagine how pleased I was to find a whole book on them, free online. There’s some interesting back-story to why the book is currently public domain, but since it is, you can have a look at Addicted To Hate. You know, if you have a strong stomach. If you’re more of a video guy, I’m still recommending the piece Louis Theroux did–you can find it on youtube by searching for “The Most Hated Family In America“.
• I have distinct memories of reading The Merchant of Venice in high school English–and unlike rather a lot of Shakespeare I haven’t revisited it, or had chance to interact with it as an adult. Even given that, I did find this piece about how teaching the play has changed over 30 years for a particular instructor very insightful.
• In one of those weird bits of synchronicity, the link to that last article was immediately preceded in my RSS reader by a link to this. Gifted Toronto artist Eric Kim has been doing two panel versions of The Bard’s works (“Thespian Thursdays”), and that’s his take on The Merchant. You should absolutely also check out Eric’s online web comic Streta. It starts off looking like it’s going to be a relationship story, and then right around page 5 things get nuts! Great fun so far, check it out.
• I’m not too impressed with the it’s-not-plaigarism-it’s-remix-culture-you-don’t-understand-because-you’re-a-dinosaur argument. First off, I have Negativland albums that I’ve been regularly listening to since before the person making the argument was conceived, and I am–right now, as I type this–listening to the Kleptones, so don’t tell me I don’t get remix culture. Secondly, you know what one of the key characteristics of a remix is: that you don’t start by claiming it’s entirely an original work until you get caught sampling. Bah. Get off my lawn.
• Yeah, so they’re going to do a trilogy of movies adapting Asimov’s Foundation trilogy… as 3D motion capture movies. Yes, that’s right–you will be able to see the predictably behaviour of statistically significant sets of humanity over time IN 3D. I predict a lot less talking than in the books, and many, many more exciting space battles.
• Hey look–a free electronic version of one of John D. MacDonald’s pulp novels. Have I mentioned my contention that JDM is the single finest storyteller produced by America in the last century?
• Hmmm. Harry Stephen Keeler seems to be tweeting from beyond the grave. You know about Keeler, right? Gaiman calls him “one of my very favourite authors in the world. Greatest bad writer, or worst great writer, of 20th century.” I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s sure fun to read–even in 140 character chunks.
• And finally, you writing process junkies–and you know who you are–might want to watch Graham Joyce’s feed closely for the next little while.

Many things these days contribute to my lack of sleep–social activity, parent scheduling, social evenings in different cities, my stubborn refusal to go to sleep when I should, time spent playing with the world through this Internet thing, and–of course–things I start to read when I should go to bed that I just-can’t-put-down.

Sometimes you can see this coming, so you know not to start reading something if it’s late. I was smart enough not to start that new(ish) Tibor Fischer book too late in the evening, or that latest Justina Robson romp, or… well, there’s a lot of traps out there, and sometimes I manage to start them at a decent hour and sometimes they trick me, and I start reading them in the wee hours, and end up finishing them in the hmm-is-that-false-dawn-over-there hours¹.

One thing always seems to get me though: new episodes of Shadow Unit. They never seem as dangerous to sleep as they actually are.

“What’s a Shadow Unit?” you ask? Well, I could point you to what I’ve said about it here before, or I could point you to the official Getting Started, but I think perhaps the best description of what it is was included in a post by one of the main creators:

It’s the latest chapter in a thing we have variously referred to as a virtual television show, an interactive semi-real-time hyperfiction evnvironment, and fanfic for a TV show that doesn’t exist.

What it is when we’re not failing at marketing is a serial shared-world narrative optimized for the internet. Imagine Wild Cards if you could talk to the characters as events play out, and occasionally influence the course of events. The setting is somewhere between Millennium, The X-Files, and Criminal Minds, with touches of The Man from UNCLE. Which is to say it’s about a group of unrealistically sexy, ubercompetent FBI agents attempting to protect the innocent from the worst monsters imaginable, with hints of evil conspiracy.

Maybe.

Unless that’s not what’s going on at all.

