Taylor Caldwell was a best-selling, award-winning novelist who wrote from 1937 to 1980. She is best known for her historical fiction and the breadth of detail it contains – detail which she credited to past life memories of those eras.

This kind of recall started young.  As a child she had a series of vivid dreams about Atlantis, and wrote her first novel based on those dreams at age 12.  Her grandfather, a book editor, considered publishing the book, but couldn’t believe a 12-year-old could write something so sophisticated. Thinking she must have plagiarized it, he rejected the novel, which languished in her files for 60 years.

In the 1970s astrologer and occultist Jess Stearn was working on a biography of Caldwell. He learned of this book, and helped edit it and get it published. That is the genesis of the book, The Romance of Atlantis, which, one might argue, is almost like being there.

If you like historical novels, Caldwell’s other work is also worth taking a look at. Her book Captains and the Kings was quite popular back in my librarian days, and is what first put her on my radar as an author.  But for the Atlantis-curious, give this Romance a spin. It is an unforgettable take on that setting.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Taylor Caldwell and the Romance of Atlantis

Portrait of Doyle, 1890

This month our fictional exploration of the world of Atlantis begins with a book by Arthur Conan Doyle. Although better known for his Sherlock Homes adventures, Doyle also wrote adventure stories, including many that were called at the time a “science romance.”  Science romances were becoming quite popular: think of books like Jules Verne’s  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  These stories of exploration and danger were quite successful for him, particularly his Professor Challenger stories such as The Lost World (wherein an expedition to the Amazon discovers dinosaurs still alive.)

Concurrently, Doyle was interested in Spiritualism. He was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research, and went on lecture tours on the subject in his later years. It was during this time that he developed an interest in Atlantis, and in 1929 he published Maracot Deep.  As far as I can tell, this is the first fiction novel to treat of the subject: earlier writers in the modern era, from Francis Bacon to Helena Blavatsky have written non-fiction accounts of the place, but for a complete story set in Atlantis (or in this case, its remnants), it looks like the creator of Sherlock Holmes has first dibs. It is also the last work of fiction he wrote before he died. (His last book was The Edge of the Unknown, appearing in 1930, about his experiences and observations in investigating the supernatural.)

Maracot Deep is what we today would call science fiction, featuring the use of technology to explore a remote location, and offering science-based rationales for the underwater nature of Atlantis and the survival of people in the deep-ocean environment.  It is a short book, more what we would consider a novella; some of the dialog sounds dated, as it is period slang from the 1920s.  But the story is entertaining, and it is a glimpse into how a master storyteller conceived of Atlantis, and how adventurers from the (relatively) low-tech 1920s might have encountered it.

Happy reading! And please do leave a note if you give this book a gander. What do you think of it?

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Arthur Conan Doyle’s sci-fi about Atlantis: Maracot Deep

Bot  is the odd childhood nickname of my sister, explanations therefore reserved for later. I shall leave her identified only via that moniker here, in case she wants to distance herself from these proceedings in the future (ha).

Botly has lately commented on the fact that I get books quite frequently through the mail. It’s true: between reading for fun, for education, and for research, I have a constant influx of tomes from online sources. I don’t usually pay more than $4/book (check out www.betterworld.com for a great economic solution to your bibliophilic cravings). The result is, I can afford to feed the book habit on a relative shoestring and the consequence is, a plethora of books.

Bort (ok, it’s a mutating name, but I like that one especially. It’s kinda like Borg, you know?) – Bort reads a lot too, but mostly just for fun, and the necessary mental vacation from her very intensive work in the insurance industry.  Ergo, she does lots of “popcorn” reading – quickie books, light romances, some thrillers and mysteries and paranormals, things with cool cover art. Like that.

But she lately opined that she should get as many books as I do – from me, as gifts, was understood. She is ogling my volume of incoming and having biblio-envy, I understand. In our perfect world, we would each have time to do nothing but read.  With this as necessary background, I share with you my newly hatched Grand Plan.

She’d like a book a week (she can read more than that, but 1 a week from me is something she’d actually get around to reading, probably, as opposed to collecting for eventual perusal 10 years from now).  Her ideal mix would be, 1 non-fiction to 3 fictions/month.

