Biologists and paleontologists have known for some time that major disasters to Earth’s biosphere often reset the course of evolution. One of those events that has captured the general public’s attention is the Long Island-sized asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, ending the reign of dinosaurs and leaving the world open for exploitation by mammals. Mini-sized mammals that skittered between the footfalls of T. rex and other massive beasts gave way to mammalian megafauna that ultimately included our species, Homo sapiens. 

But what if the asteroid had missed? Would some kind of intelligent creature like us eventually have evolved or was our evolution a freak occurrence contingent on a random event? That is a question I will get to explore at the next WIPS Founders Symposium in March of 2022 entitled Mammals! From Mini to Megafauna. 

I certainly wasn’t the first to entertain this idea. Paleontologist, Dale Russell, and sculptor, Ron Sequin explored the concept in 1982 in a paper titled “Reconstruction of the small Cretaceous theropod, Stenonychosaurus inequalis (now called Troodon), and a hypothetical dinosauroid.” The paper was a quite daring “What if?” at the time. They asked whether the evolution of an intelligent “humaniform” creature would have happened with or without a catastrophic asteroid impact and postulated a large-eyed, two-legged dinosauroid that would have made a fine candidate for an extraterrestrial in a science fiction movie.

Ultimately, speculation boils down to whether you believe that contingency in evolution is more or less important than convergence. Paleontologist Steven Jay Gould made his case for contingency in his book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. He claimed that evolution was contingent on unique events. If you replayed the evolution of life on Earth subject to different disasters at different times, organisms would evolve in unique ways.

Other paleontologists, like Simon Conway Morris in his book, Life’s Solution, Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, argue that convergence is a more important phenomenon in evolution. In other words, life finds similar solutions to similar problems, which is why a squid’s eye is so similar to a human eye, even though they evolved from very different starting points. Perhaps the kind of language-based, technological intelligence we display needs a body form like H. sapiens.

I plan to have fun with this idea—as have several other people since Russell’s early paper. Stay tuned for more information—along with some speculative illustrations of my own.

It may seem odd to blog about writing on a website that primarily promotes artwork, but both creative activities have always been important to me. Often, one mode of expression rises to ascendancy, and later the other takes hold. Also, I have been fortunate to be able to combine my illustration, writing, and graphic design skills on many projects.

I’ve spoken before about my long-time fascination with science fiction. After I left secondary science teaching I wanted to hone my skills as a fiction writer. Fortunately, I connected with the Denver area science fiction writer’s group in the early 1970s under the leadership of Edward Bryant, a talented Wyoming writer of SF and horror. Writing short fiction is tough. A writer needs to develop character and plot quickly, engaging the reader without losing him with tons of expository backstory. Novel writing in that regard is easier. Writers have the leisure to meander more.

I sold a couple of pieces of short fiction—most notably a story called “Succession” in a now defunct magazine called Aboriginal Science Fiction. The story was also a quarter finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard competition in the early 90s. But making a living writing fiction is a dicey prospect at best. The graphic arts paid most of my bills as young family man. Writing was secondary. I did eventually earn income as a nonfiction science writer, but fiction put more smiles on my face when I spent time with it.

As I got older and less patient with the traditional publishing industry that often took months (and sometimes years) to respond to submissions, I used my graphic arts skills to enter the realm of self-publishing. Ultimately, I wrote four SF novels. Fulcrum Publishing (then in Golden, Colorado) published The Deep Time Diaries in 2000.  I published A Singular Prophecy under my company, Biostration, and published two “Dead Genius” novels under the name Penstemon Publications. All received recognition from various writing colleagues and organizations, although I never mustered the enthusiasm or bankroll to market the latter three properly. I did have fun writing them, however, and I do consider that a plus. Happiness and professional recognition trumps commercial success on my ledger.

But now I am writing short again. There is real challenge and skill involved writing short stories, although there are many fewer traditional markets than there used to be. (I have to note: various online options do exist.) I recently finished a story I have high hopes for called “My Little Genius,” a tale set in the same future universe as my “Dead Genius” novels. (See the book section of my website.) A few of the top SF magazines still publish: Analog Science Fiction, and Fantasy and Science Fiction at the top of the genre. I remember them fondly from my youth. I’ll try them first. Who knows, I might become the oldest author to publish with them for the first time.