So, you can view it as an online series, each episode a novella or novelette (or, in a couple of cases “novel” might be more accurate) that is a complete story, but with an ongoing arc story behind the episodes. The stories are released regularly to the web, arranged in “seasons”, with short breaks between them. The first story of the third season just went live recently, and a schedule was recently announced showing that there will be a total of four seasons before the planned finish of the story.

Oh, and these stories–the people who are writing them? Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, Will Shetterly, Holly Black, Amanda Downum, Leah Bobet, Chelsea Polk? Recognize any of those? Yeah, I thought so. And if you look at that schedule, there’s clues that a few more people will be playing.

So, lots of free–but donate if you’re enjoying it!–stories, by great authors. Over a million words already in the main storyline! That’s several novels worth of story.

But that main storyline isn’t the whole story. See, many of the characters in the story keep Livejournals, and you’re allowed to interact with them, so long as you don’t break the fourth wall. That’s pretty much a web-only thing–you can’t do that with “normal” novels.

So, you just want to read the stories, you can. They’re great, and you don’t need anything else, and the only things you have to worry about are that you might stay up to late reading or the fact that the creators will put you through an emotional wringer. If you look a little more closely you can find secrets and easter eggs. You don’t need to, but it’s fun. And if you want even more, then you can follow (or even interact with) some of the characters. Pick your level of investment. You can also, of course, interact with the creators and a community of fans on the forum, as well.

I started just reading the stories, but after a while I had to follow the character LJs as well, because the stories were making the people real for me.

(Actually, I whipped up a couple of tools to help with this: a Google gadget to follow the Shadow Unit feed, and Yahoo pipes to follow the character LJs, and creator LJ mentions of Shadow Unit–these get a mention on the Shadow Unit home page, albeit with my name misspelled.)

Most of the content is also available in e-book form, if you prefer to read that way. And there is a suggested timeline of things to read at the wiki if finding the reading order through the hyperlinks seems daunting.

So that’s what it is. Why should you read it?

Well, I’ve said this before, but mostly you should read it because it’s good–because you will come to care about the characters, because you will be interested in the plot arc, because it’s the kind of thing that will keep you up reading long after you should have gone to bed². But you don’t have to take my word for it, or even just trust the reputations of the writers involved–I just told you how to find out for yourself whether it’s your cup of tea or not. (And if it is, then you should also hit that donate button–this is a gigantic work that they’re giving us for free, so throwing something into the hat should be a no-brainer if you like the show.)

1. Fortunately I lead a highly-caffeinated life. Do not try this at home.(back)
2. That last episode–around 53,000 words. If you printed that Courier, single-spaced, that would run to 140 or so letter-sized pages. That’s not an “episode”, that’s a short novel. And you will not stop in the middle of it.(back)

(photo credit: www.iliaphotography.com)

In the weeks (well, at this point I guess I could say “months” although it doesn’t feel like it) that I’ve been back in Ontario, I’ve had a number of encounters with things that were once regular parts of my life before my near-decade out East, and some have been shocking and jarring, others kind of like the sensation of something slipping back into the place where it belongs.

Nothing has hit that feel as hard as this past Saturday, though, when Trish and I went to see Danny Michel do the first of three sold-out nights at the Jane Bond.

I’ve mentioned Danny here a lot before, so I won’t go into it at length, but let me just say that listening to the show, in the room (which frankly doesn’t appear to have changed substantially in the last ten years from a patron’s perspective), both seemed just right, and like all the years hadn’t passed.

Trish actually used the fact that I would be able to see Danny play a lot more often in Ontario than the once-a-year or so he came out to Halifax as part of her psychological campaign to help me adjust to the move. It was probably one of the strongest weapons in her arsenal. This weekend’s show was certainly the beginning of me going back to seeing Danny play every reasonable chance I get.

Lest you get the impression that Danny isn’t improving in his craft, by the way, let me put that aside–it definitely isn’t the same show I used to see, Danny only gets better. I’ve seen a lot of live music, but I’ve never seen a solo performer who could touch Danny live–I’ve seen a few who could hold a room like Danny can, but none whose overall performance is as compelling, or as fun.