Whereupon I say, “Bwahahaha…..”

The Scheme

After pinging her about topical interests, I gave her a non-fiction book about Atlantis. This on the heels of a conversation where she said she was interested in Atlantis but there wasn’t really anything factual about it. To which I replied, “Oh yes there is.” To which she replied silently with the infamous Raised Eyebrow.  Which resulted in me giving her this book, Survivors of Atlantis (see below for details).  It marshals arguments from some well-known archaeologists who make arguments for the historical existence of Atlantis, and traces this Atlantean influence through various civilizations.  Interesting content, at the very least provocative of thought however you come down on the Atlantis question.

So, my grand plan is to follow up on the non-fiction Theme du Month with fiction books that elaborate upon that topic. That means, thematically, we can get into a subject of interest with a non-fiction groundwork, and then see how that subject has been elaborated upon in story narrative.

Now, how too cool is that? (Though if you don’t see at all what might be cool about that, you probably don’t grok this blog at all… !)

This means former-librarian me gets to go dig around in forgotten corners of literature and history and find really interesting (and ideally, mostly forgotten)  gems of literature, and share them in the context of the ‘real world’ framework they explicate.

I’m delighted. I think Bot will be delighted – if she actually finds time to do the reading. I hope she will. At any rate, I’ve managed to intrigue my own self with this concept, and see that I will have to order multiples of many of these books, because they’re things I would like to read as well. (Oh, darn, must…buy…more…books….!)

Therefore, with this post, I am announcing the Bot Book of the Month Club. Now and then I’ll post here about the Topic Du Month, and what titles are being bought and shared to delve into that subject.  When I post about the non-fiction seed of the month’s fiction reading, YOU are invited to contribute fiction reading suggestions that you think fit the theme.  Please do be sure to let me and other readers here know why you think the fiction work is relevant. I’m hoping for something that goes beyond just, “Story x takes place in that time/place.”  Why is that work  especially interesting?  Why should we look at this one book as a notable elaboration upon our non-fiction topic?

I’m curious to know what you might recommend.

With that in mind, then, here’s the non-fiction book for this month. Let me know what fiction you think would be suitable companion reading to this. Later, after I’ve made some selections, I’ll share my own choices and the rationale why. I’m limited to 3 fiction works to every 1 non-fiction for the Bot-book-supply-plan, but trust me that intriguing titles readers post about here are very likely to be purchased and read by myself, at the very least, and possibly The Great Botkins as well.

The Book this Month

Survivors of Atlantis: Their Impact on World Culture

There is a lot of fluff written about Atlantis. There is also a lot of esoterica on the subject. I don’t dismiss that out of hand – I have my own experiences with esoterica, when it comes to that – but for someone interested in a contemporary factual treatment of Atlantis, Survivors of Atlantis is of particular interest.

This book makes an argument for the existence and global impact of Atlantis by comparing various cultural influences on widely scattered continents that seem to come from a single trans-continental source in prehistory.  In making this case he cites the work of various archaeologists who are respected as legitimate scientists in their fields.  The book gets generally good reviews from Amazon readers for its marshaling of facts, and stands out to me because one of Bot’s abiding areas of interest is archaeology.  Hence this pick for our Book of the Month club.

Survivors gets generally good reviews from Amazon readers, who especially like how author Frank Joseph uses archaeologist-collected evidence to make his points. In the News from the Weird corner, Joseph himself is, shall we say, a colorful character, notorious, even, for some of his past doings. I don’t want to get into that history too much here in a book description: at one point in his later life, Joseph seems to have turned a corner with his awareness and his personal activities, and since then has devoted his time and energy to things like his research about Atlantis.  If you are mucho curioso about the author, Google is your friend. Personally, I’m willing to let a work stand on its own two feet, and in this case there is much that is thought-provoking and well-grounded scientifically in this book.

But this is just the appetizer.  It sets the stage for our flights of the imagination in narrative tales yet to come. Do you have any stories in mind that take place in Atlantis, or are about that lost continent? Leave your reading suggestions (and reasoning why!) in the comments.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

The Book of the Month Club, or, What’s Bot Reading Now?