It’s good to have goals, even when you’re a kid of 74. Someday I may have to get serious about the really tough writing form: poetry. 

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The same can be said for stories. 

In the January newsletter I sent to my subscribers this month I spoke about the joy of teaching. Specifically, I talked about infecting kids with the wonderment of studying fossils. The kids belong to the PaleoZone club sponsored by WIPS—the Western Interior Paleontological Society. Recently, I was invited to speak to a different audience: art students in Connecticut interested in the creative interplay between art and science. The theme I will promote during my talk is that the wonder induced through the enjoyment of imaginative fiction and imagery helps inspire the rational achievements we associate with science and technology. 

A key component of that inspiration depends on sharing a vision of what is true. What is real.  Or at least what has the potential of becoming real.

As a child of the 1950s and 60s I read science fiction. I recall reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, awed by the grand vision of a human civilization that rose and fell across the immensity of our galaxy—a swirling veil of star systems which even light takes 200,000 years to cross. As a college student I avidly watched the first Star Trek television series—as did many engineers who would ultimately join NASA in order to try to make some version of a Star Trek future come true.

Humans owe their success on our green and blue planet to the ability to share improbable visions and often make them come true. Unfortunately, that same ability can tear civilizations apart when different factions become grounded in alternate, incompatible realities.

I became attracted to science because it’s techniques work exceptionally well. Ask nature a question by setting up an experiment that tests only one variable at a time. Nature answers such questions with yes or no answers. The process is slow and has a hard time answering some kinds of questions—like “Is this act you are contemplating right or wrong?” But in the end, scientific truths match the realities we perceive with our senses. We have built our civilization through the practice of science. We have sent men to the moon. We have launched probes to other worlds. Our populations have skyrocketed because we have access to reliable food sources and health care.

I plan on telling the young Connecticut artists on March 23, 2021 that a new generation of scientists will blossom because they saw fantastic art and read mind-blowing fiction. Those students will see some of that work (including mine) in the Art of Science exhibition at Eastern Connecticut State University from March 17 to April 27, 2021. Perhaps some of those students might be inspired to turn science fiction into science fact some day. I certainly hope they can. 

I hope that testing their ideas in the crucible of the natural world of which they are a part, and finding verifiable answers there, continues to allow human beings to improve rather than diminish their odds for survival.

It does require agreement on what is real, what is fantasy, and what could become real with effort and determination.

           In my science fiction book, A Once-Dead Genius in the Kennel of Master Morticue Ambergrand, my character, Gaia, tells her alien counterpart from the planet Jadderbad that, “Humans are primates with delusions of grandeur, you know.” I thought I was being funny. After reflection, I rather think that I was just prescient. Scientists and philosophers have tried to point to human language, tool use, inflated brains, and other traits to distinguish humans from their animal associates, but in the end it would seem to be our unflappable sense of self-importance that has allowed us to consume the world with righteous entitlement. And this hubris might be a pretty recent development in the grand scheme of things. 

            Hear me out.

            Humans, in bodies we would recognize as being “us,” have existed for at least 200,000 years (maybe significantly longer). Fossils point to our origins in Africa. Our rapid growth and expansion only materialized in the last 10,000 years or so—since the birth of agriculture. Ten thousand years represents about 500 generations. So what were we doing for the previous 9,500 generations? Contemplating our collective navels? Or were we just hunting and gathering our way across Africa and the Eurasian landmasses content with a lifestyle that kept us in touch with our place within nature? I contend that somewhere and somewhen we suffered a monumental case of megalomania—a sense of self-importance that ultimately led to pyramids, Gothic cathedrals, Washington Monuments, Golden Arches, and other collective projects that insulated us from our biological roots.

            Our species, Homo sapiens, almost didn’t make the cut, you know. “The cut” being extinction. Our genetic uniformity across all modern “races” is profound. There is less genetic diversity among ALL HUMANS—all 8 billion of us—than there is between chimpanzees and their close cousins, the bonobos, for example. Evidence indicates that a monumental supervolcano (Toba in Indonesia) may have popped off about 74,000 years ago and nearly wiped us out. There were other humans around, however. 50,000 years ago H. sapiens shared the world with Denosovans, Neanderthals, and perhaps one or two other variations on the naked ape theme. Genetic studies show we even mated with them, off and on, when opportunities arose. Avid mating behavior is one of our strong suits. I carry a couple percent Neanderthal genes myself, being of Northern European extraction. For whatever reason, we are the last upright apes left standing.