Danny was debuting eight completely new tracks at the show, which was great–I love to hear new stuff mixed in with the things I know, and I like to track the development of songs by artists I like, when I can, and the changes and development are often most pronounced in the “early life” of a song. (In Danny’s case, since I’ve been seeing him live since before any albums he admits to were recorded, I’ve had the chance to watch a lot of songs evolve over time.)

Three of the new songs hit me right away–one about the question of who would really miss you if you left, one about a guy who runs a joint in the islands, and one about a letter written by the younger self to the older–but history suggests that it’s the ones that are less accessible that will end up being favourites longer term.

Almost all of the new stuff had a pretty clear Paul Simon influence, which Trish and I were commenting on, before Danny made a joke about it from the stage.

You can, by the way, see a fraction¹ of what I mean, since Danny just released a new live CD. You can see the cover and hear a bit at Danny’s site. The physical ones can be had from Danny for $15 via mail order, but for you children of the digital age, the album (and all his others) can be had for less money on iTunes and Zunior (particularly notable for having loseless FLAC versions of the albums for DL). Buy the music–support independent artists!

1. I say that you can use that album to see “a fraction” of what I mean though, because while the music sounds great, without the ability to see it’s just not the same thing as a live show. If you get the chance, see him live–it’s a whole different thing.(back)

I mentioned that I’ve started the process of unpacking my books in the new house. I began with the mass-market paperbacks, for a few reasons:

• they’re the smallest bit of the collection, so they present a relatively undaunting place to start
• The place where I wanted to put them was ready–unlike the room that will be the “main” library, which needs painting before I start putting stuff in there, or my office, which needs some reorganizing before I start to put shelves in it.
• I never unpacked the MMPBs that I moved to Halifax during the entire time we lived there, so starting with these was appealing since it would mean a chance to review some books I had that I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade. Also, in some cases where I had bought MMPBs during our time in Halifax that “go with” ones I previously had, I could have the OCD life satisfaction of finally putting them together.

Also, as I mentioned previously, I’m using the unpacking, sorting, and shelving process as an opportunity to build an electronic catalogue of my holdings. The amount of geek pleasure I’m getting out of this fundamentally tedious process is nigh comedic.

Having built a catalogue of the MMPBs as I put them on the shelves though, I can state with some exactitude that so far I have shelved 1297 books. This represents all the MMPBs that moved with us to Halifax, and the majority of the ones I bought while we were there¹.

They look like this:

Being OCD man, the books are shelved alphabetically by author, and chronologically within each author (except for cases where books are in a series–then each series is arranged together in chronological order). As you can see, I’ve left myself lots of spaces to fit more books in later without reshelving everything.

I actually planned to put another wide bookcase here–you can see that there’s space for another wide on one the right-hand side–but apparently I overestimated the amount of space I would need immediately. This is a very good thing, since part of the goal of the setup in the new house is to have lots of room for future expansion. Having room to add another 8-shelf case, and the ability to add height extensions to four of the bookcases in this section (the ceiling is lower over the other ones), mean I should be good for quite a long time².

Those 1297 books represent 16 boxes. I have literally hundreds of boxes to go. But at least I get to feel like I’m getting there.

1. Some of the ones bought during our Halifax life got packed as “space-fillers” in the boxes with trade & HC fiction, so it will be a while before I have all the MMPBs in place.(back)
2. My rate of acquisition of MMPBs is pretty low compared to trade & HC fiction–I think I have around the same number now as I had when we left Halifax. I had 5 of the wide tightly packed cases full of MMPBs then, and now I have 5 wide and 1 narrow with lots of leftover room.(back)

For inside joke comedy reasons, I really want to bottle some beer (although I have no idea how to brew–as with fiction and music, I’m really excellent on audience, but not much on creator) just so I can label them something like this:

Yeah, OK, I was just playing around with an online label designer from an Australian u-brew joint… but come on, you’d drink something called “Juice Drool of the Scourge Goddess”, right?

As a former resident of Nova Scotia, I believe it is within my remit to raise a glass today and toast the 247th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War.