Rosa Parks

In 1960 – when it just wasn’t done – my older (white) sister married a black man in San Francisco.  And had children.

I didn’t learn until I was 12 (in 1968) that my niece and nephew were black. I wasn’t told, lest “I have prejudiced feelings against them.” Like, a child has that degree of prejudism out of the box? No. That was maternal “eek!” factor in play. Mom – who always had black women friends thoughout my life – didn’t quite know how to cope with something so close to home, so didn’t share anything about it until she absolutely had to.

She was distressed to share this truth with me. I, a child of the ’60s, was delighted to discover this diversity in my family, and later to learn more of the experience from my sister who lived it first-hand.

Also a discontent child of the ’60s, in a later year when I was ready to run away from home I negotiated what was to me the next-best alternative: to live with a school teacher/role model who had become a close friend and surrogate parent. This plan only fell apart after mutual parent/teacher conference on a weekend at said teacher’s home, but with the result that I still consider my former teacher a near parent. It is almost incidental that she is black, but she certainly had a profound impact on my formative teenage years. (I credit her with my becoming a writer, and my first book, Mainline, is in part dedicated to her: Mary Walker McCants Wilton. If you know where I can reach her these days, please do let me know. I love her still, and would love to reconnect with her.)

Formative Ideas About Race

My friendly affection towards black women began early on. When I was 0 to 3 years old I had a nanny, who happened to be a woman of color: Aunt Bea. I loved her dearly, and miss her to this day. So some of my early emotional bonding occured across to-me-invisible race  boundaries (perhaps notable is that these years encompassed 1956-1959. Note that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery, Alabama, bus in December 1955 – a mere 7 months before I was born.)

Rosa Parks booking photo, 1955

That left me ready-primed for seeing loving connections in a way that is rather oblivious to color.  My addendums to race have always been exactly that: a sort of belated, “oh, yeah, and people see that as xxx” (fill in race/ethnicity here).  I can’t say I’m color-blind – I”m aware of racial tones when I see them, and how that works in the larger world – but on a personal scale I see person-of-color and tend to think, “oh! family model. And who might you be?!’  (Which may be why some of my girlfriends have been of various ethnic origins….)

One of my most heart-wrenching close contacts with race and color happened when my then-partner also became pregnant by a black man. My partner was from Germany, and returned there temporarily early in our infant daughter’s life, leaving me to raise Monika by myself until she was 3. (She was the most beautiful baby! Looked like a young Janet Jackson. SO adorable!  ) I lost contact with her after her mother came back from Europe and we parted ways, but I finally managed to reconnect with her as an adult after many years. What to do with such a relationship interruptus circumstance is a whole ‘nother story (won’t be getting into it here).  But for my posting reasons du noir, I just want to observe that my near-daughter  is half black, something that interests me and I wish I had more personal experience of in regards to her lived life.

Now, the third tangent is this: I am not exactly “white” mainstream American. In fact I am Arab American. I am half Lebanese, and since 9/11 have been treated to rants about “towel-heads” and more virulent verbal assaults, some of which I’m happy to say I have challenged face-on (and seen boneheads back down from their rhetoric when they see a face attached to “those people from over there.”)

I share this pseudo-invisibility with other Arab-Americans of ambiguous names and ethnic appearance (and who would ever guess that the Scotch-Irish surname “Christian” hides the “Hakeem” part of the lineage?) Trust me, we compare notes on these disconnects from time to time. This journey across mixed ethnic and racial ground can lead to very weird circumstances.

I have even  (most surprisingly) been completely dissed as a minority with any issues by a Chinese American psychology professor who said, in so many words, “You don’t look foreign. You can’t have a problem.”  (!!!)

Where do I even begin….

Well, let me just get back to the NAACP.  And to get there I will briefly tour through science fiction  by James Cameron (Hey. This IS a sf blog, you know?)

Cameron>Bassett>Parks

One of Cameron’s relatively overlooked works from the 1990s was this little thing called Strange Days. This 1995 movie was about a former vice cop (Joseph Fiennes) peddling illegal cyber-brain recordings (aka “sensie feelies” in other sf tropes) that share a vicarious recorded reality of someone else’s experiences. His friend/romantic interest is Angela Bassett in a totally great role (she definitely made more of it than was written).