            Perhaps we didn’t want to share our delusions.

            Who knows what a megalomaniacal gene might look like? In 2004, geneticist Dean Hamer proposed that the gene that produces vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2, for short) predisposes people to have mystical or spiritual experiences. Clever reporters called it “the God gene.” I understand support for this idea has waned. Nevertheless, perhaps there was some unique set of genes in the population that survived fallout from Toba that gave them a sense of Manifest Destiny with huge survival value.

            Maybe.

            I’m not saying that only believers in supernatural beings account for our collective behavior. Anyone who yearns to belong to some endeavor more all encompassing than their own individual existence, or plans to create some lasting legacy for future generations, is also guilty of that style of hubris. H. sapiens seems to feel imbued with special importance of one kind or another. As a species we have a real talent for believing in improbable things. Imagining those things is the first step in actualizing them.

            So, if having a sense of inflated importance has allowed us to destroy our world, our biosphere, because we believe we are separated from it—or perhaps operate on some other mystical plane outside of it—what can we do to avoid self-destruction?

            Perhaps we can deify that which we are poised to destroy. We can make it sacred.

            In Greek mythology, Gaia was the Earth personified as a goddess, the daughter of Chaos, not to mention the mother and wife of Uranus (Heaven). Much later, in the 1970s, the chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis proposed the Gaia Paradigm: the notion that the entire living fabric of Earth—the biosphere—maintains a state of equilibrium that favors the continuation of itself. This paradigm elevates the biosphere to a kind of vast, self-regulating organism. As scientists, Lovelock and Margulis emphasized that nothing supernatural was going on here. Over the billions of years life has evolved on our planet, it has simply interconnected to the point that its systems work to stabilize the cycles that lead to life’s collective perpetuity. 

            But humans seem rather inclined to like gods and goddesses. Maybe we should encourage the cult of Gaia so that it will be easier for us to see that Her self interests merge with ours.

            Just a thought.

            Anyway, I DID personify Gaia in the book I mentioned at the beginning of this musing, and also in the book that followed: A Twice-Dead Genius Comporting with Misunderstood Abominations. As I mentioned, Gaia was the character that described humans as primates with delusions of grandeur. In fact, in this latter book, Gaia gets so miffed at her egocentric primates that she makes life very difficult for them. Conflict, of course, is the heart of good storytelling, which is something else we primates can’t seem to get enough of.

            So, feel free to look up one or both books if you are in the market for a good story and a few chuckles. You can link to Amazon by finding the book tab on my website and searching for the appropriate books. If you read this blog between December 28 and 31, 2020, you can purchase the Kindle book version of A Twice-Dead Genius for a mere $0.99. Favorable reviews always welcome.

             I need my own delusions of grandeur stroked from time to time.

Imaginative artwork should have a long and healthy life span. It should “go viral,” as one might say today, infecting the minds and imaginations of many admirers. Ironically, one of my scratchboard pieces illustrating a viral attack on bacteria has served to embellish several articles I’ve written over the years, and lives on as an attractive print yet today. A case of a virus illustration going viral? Perhaps.

As a life-long student of biology, viruses have always intrigued me. They are too small to see without incredible magnification, yet harmful ones can kill you. They are protein capsules containing naked genetic code requiring the infrastructure of more complex life to reproduce. Biologists argue about whether viruses are really alive or not. Do they represent an early kind of proto life form, or are they the parasitic remnants of a microbe once more complex? Whatever they are, they serve as conduits for DNA transfer between more familiar multicellular organisms, and their codes linger within our bodies, providing a pool of genetic blueprints for assorted chemical assemblies, some of which are nearly as old and as vital to our survival as the Earth herself.

