Thursday
I write today on an important University of Ljubljana dissertation I helped supervise and that our committee recently approved. In her study of biopunk, Majda Nizamič has shown the importance of dystopian science fiction—Margaret Atwood calls it speculative fiction–in helping us negotiate our greatest technological challenges. Novels, Majda makes clear, can go places where expository writing comes up short.
She explains that the biopunk genre “deals with biotechnology, depicting a futuristic society that misuses biotechnology to gain power and exert control.” The genre can be seen to have originated in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), but it took on new life following breakthroughs in DNA science. Biopunk focuses on such issues as genetic engineering, human enhancement, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, bioterrorism, and posthuman evolution. Its authors often show that, unchecked, biotechnology can lead to ecological collapse and even the annihilation of the human race.
Biopunk is particularly interested in genetic engineering. Of the four novels that Majda examines, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake looks at splicing and gene editing, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl at agri-tech, Greg Bear’s Blood Music at intelligent cells, and Jeff Vendermeer’s Borne at various forms of enhancement biotech. Because she limits her study to North American works, Madja didn’t mention Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker-nominated Never Let Me Go but it also fits the genre.
I am most familiar with Oryx, having taught it multiple times in my nature-themed Intro to Lit class. Here’s Atwood’s description of pigs raised with organs that can be used as transplants:
The goal of the pigoon project was to grow an assortment of foolproof human tissue organs in a transgenic knockout pig host—organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection, but would also be able to fight off attacks by opportunistic microbes and viruses, of which there were more strains every year. A rapid maturing gene was spliced in so the pigoon kidneys and livers and hearts would be ready sooner, and now they were perfecting a pigoon that could grow five or six kidneys at a time. Such a host animal could be reaped of its extra kidneys then, rather than being destroyed. It could keep on living and growing more organs, much as a lobster could grow another claw to replace a missing one. That would be less wasteful as it took a lot of food and care to grow a pigoon. A great deal of investment money had gone into OrganInc Farms.
In addition to pigoons, ethically-challenged scientists in Atwood’s novel have created other new species, including rakunks (raccoons and skunks), wolvogs (wolves and dogs), phosphorescent rabbits, liobams (lions and lambs), and caterpillars with smiley faces:
The rakunks had begun as an after-hours hobby on the part of the OrganInc biolab hotshots. There’d been a lot of fooling around in those days: create-an-animal was so much fun, said the guys doing it; it made you feel like God. A number of the experiments were destroyed because they were too dangerous to have around—who needed a cane toad with a prehensile tail like a chameleon’s that might climb in through the bathroom window and blind you while you were brushing your teeth? Then there was the snat, an unfortunate blend of snake and rat: they’d had to get rid of those. But the rakunks caught on as pets, inside OrganInc.
The cosmetics industry also gets involved:
There were pigoons at NooSkins, just as at OrganInc Farms, but these were smaller and were being used to develop skin-related biotechnologies. The main idea was to find a method of replacing the older epidermis with a fresh one, not a laser-thinned or dermabraded short-term resurfacing but a genuine start-over skin that would be wrinkle- and blemish-free. For that, it would be useful to grow a young, plump skin cell that would eat up the worn cells in the skins of those on whom it was planted and replace them with replicas of itself, like algae growing on a pond.
Majda writes that we should think of biopunk as thought experiments that “aid us in imagining the improbable, or even impossible, which deepen our understanding and comprehension of the world around and from within us.” She says that although we may derive some comfort that this hasn’t happened yet, there’s always the possibility that the novels are predictive. Indeed, if the once vibrant genre of cyberpunk has fallen off, to be replaced by biopunk, it’s because computers taking over our lives now seems normal rather than a futurist nightmare.
In her conclusion, Majda asks a number of important questions, including
— Will humans become more human or less so, more biological or less, over time?
–What are the consequences of unbridled use of biotechnology, such as genetic engineering and splicing?
–Are we on the path of remaking humanity?
–Might we at some point also be talking about a “synthetica sapiens” which will come to replace homo sapiens?
Returning to Oryx and Crake after a decade away from it, I was dispirited by how much closer we are to the world Atwood depicts. In her dystopia, large corporations and big money run everything, regulations have been swept away so that laissez faire capitalism reigns supreme, and great gaps have opened between the super wealthy and everyone else. We were well on our way to this America prior to Trump, but his pay-to-play policies, along with Project 2025, have accelerated the process.
Majda quotes one passage from the book which helps explain the rise of vaccine skepticism and Robert Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” schtick. If you can’t trust the pharmaceutical giants, then why not “do your own research” and opt for your own remedies? The advice comes from a survivalist who is living off the land:
Now, promise me that you will never take any pill made by a Corporation. Never buy such a pill, and never accept any such pill if offered, no matter what they say. They’ll produce data and scientists; they’ll produce doctors – worthless, they’ve all been bought.’ ‘Surely not all of them!’ said Toby, shocked by Pilar’s vehemence: she was usually so calm. ‘No,’ said Pilar. ‘Not all. But all who are still working with any of the Corporations. The others – some have died unexpectedly. But those still alive – those with any shred of the old medical ethic left in them …’ She paused. ‘There are doctors like that, still. But not at the Corps’.
It turns out that, in this instance, Pilar is right since there is a mad scientist who creates a pill that kills practically all of the world’s humans (although Toby and Pilar escape). In the case of MAHA, unfortunately, skeptics are rejecting legitimate science, which in turn is leading to the return of measles, whooping cough, and other diseases we had all but stamped out. Also, thanks to Elon Musk’s DOGE boys, we’re seeing the return of screw worms in our cattle and Ebola in Africa.
Majda’s dissertation needs to get out into the world because it shows that the novels it treats are grappling with foundational questions. As I read through it, I thought of a Laguna elder’s admonition at the beginning of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony:
I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just for entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.
You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.
Biopunk. Not just for entertainment.