Among other things, the treaty essentially saw the French hand over claims to Canada–particularly Nova Scotia and Cape Breton (then called Ile Royale)–to the British. The signing of the treaty marked a significant turning point in the history of the country–although you could make a pretty good argument that it just represented the official recognition of a corner that was turned some years before. If you’re wondering how something like that is done, here’s the relevant clause:

IV. His Most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which he has heretofore formed or might have formed to Nova Scotia or Acadia in all its parts, and guaranties the whole of it, and with all its dependencies, to the King of Great Britain: Moreover, his Most Christian Majesty cedes and guaranties to his said Britannick Majesty, in full right, Canada, with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton, and all the other islands and coasts in the gulph and river of St. Lawrence, and in general, every thing that depends on the said countries, lands, islands, and coasts, with the sovereignty, property, possession, and all rights acquired by treaty, or otherwise, which the Most Christian King and the Crown of France have had till now over the said countries, lands, islands, places, coasts, and their inhabitants, so that the Most Christian King cedes and makes over the whole to the said King, and to the Crown of Great Britain, and that in the most ample manner and form, without restriction, and without any liberty to depart from the said cession and guaranty under any pretence, or to disturb Great Britain in the possessions above mentioned. His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. His Britannick Majesty farther agrees, that the French inhabitants, or others who had been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada, may retire with all safety and freedom wherever they shall think proper, and may sell their estates, provided it be to the subjects of his Britannick Majesty, and bring away their effects as well as their persons, without being restrained in their emigration, under any pretence whatsoever, except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions: The term limited for this emigration shall be fixed to the space of eighteen months, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty.

As a sort of aside, another thing that the treaty did was establish the situation with Saint Pierre and Miquelon–something most Canadians are at least dimly aware of, but which always seems to shock the Americans.

VI. The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of St. Pierre and Macquelon, in full right, to his Most Christian Majesty, to serve as a shelter to the French fishermen; and his said Most Christian Majesty engages not to fortify the said islands; to erect no buildings upon them but merely for the conveniency of the fishery; and to keep upon them a guard of fifty men only for the police.

The fact that there’s still a little piece of France there off the coast of Newfoundland has always struck me as pretty cool, actually. And you should hear the smuggling and rum-running stories that The Old Salts have about those islands from the Prohibition days…

The text of the treaty is here, if you’re interested.

I am dragging the Professor out of the archives to headline a series of link posts I’m going to be doing about medical “we live in science fiction now” stories (and maybe some medical “mad science”) pieces as well. I’ve been gathering these stories for quite some time–each one alone is a bit shocking or amazing, but when you start to see them piled atop each other, the effect is really kind of staggering… staggering in a hey-my-generation-is-supposed-to-be-future-shock-proof way.

So let’s start by talking about regeneration. Not Time Lord stuff, but actual medical technology that might allow us to grow replacement body parts. This is one area where there seems to be just story after story over the past few years. Let’s start with some that are a bit older, and see if we can’t catch up to the bleeding edge, as ’twere, over the series of posts.

Regeneration, in the most basic sense, I guess is about the ability to regrow body parts. While researching this problem may lead to some pretty serious complexion issues in fiction, it’s something that science is pretty hard at work on, on a number of fronts. For example, science has already produced a way to regrow a lost fingertip, using strange and complex technologies referred to as “pixie dust”. Well, OK, it’s actually called “extracellular matrix”, but whatever you call it, there’s no arguing with the images in the video at the BBC report on the stuff. Regrown with complete feeling and completely movement–I wish I had had some of that dust around when I cut the end off my thumb, since while it did heal it has no sensation at all.

Pixie dust is just the beginning of the story though. Look at this quote from a CBS news story on the same topic:

Dr. Atala, one of the pioneers of regeneration, believes every type of tissue already has cells ready to regenerate if only researchers can prod them into action. Sometimes that prodding can look like science fiction.

Emerging from an everyday ink jet printer is the heart of a mouse. Mouse heart cells go into the ink cartridge and are then sprayed down in a heart shaped pattern layer by layer.

Dr. Atala believes it’s a matter of time before someone grows a human heart.