I first created this scratchboard in 1981. The T4 bacteriophage (“bacterium-eater”) is a virus looking like an alien space probe with a faceted head containing genetic payload, a long neck-like delivery system, and spider-legged landing gear. It attaches to E. coli bacteria (mostly friendly denizens of our digestive tracts), and then injects its genetic code into the bacterial cell to highjack its metabolic machinery for manufacturing more virus particles. Clever scientists, however, learned how to add their own codes to the viral message, thus transforming the virus into potential tools for genetic engineering. Back in 1984 I sent a copy of my illustration to various children’s magazines pitching an article called “Viruses: some day you might want to catch one.” A magazine called Fusion (now sadly extinct) published the article in 1985.

So, artwork can sell articles by visualizing a topic in a dramatic way for an editor thirsty for new copy.

In 1998, I used the artwork as one of the illustrations in my first book, Dinosaurs in the Garden. One chapter dealt with the world of microscopic life forms first formally discovered by the Dutch lens maker, Antony van Leewenhoek in 1674. His lenses were so well ground that he was able to see creatures as small as bacteria.

In 2020, I had occasion to use this illustration yet again for an article I wrote for Colorado Gardener magazine entitled “The viral life of plants—and everything else.” (See https://online.publicationprinters.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=1fffb732-8845-4346-9e68-52d67ee408fb) In that piece I had a chance to show the symbiotic side of viruses, as when they form liaisons with plants that sometimes makes those plants more attractive to pollinators or less attractive to potential herbivores. Sometimes, even when viruses cause disease like Tulip break disease, they create extremely beautiful—even if ultimately fatal for the tulip—flame-like color patterns on tulip petals.

Revisit old artwork that still makes your heart beat faster when you look at it. If it still pleases you, other will like it as well—maybe in a variety of different settings.

Your work just might go viral.

Just horsing around

       Creating art, for me, is a perfect example of the injunction “Do what you love doing and you won’t work a day in your life.” Of course, for much of my early working life I thrashed around trying to discover just what I most loved doing. I found out it wasn’t just one thing. I love reading, writing, photography, painting, hiking, teaching, and tennis, to mention some of the top contenders. However, when engaged in creating new images, particularly pictures of lost worlds, imaginary worlds, or strange beasts, I seem to come closest to that state of mind where labor merges with love. I’m just horsing around and enjoying the hell out of doing it.

       And speaking of labors of love and horses, I’ve recently been painting a series of small scenes for a local geologist (Elisabeth Erwin-Blankenheim) illustrating the evolution of horses from their origins in the Eocene—the period of tropical warmth that followed after the apocalyptic end of the dinosaurs’ reign 66 million years ago. These paintings have allowed me to become more adept at drawing horses while familiarizing myself with the shifting climates of the Cenozoic and the rise of mammalian life.

       I admire the work of paleoartist Jay Maternes who created many murals depicting the Cenozoic. Visions of Lost Worlds, the Paleoart of Jay Maternes, is an excellent book published in 2019 by Smithsonian Books describing his journey as an artist and the amazing images he created. 

       The legacy of paleoart extends back to Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), a wildlife painter coaxed into reconstructing the remains of an extinct pig-like animal (Elotherium) by a Dr. Wortman at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).  After that commission, Knight was hooked on reconstructing the deep past. He went on to paint iconic murals of dinosaurs and other beasts that my generation grew up with. I wrote about Knight in my 2015 book, Confessions of a Time Traveler. (See the link to Amazon in my “books” section.)

       Both Knight and Maternes (who also worked at the AMNH as well as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History) spent long hours drawing animals from the bones and musculature up. I know Knight sculpted models out of clay and lighted them to create all the proper cast shadows. I didn’t have the time or money to go to that extreme, but still it takes several hours of sketching various poses to create a rough sketch, and then 6 to 8 hours to render even a small (8.5” X 11”) piece of finished artwork.

       Here you can see a painting showing Hyracotherium trotting alongside his modern counterpart—the faithful traveling and recreational companion of many people today.

       I guess there’s more than one way to have some fun just horsing around.

Once a decade or so I have an attack of poetry. The following free verse poem was inspired by a find in Northern Colorado. I may have been channeling Loren Eiseley, a favorite writer/poet of mine. Sometimes one has to wonder if humans will rise to the task of becoming stewards of our planet or not.