Because of this sf romp I got curious about Bassett’s other work.  I’d seen her previously only in the bio of Tina Turner, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, which I found more disturbing (for the content) than entertaining.  The Cameron movie put her on my radar in a whole different way. She was completely compelling. And intense. Stole the show, even.

Hm.

So – next up:  The Rosa Parks Story, which not only stars but was also produced by Bassett.

I grew up hearing about Rosa Parks. SEEING this story fascinated me with Bassett’s acting, and irritated the hell out of me about our collective (and continuing) issues about RACE in this country, and the continuing battle we must even lo these many years later fight, even when a black man is (unbelievably! wow!) actually holding the office of President (and why is it not surprising that death threats against the president are up by 400%, according to the Secret Service).

!!!

I am simultaneously amazed by our progress, and appalled by the small dent it has made in the face of entrenched attitudes in certain parts of the country.  I am – I regret to say – doing my writing retreat in a terminally Red State where they are still fighting the Civil War. The attitudes portrayed by certain crackers in the Rosa Parks movie are still alive and well in some places close to where I live, and it makes this San Francisco girl with beloved black family members just want to puke. Or scream. Or go on a Freedom March or something.

And so, tonight, I joined the NAACP.  And I signed up with the local chapter, in case there is something I can do locally that is of significance. Time will tell. At the very least, I am contributing to an organization that has had a huge impact, over time, on civil rights and social status quo in this country. Many people dismiss the NAACP these days as no longer relevant, or a relic from  an older time. But I see it as a civil rights organization with a vibrant history. It is part of my generation and consciousness,  and I am proud, however late my association may be, to now be a part of it.

Huzzah.

Take that, Red State.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

I joined the NAACP tonight.

Now that I am in hour 18 of a low level scan-and-repair process for my ailing hard drive on my main ‘puter, I thought I’d turn to my laptop to spend a little catch-up time with readers here at the Lizard Lair. This will prevent me from staring at the slowly remapping sectors on my other monitor (watched pots refusing to boil and all that), and will also let me share some info regarding my book Splintegrate, and a few other things.

Splintegrate

Splintegrate has been a perverse fascination of mine for over a decade now. It was conceived of a few years after Mainline saw print. My work with it has gone through cycles where I have been on fire with the storytelling of it, and other phases where the well has been completely dry, such as during the multi-year decline and then death of my mother from congestive heart failure. A series of life episodes of that “major life change” nature derailed my creative process for longer than I care to think about; there was a period between 2000 and 2005, for instance, when I read not so much as a single fiction book. I could write it (fitfully) but I couldn’t absorb it.

The point of this is to say, writing Splintegrate has been a challenge on more levels than simply the craft-related ones of telling a good story.

The craft challenges, however, are also there as in any novel-length work. After being 95% finished with this book last year,  I realized I was not telling the best story possible. I was in a bind between the story I had originally envisioned, where the characters where actually taking it, and some breakdowns in plot/motivation that this disconnect had created along the way. Something fundamental was not clicking with the story. After bashing my head against walls and keyboards numerous times while analyzing plot issues, I finally had to put the work aside for a time and approach it later with a fresh eye.

“Later” has come around during the last month or so. In particular, I am taking some new approaches to reworking the plot that seem to (finally) be bearing some fruit. One of the most helpful insights came from revisiting character motivations and conflicts, and identifying specific plot points where motivations were not clearly enough defined for subsequent actions to be as riveting as they should be. Right now I’m wrapping up this plot analysis and next will be rewriting earlier scenes to better explore those motivational issues that drive later events. Then following some of those motivations down new storylines to a different set of consequences than are presently written.

This is a normal rewrite process for any book, but in this case I have been unable to see the trees for the forest. My plotting breakthoughs come on the heels of two specific things, which I want to mention here in case they are helpful to other writers.

Craft

One of the tools I use is a nifty program called yWriter, coded by programmer and novelist Simon Haynes. It is available for free (go figure!) here. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Especially if you write complex plots like I do, with many characters and many subplots busy at the same time, this is a very useful program for managing writing in easily rearrangeable scenes and chapters, including plot points and timeline mapping if you fill in sufficient information.