I can almost hear you thinking “that’s quite far away, though, isn’t it”. Well, keep reading:

In this clinical trial at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Patrick Shenot is performing a bladder transplant with an organ built with this patient’s own cells. In a process developed by Dr. Atala, the patient’s cells were grown in a lab, and then seeded on a biodegradable bladder-shaped scaffold.

Eight weeks later, with the scaffold now infused with millions of regrown cells, it is transplanted into the patient. When the scaffold dissolves, Dr. Shenot says what’s left will be a new, functioning organ.

“The cells will differentiate into the two major cells in the bladder wall, the muscle cells and the lining cells,” he explained. “It’s very much the future, but it’s today. We are doing this today.”

Note that the story is from almost two years ago. And read the rest of it, especially the bits about the military interest.

See, in 2008, the US military created the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine to look at this stuff. And even then, things were moving along nicely. Here’s a quote from a Slate article about it:

If you’ve been following Human Nature for the past three years, you know that tissue regeneration is well underway. The military has been working on regrowing lost body parts using extracellular matrices. Scientists in labs have grown blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat. This year they announced the production of beating, disembodied rat hearts. At yesterday’s press conference, Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker explained that our bodies systematically generate liver cells and bone marrow and that this ability can be redirected through “the right kind of stimulation.”

I like that the author of that piece also does some pondering on just how much we’re taking this all in stride, and on what it might mean for the next generation.

Oh, and I should really link to this picture, from an AFIRM presentation, just so I have an excuse to mention the Ear Mouse. While the Ear Mouse might seem creepy, if I (or one of my loved ones) needed a replacement ear, I bet I wouldn’t care much about that. All mouse-weirdness aside, if military research leads to soldiers wounded in battle getting to regrow limbs, and that trickles out to allow people wounded in accidents, or civilian “collateral damage” from military operations being able to regrown things, I am totally OK with that.

Of course, things don’t have to be that extreme. It doesn’t have to be life-or-death, or crippling or disfiguring injuries. My teeth are a mess, and I would be delighted if science would come along with a way to regenerate, or regrow, them. Oh wait. They’re on that.

In that story from 2002 we read:

She predicted that within five years, we would know whether dental stem cells could be manipulated to bioengineer teeth. To generate a human tooth might take an additional five to 10 years.

In a 2004 story we read:

The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth – for example, a molar or an incisor – the bud will form.

Using a local anaesthetic, the tooth bud is inserted through a small incision into the gum. Within months, the cells will have matured into a fully-formed tooth, fused to the jawbone. As the tooth grows, it releases chemicals that encourage nerves and blood vessels to link up with it.

In a 2009 story, we read about researchers in Japan actually doing this with mice.

And, of course, that’s not the only angle of attack. You don’t have to replace the teeth if you can just repair decay:

By putting a layer of the solution on individual test teeth, Marshall has already been able to remineralize some parts of the teeth. The challenge is to get the crystals to regrow throughout the dentin.

To heal properly, the crystals need to form from the bottom of the tooth up to the enamel. Marshall isn’t sure whether that’s happening yet, but she is confident that she’ll find a way to restore dentin functionality over the next few years.

[...]

“We’re still a ways from being able to grow back dentin and enamel,” Bayne said.

That’s a 2008 story, by the way.

While we’re talking about regrowing things in the mouth–and I hope you’re ready for some real sensawunda stuff–did you see about the researchers who grew a man a new jawbone… in his own stomach?

Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.

Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality.

Yeah. They did that. Two years ago.

And, it’s not just bone and skin that needs regenerating. What about someone who’s had, say, a spinal injury and sustained nerve damage. Yeah, they’re on that too. In this case, it’s not just the regeneration research, but also research into using other nerve paths if the spinal nerves are blocked, or into just straight-up manufacturing new artificial nerve fibres:

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University have designed a self-assembling electronic wire which is destined for the use inside a human body. The organic wire is water-soluble and it’s made of lightweight carbon materials and many wires like these could power pacemakers, stimulate organic function and reconnect damaged nerve tissue.

Although we will not transform ourselves in Borgs or robots, these organic wires will help paralyzed people to restore their nerve fibers thanks to the self-assembly process. These wires are 10,000 times thinner than a human hair and they have the possibility to interact with individual cells from our body, and once the nerve cells are reconnected, paralytics will regain their mobility.