The old man placed his boot near a pad of prickly pear, 

And a shard of sharp-edged flint.

The flint transfixed his eye. Caramel colors swirled 

Within triangular contours, 

As if a candy maker 

Mistakenly selected flinty quartz for his confection.

The old man plucked the rock from its dirt and cactus home. 

His thumb caressed a central knob; fingers nested ‘round the point, 

Exposing a serrated arc of stone. 

Some person once dreamt a purpose for the ragged flint,

Perhaps to scrape a hide, 

During an age when frigid air slid down glaciers, 

And giant bison huffed puffy clouds with every breath exhaled.

The old man felt connection with the shaper of the flint. 

Their tool clasped his hand like a long-lost friend. 

The flint of earthy colors, flaked and reimagined, 

Performed acts his body alone could not.

The pretty quartz might carve a totem, or slash an enemy’s throat. 

It could spark fire with another flint or 

Ignite minds to burn with wilder, wider conflagrations:

Erecting cities like termite mounds,

Or shedding ships like spores to circle distant, deadly worlds.

The old man’s world now teetered, 

Precariously,

Overused, abused,

On the sharp-edged legacy of flinty dreams come true.

The mysteries of slime mold intelligence

      Who would have guessed that an artist might have two illustrations of slime molds (Physarum polycephalum) in their portfolio? Certainly not me when I was an embryonic biology student at the University of Michigan—even though one Dr. Alfred Sussman transmitted his enthusiasm for these strange creatures when I was but a freshman. Sussman highlighted the ability of these wandering, multinucleated masses of living tissue to produce specialized reproductive cells when stressed. Now researchers are discovering that this primitive organism possesses the rudiments of intelligent behavior once considered the prerogative of more complex beings like us.

       Slime molds tend to wander on logs and forest floors in relatively moist habitats. I forgive those of you in the arid west who never encountered this biological wonder. Once classified as a kind of fungus, they really belong to a rather hodgepodge group called protists—single-celled beasties not easily classified otherwise. For those of you that are old enough, think of “The blob” in the old 1950s horror show, although slime molds are much smaller and slower. Nevertheless, slime molds are a mass of cytoplasm—the complex fluid found in all cells—sprinkled with multiple nuclei—the compact repository for a cell’s genetic blueprints. They scour logs and leaf litter for bacteria to eat. When faced with starvation, they send out signals that attract other wandering blobs. Those blobs merge, and some parts transform to create a stalk, that rises into the air and produces spores free to sail away on a draft of air to better hunting grounds.

      A Japanese researcher in the early 2000s, Toshiyuki Nakagaki, discovered that slime molds could successfully run mazes to find a food source (usually an oat flake). Physarum quickly found the most direct route to food. Eventually, the researchers discovered the mechanism for this behavior: Physarum deposits a trail of slime behind as it moves. As it wanders, if it encounters its own trail, it knows to turns toward yet unexplored territory. The slime trail becomes a kind of externalized spatial memory, not unlike the scent trails that ants and termites leave in their wake.

      Nakagaki et al came up with even more clever ideas. They placed oat flakes on the map locations of Japanese urban areas and set Physarum loose to find the most direct routes to food sources. Physarum eventually created “trunk lines” of cytoplasm essentially identical to Tokyo’s railway network. More recently, researchers have used slime mold talents to map out computer circuits. One team demonstrated that “a slime mold network can carry out XOR or NOR Boolean operations.” Whatever that means, it sounds pretty smart.

       Back in the 1960s one of my favorite authors, Loren Eiseley, compared the network of humans launching spacecraft off Earth toward other realms to slime molds. In his book, The Invisible Pyramid, he described the Pioneer probes of the day as “thistledown off to new worlds.” The Voyager spacecraft, launched just before Eiseley died, are some of our first “spores” headed off in the general direction of Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star, excluding our own sun, of course. They should arrive in 70,000 years or so.

       At any rate, I think slime molds are cool. More than 600 million years ago their lineage created cells on the verge of complex organizational skills. Part of that legacy was the streaming, electrically charged miracle of moving cytoplasm that held the secrets to forming the rudiments of intelligent behavior before brainy metazoans like us thought we had cornered the market in that area.

