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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biology in fiction | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_in_fiction | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:44:18.569232+00:00 | kb-cron |
A common use of fictional biology in science fiction is to provide plausible alien species, sometimes simply as terrifying subjects, but sometimes for more reflective purposes. Alien species include H. G. Wells's Martians in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, the bug-eyed monsters of early 20th century science fiction, fearsome parasitoids, and a variety of giant insects, especially in early 20th century big bug movies. Humanoid (roughly human-shaped) aliens are common in science fiction. One reason is that authors use the only example of intelligent life that they know: humans. The zoologist Sam Levin points out that aliens might indeed tend to resemble humans, driven by natural selection. Luis Villazon points out that animals that move necessarily have a front and a back; as with bilaterian animals on Earth, sense organs tend to gather at the front as they encounter stimuli there, forming a head. Legs reduce friction, and with legs, bilateral symmetry makes coordination easier. Sentient organisms will, Villazon argues, likely use tools, in which case they need hands and at least two other limbs to stand on. In short, a generally humanoid shape is likely, though octopus- or starfish-like bodies are also possible. Many fictional plants were created in the 20th century, including John Wyndham's venomous, walking, carnivorous triffids. in his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids, The idea of plants that could attack an incautious traveller began in the late 19th century; the potatoes in Samuel Butler's Erewhon had "low cunning". Early tales included Phil Robinson's 1881 The Man-Eating Tree with its gigantic flytraps, Frank Aubrey's 1897 The Devil Tree of El Dorado, and Fred White's 1899 Purple Terror. Algernon Blackwood's 1907 story "The Willows" powerfully tells of malevolent trees that manipulate people's minds.
=== Optimism and pessimism ===
A major theme of science fiction and of speculative biology is to convey a message of optimism or pessimism according to the author's worldview. Whereas optimistic visions of technological progress are common enough in hard science fiction, pessimistic views of the future of humanity are far more usual in fiction based on biology. A rare optimistic note is struck by the evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane in his tale, The Last Judgement, in the 1927 collection Possible Worlds. Both Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 Childhood's End and Brian Aldiss's 1959 Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, too, optimistically imagine that humans will evolve godlike mental capacities. The grim possibilities of Darwinian evolution with its ruthless "survival of the fittest" has been explored repeatedly from the beginnings of science fiction, as in H. G. Wells's novels The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), and The War of the Worlds (1898); these all pessimistically explore the possible dire consequences of the darker sides of human nature in the struggle for survival. Aldous Huxley's 1931 novel Brave New World is similarly gloomy about the oppressive consequences of advances in genetic engineering applied to human reproduction.
=== Biological parables ===
The literary critic Helen N. Parker suggested in 1977 that speculative biology could serve as biological parables which throw light on the human condition. Such a parable brings aliens and humans into contact, allowing the author to view humanity from an alien perspective. She noted that the difficulty of doing this at length meant that only a few major authors had attempted it, naming Stanley Weinbaum, Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Ursula Le Guin. In her view, all four had impressively full characterizations of alien beings. Weinbaum had created a "bizarre assortment" of intelligent beings, unlike Brunner's crablike but extinct Draconians. What united all four writers, she argued, was that the novels centred on the interactions between aliens and humans, creating deep analogies between the two kinds of life and from there commenting on humanity now and in the future. Weinbaum's 1934 A Martian Odyssey explored the question of how aliens and humans could communicate, given that their thought processes were utterly different. Asimov's 1972 The Gods Themselves both makes the aliens major characters, and explores parallel universes. Brunner's 1974 Total Eclipse creates a whole alien world, extrapolated from terrestrial threats. In her 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin presents her vision of a universe of planets all inhabited by "men", descendants from the planet Hain. In the book, the ambassador Genly Ai from the civilised Ekumen worlds visits the "backward- and inward-looking" people of Gethen, only to end up in danger, from which he escapes by crossing the polar ice cap on a desperate but well-planned expedition with an exiled Gethenian Lord Chancellor, Estraven. They are ambisexual with no fixed gender, and go through periods of oestrus, called "kemmer", at which point an individual comes temporarily to function as either a male or a female, depending on whether they first encounter a male- or female-functioning partner during their period of kemmer. The invented biology reflects and exemplifies, according to Parker, the opposing but united dualities of Taoism such as light and darkness, maleness and femaleness, yin and yang. So too do the opposed characters of Genly Ai with his carefully objective reports, and of Estraven with his or her highly personal diary, as the story unfolds, illuminating humanity through adventure and science fiction strangeness.
=== Structure and themes ===
Modern novels sometimes make use of biology to provide structure and themes. Thomas Mann's 1912 Death in Venice relates the feelings of the protagonist to the progress of an epidemic of cholera, which eventually kills him. Richard Flanagan's 2001 novel Gould's Book of Fish makes use of the illustrations from artist and convict William Buelow Gould's book of 26 paintings of fish for chapter headings and as the inspiration for the various characters in the novel.
== Realism == The geneticist Dan Koboldt observes that the science in science fiction is often oversimplified, reinforcing popular myths to the point of "pure fiction". In his own field, he gives as examples the idea that first-degree relatives have the same hair, eyes and nose as each other, and that a person's future is predicted by their genetic code, as (he states) in Gattaca. Koboldt points out that eye colour changes as children grow up: adults with green or brown eyes often had blue eyes as babies; that brown-eyed parents can have children with blue eyes, "and vice versa"; and that the brown pigment melanin is controlled by around 10 different genes, so inheritance is along a spectrum rather than being a blue/brown switch. Other authors in his edited collection Putting the Science in Fiction point out a wide variety of errors in the portrayal of other biological sciences.
== References ==
== Sources == Koboldt, Dan, ed. (16 October 2018). Putting the Science in Fiction. Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-1-4403-5338-3. Parker, Helen N. (1977). Biological Themes in Modern Science Fiction. UMI Research Press. ISBN 978-0835715775.