On the heels of my recent computer problems, I was re-downloading some other utilities from that site, and while doing so surfed around and for the first time read some of  Simon’s essays on the craft of writing and the business of book selling.   He is the author of the Hal Spacejock series of comedy sf novels distributed by Penguin Australia.  On the one hand I want to say “he didn’t say anything I don’t already know”, and also, “I don’t agree with everything I read there.” However: he also said some things that were that kind of cosmic timely reminder where I could feel a light bulb go on . “Ah ha,” I thought to myself, “this is something I need to pay more attention to in my own writing…” And this spurred the process that took me on to re-evaluate my plot problems from a useful perspective.

I recommend his products, and also his essays, especially for newer writers, or for jaded older ones like myself who might need some pointed reminders from time to time.

Plotting Tool

A link from Haynes’ site points to Randy Ingermanson’s site, another author who was/is a computer geek (as, I note, am I. It must be in the water…) Ingermanson explains how he logicked his way through book treatments and plotting, likening it to the design process he was familiar with as a software engineer. Now this may sound terminally geeky, but he has coded a program to walk you through what he calls the “snowflake” method (a reference to iterative design cycles) and produced a slick, very on-point plot and book design tool.

I found the first two or three steps of his snowflake process so simplistic yet enlightening (and yielding immediate insights for my own work) that I not only was able to solve a major plot dilemma in Splintegrate in the first half-hour of reading about his paradigm: I also got a handle on a whole new book I want to write as a result of altering how I was thinking about some plot issues.

That sold me. I bought his program. I’m very much into open source/freeware/shareware products so it is rare that I actually pay actual cashola for a program. This one was worth it to me, and I give it two thumbs up. If you want to put together a full blown book proposal, or simply work on plot details, Ingermanson’s Snowflake program walks you through the process including instructional content on the what/why/how of what you’re doing.

You can read more about his Snowflake paradigm and order the program here.

Bookstores

Last but not least, I mentioned I’ve identified a whole new book I want to write. This is a departure from my past work and may in fact occupy a unique genre niche. For that reason I’m not getting into many details here in blog-land; my shorthand for it now and in the future will be “Victorian paranormal,” which doesn’t give too much away.

That said, while I’m continuing to revamp Splintegrate, this new story possibility nibbles at the edges of my imagination. I can’t give it too much attention with a work-in-progress on my plate, but I do want to feed the concept a little and let my hind brain mull things over while my forebrain is in science fiction land. To that end, I’ve been doing some specialty book buying and want to recommend to my fellow bibliophiles a cool independent bookseller I’ve recently discovered: Monkey House Books, run by a nice lady named Sara in Mineola, NY (on Long Island). This is a small venture listed with the association of independent bookseller’s online site, abebooks, specializing in fiction, history and a few other things.

Two things stand out about Monkey House: she has a very nice assortment of vintage books (published around one side or the other of 1900) as well as eclectic other items, and has both very reasonable pricing and perfectly modest shipping charges (which, if you’ve seen my earlier rant on the subject, you know is an important buying criteria for me). Or make that three things: unusually for abe listings, where possible Sara also writes a little blurb about the book contents in the listing, not merely its condition. Very helpful for purchase decisions. Monkey House has provided me a delightful assortment of some Victorian novels that will be great background reading for the period paranormal I have brewing. Her excellent customer service ethic guarantees I’ll buy from her again in the future. If you want to support a worthwhile indie book seller, I encourage you to check out her bookstore at Monkey House Books.

So, that’s it for lizardly updates for now. I hope to return to regular blogging imminently. Talk to you again soon.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

I’m Plotting… (Splintegrate & other updates)

This week I’ve been accruing the geek widgets necessary for this next step in the evolution of dinosaurian communications. I have been spurred on by the fact that I have four pet mice (the Mouse People, or, Meeple, in my lexicon) who sort of surround me in their various cages where I work in my writer’s cave. They are rather compelling of my attention and I confess I am far more amused at their antics and behaviors than I ever imagined I would be.

I used to think, “Mice? Meh.”