       Should anyone want to place a visual ode to the mystery of slime molds on their wall, I’ve got just the prints for you. E-mail me for more information about either the original artwork or reproductions.

Business as usual. Until it isn’t. Those phrases define paradigm shifts often precipitated by assassinations, wars, diagnoses of terminal illness, singularly improbable achievements, and global catastrophes. Those of us who have lived long enough to become silver-crested primates of the human variety may have seen more than one in our lifetimes. The covid-19 pandemic certainly qualifies as a paradigm-shifting event. And while it may wreak havoc for many, it can also provide a time to slow down, reflect, create, communicate, and reformulate.

Slow down.

Pre-pandemic life often seemed to spin like a hamster’s exercise wheel. We used our labor-saving devices to give us time for different labors or provide enough money to shop ‘til we dropped. We zoned out on sports, tuned out with games or videos, or chased children or grand children from one organized happening to another. Slowing down a little has advantages: we can relish achievements and assess mistakes in preparation for more deliberate forward motion.

Reflect

Socrates is credited with pronouncing that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He chose death over exile at his famous trial for corrupting the youth of Athens with heretical ideas. Of course, Socrates was a nerd like many writers, scientists, and introverts of various persuasions, but everyone can benefit from occasionally re-examining the assumptions that power their lives. 

Create

I painted Early Earth, Mega Moon, an image that had been haunting me for several months. I made progress on my next novel. Others with more practical skills made life-saving masks or other gear for health workers. Children chalked drawings on sidewalks or painted rocks to hide as surprises for others to find on hikes. People built backdrops to put behind their chairs during Zoom meetings. Creativity often runs rampant as people re-envision change.

Communicate

And speaking of Zoom meetings: People remembered they do have neglected friends and relatives that might be fun to laugh and smile with, if only at a safe distance. My wife and I have chosen Saturdays as play-Quiddler-with-friends day via FaceTime. It’s been a fun way to play word games with people with whom we enjoy spending time. True, divorce rates have gone up as some people miscommunicate catastrophically with spouses underfoot all the time, but others have remembered what they loved about their families in the first place.

Reformulate

Pollution rates have fallen dramatically when commerce ground to a stop. Oil has over-filled warehouses as people have reduced the frenetic pace of travel. Animals have begun reclaiming some urban areas as they come out of hiding in their vanishing wild places. Is it possible to rethink the way we live from day to day in such a way that we can make the world a better place in which to live? Perhaps a little ball of protein and RNA 1/1,000 the width of a grain of salt can help us reformulate our behavior—now that its rocked the world we once took for granted.

       I have a draft! Some people might grab a coat before they shiver. Novelists really are saying I HAVE A @#$&#*!! STORY! Now, what they are NOT saying is that the story is complete—merely that it truly is a story and not 66,269 words of rambling, if splendiferous, prose. So, as of yesterday, I HAVE A DRAFT COMPLETE for A Twice-Dead Genius Comporting with Misunderstood Abominations. Now I can sculpt it into something truly grand—if I have the will and don’t die first, of course.

       By sculpting, I mean editing and rewriting where necessary. The process includes fixing inconsistencies and prose crippled by whatever things you never learned from Mrs. Wordthumper in English or from your fellow writers. The process also includes more subtle things, like pacing, character consistency, sequencing narrative to maximize dramatic effect and trying to eliminate confusion for readers while not insulting their intelligence. And then, you also must be true to your personal vision. Don’t let someone (which could include an Editor—note the capital E) try to convince you to write a story that is not the one you really NEEDED to tell. (That last one can be a tough call—especially in this modern age of filterless publishing.)

       Finishing this particular novel resulted in another milestone: I wove together the characters, plots, and themes of my first two novels into a third book, thus creating a trilogy. FULL DISCLOSURE: I had not intended to write a trilogy, but once the thought occurred to me, it seemed like a good idea. Only my readers can truly declare the effort a success, but at the moment it feels right to me!

       And the act of consummating a narrative—of HAVING A FINISHED DRAFT—sure feels good.

       The picture associated with this blog will become the cover—in some form or another. I have plans to tweak it some more, but the Mother Tree Forest represented here, against a rather “cosmic” background of stars, plays a significant role in the tale.