The problem is that for the moment this type of procedure is really possible, but in the near future the technique could be perfected.

Besides tricking the body into growing new parts, or reusing the parts that are already there in a new way, or hooking up to artificial new parts, there are still other kinds of regeneration. Like that whole research into brain rejuvenation by injection with infant umbilical blood… but it’s getting late now, and besides that particular one just kind of freaks me out with the whole “ancient rich baby vampires” angle that’s so obvious when you mix that research with the distribution of wealth disparity in our society.

So let’s just call that enough for this post.

Yeah, still alive.

I kind of fell off the Internet there for a couple of weeks. Not blogging, barely making use of any other communications tech. Still reading a lot of stuff, but all input, no output.

This was not a planned thing, I just found that my real life was taking up too much time for me to support a vibrant virtual life at the same time: getting up to speed on the new job¹, still trying to get a household established², trying to be a good husband³ and dad⁴, seeing family that are now within “drop in” distance, trying to do some cultural stuff⁵, socializing⁶, finishing some mind-bendingly-tedious cleanup of virtual things⁷, and starting some tedious-but-weirdly fun cleanup of physical things⁸

I think I’m starting to get my stride here⁹, and so I believe you can expect a return to our normal service now¹⁰.

1. For the last two days in particular, I have been absolutely loving the new job–both on its own merits, and because it is illustrating to me how dysfunctional my concept of “normal” and “expected” in the workplace had creepingly become at the previous one.(back)
2. Several rooms still unfurnished–some furniture coming this week, some hopefully next week, stacks of framed art waiting to be hung, and, of course, the book issue. On top of that, I really need to get a plumber to sort out the guest bathroom, and we should get a painter in to do the soon-to-be-library before I start putting up shelves in there.(back)
3. Dr. Wife’s birthday was in there–among other things, got her tickets to see the Little House On The Prairie musical, which she saw with Sarah on the weekend, while I savaged Toronto’s specialty book shops.(back)
4. I think the best thing Sarah and I did during my Internet break was go the Our Body exhibit at the Children’s Museum. That’s probably a post of its own.(back)
5. The best of these was going to see Karl Schroeder talk in his Writer-In-Residence role at the Toronto Public Library. Got to hear some of the not-even-done-yet fifth Virga book, and then got to hear some really bleak–but interesting and insightful–forecasting about the future for novelists, as well slightly less bleak, but no less insightful, meditations on the notion of identity.(back)
6. I had a real blast this past Saturday at an old school drink-up Chris Butcher organized in Toronto. Nothing like going out to drink and talk with people you’ve never met (but some of whom have been peripherally in your virtual social sphere for nearly a decade), and having it work.(back)
7. I have finished the project of cleaning the tags of all the CDs I finished ripping before the move. I now have all the mp3s representing rips of my physical CDs fully tagged and sorted. 2939 “albums”, 37683 tracks, representing 2610 hours, 1 minute, and 23 seconds of music–that’s about 109 solid days to get through. I am still enjoying the “oh I forgot about this” game. The prospect of trying to apply the same degree of order to my “downloads” folder daunts me.(back)
8. This, of course, refers primarily to the process of unpacking, sorting, and shelving my books. I have decided while doing this to actually also make a catalogue of the books–ostensibly for insurance reasons, but in reality because I am an OCD collector type, and the idea appeals to me. Trish bought me the software to manage the collection a while back, and I set myself up with a barcode scanner that really speeds entering ISBNs. So far I’ve only built a few shelves, enough for my mass-market paperback fiction. Just tonight I finished unpacking, sorting, cataloguing, and shelving those books. I started with the MMPBs because they’re the smallest part of the collection, so it was a less daunting task, but also because I never did unpack the paperbacks I moved to Halifax, so I’m seeing some of these books again for the first time in a decade. That added a lot of the fun of the whole thing. I have just over 1300 of them–pictures later.(back)
9. This may be a case of “famous last words”.(back)
10. Unless I actually give in to the urge to go tinker with the footnotes plugin so that it will support footnotes in footnotes…because that would make this kind of thing funnier.(back)