Then I saved one from being dinner in the snake cage. This small white feeder mouse of course became Minnie Mouse. Then I had to get her a female companion, a large exotic who was Maxi Mouse, short for Maxine. Then it turned out Maxine was a Max (ahem), and suddenly there were mouse babies.

For a while there I felt like I was having tribbles. From one good deed to hordes of meeple in 4 weeks flat…

Several died early deaths, two for lack of nursing, I think, one killed by her own curiosity (Magellan Mouse, too intrepid an explorer who snuck outside the cage), and one of heat stroke, through a tragic transportation accident to and from the vet’s. Sigh. No wonder they have hordes of babies in their litters. Life is cheap when you’re a mouse. But 2 survived: the gray girl mouse, who became G.G., now Geegers, or Gigimus if we’re being formally latinate. And Mini-Me, the runt of the litter, a little boy who looked and acted just like his mother, and who was inseparable from her side until he had to be moved out when he hit adolescence (No more tribbles!)

So. I have Max, the large hefty boy who walks hanging from the roof of his tank, to whom I sing the Spider Mouse song (think Homer’s Spider Pig, only about a mouse). There is gentle little Minnie Mouse who runs laps every night, and Mini-Me, now grown into Micro-Mouse (Mike for short), who chuckles and chirps while he plays games in his cage wheel. And Gigimus, who fiercely defends the girls’ cage from intrusion by The Food Giant. (That would be me.)

This isn’t Geegers, exactly, but it could be if we had teeny little mouse protective gear to put on her. It certainly captures her guard-mouse attitude.

I’ve decided I should film some meeple footage, maybe start a Mouse Channel on YouTube. If I can catch the cute parts of their behavior on vid, and edit it right, it could be quite amusing to watch. Don’t know how much time I’ll have for this, but I figure this would be a fun project by which I could learn some technical how-to’s regarding desktop video and sound editing. Then I’ll be set for more serious non-meeple related Real Lizard content. I actually have quite a few things I want to record and release to the public, some of which have to do with my science fiction/fantasy writing, so a good learning project or two will serve me in good stead.

Besides, if I have to suffer periodically from Kw00tons over here, you should too. Share the joy and all that, you know?

I have a web cam on the way with a gooseneck on it that is perfect for setting up an in-cage view of meeple. When that’s here, along with my new (1 terabyte!!!! can we say Geek Heaven?) hard drive, then I’ll be ready to start putting the pieces together. Then there’s the re-doing the office, rearranging hardware, organizing and connecting multimedia components (audio recording gear, mixer, etc)…

A bit of a project, but it will rebuild my work platform and workspace, and take my project capability to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, our regularly scheduled book writing and blogging will continue apace. Stay tuned for more.

I leave you with this interesting photo of Super Mouse, a little fellow photographed as he leapt clear of a trap, a trick he and his fellows were apparently quite good at, according to the photographer and other pix in this spread. This appeared in the July 16, 1956 issue of Life magazine[1], the week I was born.

________

1. The mouse photo spread starts on page 10. Interestingly, on page 92 of this same issue is an article summarized in the table of contents this way:

The Nixon Controversy. Would Richard M. Nixon make a good president? The most controversial figure in U.S. politics in pro and con debate.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Video Lizard, With Meeple

The lizard in the lair gives this two claws up. They rock!

And the ‘behind the scenes’ reel is also entertaining.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Canada, FTW!

Without further ado, then, I bring you….

Today’s offering of future science comes to us from the February 16, 1953 issue of LIFE magazine.  Here we are introduced to an amazing labor saver just in time for winter snow:  that wonder of modern technology, the remote-controlled snow shovel!  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Remote-Controlled Snow Shovel from Reo Motors, 1953

If the machine looks suspiciously like a lawn-mower, well, there’s a reason for that. Here’s what Life had to report:

Lazy Man’s Snow Shovel
Converted lawn mower that clears winter walks is guided by radio signals

Lazy men got some authoritative support recently when two physiology professors concluded that shoveling snow for 10 minutes is harder on the heart than running up 61 flights of stairs. They may get a good deal more comfort out of a new automatic shoveler that picks up snow from the sidewalk, tosses it 15 feet away while the operator sits snug inside his living room pushing three small buttons (above).

The shoveling machine is a Reo Motors’ version of its remote-control grass-cutter (”Lazy Man’s Mower,” LIFE, June 26, 1950).  Like the mower, it has a 1 3/4 hp motor and is steered by radio. When the switches are pressed in the living room, radio signals are beamed to the machine, picked up by its cone-shaped antenna and fed to electric relays which start, stop, or turn the plow. But while the plow looks like man’s best foul-weather friend, it may never go on the market. Reason:  it would have to sell for $1,000.

Well, no wonder that didn’t catch on. That’s equivalent to $8048.71 in 2008 dollars!  Still, aside from problems with snow deeper than 3″, and wheel-spinning on icy patches, it seemed to work just fine.

Where are these today, now that our tech has made some improvement?

______

About the Future Science graphic:

The nifty logo-ish graphic on this page is the cover of a Buck Rogers book from 1933, slightly edited by moi.  I may be adding other graphic themes after a while but generally I’ll have a smaller version of Buck or someone like him as a handy visual tag so you can spot Future Science columns at a glance.

As soon as I have some time for a little housekeeping around here, I’ll also open a gallery where older FS posts and artwork can hang out in one central location for easy browsing and bookmarking.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Future Science: the Lazy Man’s Snow Shovel

The Afro-Latinosaurus

I’m looking for some Flash Gordon info and came across a map of the planet Mongo at this most click-worthy site, Strange Maps.

The home page features a flow chart of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and some cartozoological animals (”the discovery and study of animals outlined paradigmatically by street layouts as they appear on maps“). And since this is the Lizard Lair, I would be remiss if I did not also point you to the tyrannasaurus rex that lurks in the continental profiles of South America and Africa.

Here’s a joyous dinosaur roar out to the twisty mind that conceives all of this, for whom I can find no obvious ‘about’ info at the site, but is revealed by the book he’s produced (Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities) based on this site’s contents.  His name is Frank Jacobs, and apparently he’s been banging away at this inspired cartographical conceit since 2006.  Huzzah!

I am a rabid map afficiando, and spend quite a lot of time making them as accompaniment to my role-play gaming and to create/illustrate the landscapes relevant to my books. (I’ll be posting more about that this next month.)  So I’m in hog heaven with this new discovery. I may actually have to start reading and posting over there now and then.

Warning: there is a lot there that will suck you in and squander your work hours. But go ahead and check it out.

You know you want to.

>>Click Here<<

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Strange Maps

HIV virions budding from cultured lymphocyte cell

What is an HIV virus that doesn’t cause HIV?

It might be the key to medical cures based on genetics.

Since we’ve decoded the human genome, a tantalizing prospect has loomed before researchers and the medical community: gene therapy. If we can understand what genes cause an illness or defect, and if we can repair or replace them with a more desirable alternative, then we can correct problems at a cellular level. Gene therapy is non-invasive. The body fundamentally reforms itself, and new cells that grow after treatment follow the new, improved blueprint in the altered DNA.

We grow new cells all the time, not only when we’re healing from an injury. For instance, our constantly regenerating skin gives us entirely new palms every 24 to 48 hours. In fact, our entire bodies rebuild themselves about every 7 years. Why not take advantage of this constant growth and replacement cycle to literally build “a new you”, free of whatever was ailing you?

Scientists have been thinking about this for quite a while.

Two Gene Therapy Obstacles

This approach to medicine and genetics faces two major challenges. One is our as-yet limited knowledge about which particular genes are responsible for a given set of traits, symptoms and syndromes we have identified. Simply mapping the human genome is not enough: this gives us a map, yes, but as they say, the map is not the terrain. Does this bit of genetic code here affect your reaction to stress, or does it control your affinity for alcohol? Deciphering these linkages is an ongoing process. We’re making progress, but so far have only scratched the surface.

The other major hurdle is how to alter genes once we know what section of code is relevant to a problem.  DNA can be segmented – removing a related chunk of code, like pulling a clause out of a sentence – and a new segment spliced in its place.  This process involves specialized enzymes and careful gene mapping to identify the segments being tweaked, and lends itself best to laboratory manipulation.

Yet DNA can be changed in another way, as well: it can be rewritten in place in a human body, physically altered in situ. If we can rewrite the genetic code in place, nothing needs to be removed and reinserted.  Ideally, once initiated, DNA alteration would continue automatically within the subject’s own body.  But this neat solution is significantly more challenging. How do we work on the submicronic level to rewrite a body’s genetic code?

HIV to the Rescue

The answer, surprisingly, may be HIV. Viruses survive by attaching themselves to host cells and rewriting segments of DNA to replicate themselves. HIV is so pernicious in part because it infiltrates the body so thoroughly and does such an aggressive job of reprogramming the host’s genetic code and replicating itself.  Unlike most viruses it can even penetrate stem cells, to reformulate the code of the basic building blocks of the human body.

Now, in a ground-breaking therapy, a team if French scientists have stripped the HIV virus of its deadly components and used it as the vehicle to carry tailored genetic code into two host bodies.

A team led by Dr. Patrick Aubourg of the University of Paris-Descartes has been working on a treatment for ALD (adrenoleukodystrohpy), made famous in the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.”   In its worst form, the disease destroys the coating of nerve fibers in boys’ brains, causing a breakdown of the neurological system. ALD typically strikes between the ages of 4 and 10, leading to loss of sight, hearing, muscle control, dementia, and then to death within a few years.

An AP report describes their groundbreaking work:

Bone marrow transplants can halt ALD by letting new myelin-forming stem cells take root. But it’s difficult to find a matching marrow donor, and the transplant itself is very risky.

So what if stem cells from the boys’ own bone marrow could be genetically corrected, eliminating the ALD mutation? To do that, Aubourg’s team had to overcome a technical hurdle: Gene therapy works when scientists harness deliver a healthy new gene by attaching to a virus that can harmlessly infect cells. But none of today’s so-called gene therapy “vectors” could penetrate enough of the stem cells needed for an ALD treatment to work.

Unlike most viruses, HIV can penetrate stem cells, and it sticks permanently. So Aubourg’s team removed the genetic parts of HIV that make it dangerous, leaving basically a scaffolding to carry the new therapeutic gene.

Then they culled stem cells from two 7-year-old boys in the early stages of ALD, and mixed in the healthy gene. The boys underwent bone marrow-destroying chemotherapy and then had their genetically corrected stem cells reinserted.

Two years later, the boys have shown no sign of worsening brain damage and are functioning well with 15 percent of their blood cells producing the healthy protein, said Aubourg, who plans to test the experimental procedure in more patients.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

Scientists have now established a way to use a virus successfully in gene therapy. They strip HIV down to a delivery platform devoid of its ordinary  effects and load it up with the DNA they want to replicate. The virus infiltrates cells where it delivers its payload of correctly-programmed genetic code into the host’s system.  It is especially good at glomming on to stem cells.

In typical aggressive HIV manner, this virus digs in, rewrites DNA, reproduces, spreads, and repeats its life cycle in every cell it can get a toehold in. Meanwhile, the stem cells grow and differentiate as they are supposed to, following not only the template of whatever cells they are administered with (in a cell therapy regimen), but  also the encoding injected into them by the modified HIV virus.

With cell growth over time, this is a huge hit of Correct DNA, perfectly positioned to reproduce within the host. And voilà:  the hurdle of  ‘how to effectively deliver rewritten DNA’  is leapt.

Now That We’ve Got That Licked…

As we continue to figure out what genes link to what diseases or defects, we will be able to create gene therapies for more and more illnesses. And, potentially, not only illnesses but congenital defects. And then, maybe, unwanted tendencies – male pattern baldness, a slow metabolism that packs on pounds – and of course the obvious easy tweaks in the cosmetic realm, like eye and hair color, or the shape of a nose or jaw line.

At what point might we tackle encoding desireable traits, not just erasing unwanted ones? How about ensuring fast-twitch muscle reflexes for your future Big League Slugger, or a high IQ for the designer baby destined for Harvard?

And here life begins to imitate the art of science fiction.

In Part 2, I’ll take a look at what science fiction fears and foresees in the realm of gene therapy and its kissing cousin, tailored genes.

Post from: Notes From the Lizard Lair

Gene Therapy Part I: HIV, the New Silver Bullet