Monday, July 14, 2025

Fiction: Angel City (short story)

 

Angel City

Eastern American legends tell of a tribe who founded a golden city in the far west, led by their divine foremother Eve Angelica. The Royal Treasurer asked us to determine if her city existed, and if so, to locate the gold these ancient people amassed and sequester it for our Queen.

For our trek, I assembled a team of five women; a geologist, a botanist, two ethnologists who had lived with a remaining eastern tribe, and an interpreter, Skilar, who was brought up in an east coast village. She could read several hundred written word-glyphs as well as speak latter-day Inglish fluently.

The first westerners we met, living outside the ruins of Angel City, call themselves the Lost Feelies. They do not know of Eve. They say their founders were white men and women from the east who all arrived together on iron horses. They call these ancients the “Rubber Barons,” and say they built Angel City in one hundred years. The Lost Feelies told us that the tribe now dwelling in the inner city are not related to them, arriving long after the city was built.

When asked why their people abandoned the city, the Lost Feelies say supernatural enemies from the Land of the Setting Sun sent two plagues: “Bee Die Off” killed all the flowers and “wheat rust” (a fungus) ruined their grain fields. The city dwellers starved or dispersed. From the size of trees now growing in the ruins our botanist agreed that a major disaster occurred around four hundred years ago.

We followed the course of the river, which is a mere trickle in a vast channel some thirty paces wide, now much overgrown. On once-paved streets near the remaining great buildings, which they call “Those-Who-Scratch-The-Sky,” there are numerous dwellings made of ephemeral materials. They include cartonnage boxes and blankets of animal and plant fibers. There exists a great stock of paper in the abandoned buildings, which the people scavenge for cartonnage-making. A popular coating for the papier-mâché homes is a variety of green paper cut into hand-length rectangles. Each bears a portrait of a man in the center and a selection of lucky numbers. The tribe living in the streets call themselves “Skidro.” They too claim to be descendants of those who built the Sky Scratchers. They say they have an “American Dream” that material wealth will “trickle down” from the Sky Scratcher, and so they live in its shadow, waiting.

A ruined Los Angeles. (Yes I did do this in photoshop.)
A Sky Scratcher


We asked the Skidro where they kept this treasure. They pointed to the largest Sky Scratcher and said it is concealed “inside the block-chain.” Skilar elicited from them that the ultimate source of wealth is the “bite coin.” Our ethnologists believe this must be gold, since gold will readily take teeth marks, but I feel the concept of “trickle down” strongly suggests that wealth was spiritual, distributed by a sky god.

We soon reached an impasse, despite Skilar’s fluency. I quickly learned that the highest Skidro moral value is “Freedom of Speech.” They permit and even encourage untruths. They call lies “Alternative Facts.” They recite a mantra, “Do your own research!” When we asked for verification of statements, they cry “I plead the fifth,” and “We refuse compelled speech!”

Our geologist told us that this area suffers frequent quakes. Eight Sky Scratchers still stand, but ten or a dozen have fallen. These cluster, with lower-height wooden buildings (and some stone) surrounding them as far as the eye can see. Some still have metal glyphs attached to the upper façade. Skilar told us they were single words without a common meaning, denoting the name of the god to whom the edifice was dedicated. 

We explored the tallest intact tower.  It is rectilinear at the bottom, quickly becoming circular, and built in a series of reducing steps, or setbacks, which eventually shrink away to leave a round tower above, surmounted with a crown. According to Skilar, the building is composed of 73 “floors” (as each layer is called, though they are not on the ground). Each “floor” is about the height of two women and each has many window bays inset into the outer surface. The core and cladding are made of white “concrete” which Skilar described as a stone the ancients liquified, then poured from spinning machines, after which it resolidified. Concrete is usually white but sometimes beige, like a cheap sandstone but with far more strength (as I found when I tried to chip a piece off as a souvenir).

From the remains of the roadway, broad concrete stairs ascend to the “ground floor.” The step height is designed for women, but they measure a dozen paces in width, suggesting ceremonial processions ascended the steps.  Skidro told Skilar that workers, both women and men, walked up the steps to spend time sitting in chambers at the top of the building. We were unable to verify this. The structure is so austere that it seems likely to me that only priests would be allowed to enter it.

At the top of the stairs are two flat, rectangular areas filled with small rocks. Skilar learned these were fountains that propelled water through hidden pipes into the air, after which it would sink out of sight. I assume this water was used for ritual ablutions before ceremonies. The river is a mile away but our geologist pointed out that, judging by the size of its concrete channel, it must have been a veritable torrent in the Classic Period. Perhaps the depletion of this resource provides another reason for the city’s abandonment.

Beyond this ritual cistern, against the concrete wall, stand four metal sculptures. These resemble serpents adorned with red, serrated crowns. Each has a glyph affixed which Skilar read as “Fire Riser.” She did not know what relationship snakes have to fire.  I asked her if the glyphs could be an example of “Freedom of Speech,” but she said that both here and in the east, glyphs sanctified by the “Fire General” were always true, as the gods required the General to be literally truthful in all her dealings with the populus.

A picture of a fire riser, or snakes with serrated crowns, whichever explanation you prefer.
Serpent sculpture at the top of the broad stair.
Traces of red paint remain visible.

The main entrance on the “ground floor” (many steps above the ground) was originally composed of large sheets of curved blue glass, some fitted with hinges to form doors.  We saw no evidence of fortifications or guard quarters. The doors lead into an expansive open chamber. Large concrete pillars inside the space reveal the method by which the immense weight of the building is distributed to the ground, but the size of the open space is remarkable. It is some six “floors” high. The space—Skilar read the glyph as “atrium”—retains traces of wood flooring and there is a long, chest-height counter with remnants of red-stained wood. Skilar said that easterners believe the ancients stationed four “recessionists” in military garb behind these counters to repel invaders and escort invited guests.

Light pours in through the upper windows, lower windows and doors. It seemed a barren glare to us, but while the blue glass remained intact on the now open side of “atrium,” daylight must have been calming and tranquil.

Skilar and I climbed the ribbed metal staircase at the far side of “atrium.”  It leads only to a balcony (or half-floor with a short wall) overlooking the entrance and “atrium.” Further ascent, Skilar said, was undertaken in a box winched on cables. We explored, finding two arrays of the winched boxes and many rooms of unknown use. We saw several blocks and chains, but I did not find any bite-coins.

We saw several other glyphs Skilar believes the “Fire General” must have written.  Signs include “Occupancy” followed by a numeral, which must be the number of celebrants in a religious ceremony, and “Emergency Exit,” a reference, I believe, to the doorways which are thrown open during an “Occupancy” and through which Disaster Demons are expelled. From the balcony, we saw that the principal contents of the vast “atrium” comprises many ceramic containers, the size of coffins, each one filled with soil. Around them, the Classic Period tribe placed stools with backs, for comfortable viewing of the vessels’ contents.

I asked our botanist to examine the plant material remaining in the soil-containers. She found desiccated leaves and stalks from Swiss Cheese plants, remnants of Bromeliads, dried leaves of Velvet Philodendron, and stalks of Dumbcane. All of these, she told me, originate in rainforests far to the south of Angel City.  They are all inedible and some are noxious, so were not grown for food.

We left the city precipitously, as an earth tremor shook the ground. The Skidro told us it presaged another “big one” strong enough to collapse a sky-scratcher.

From our brief visit, I conclude that the ceremonial cisterns before the entrance, the dim, filtered blue light, the serpent sculptures and the large ceramic pots filled with rainforest trees and shrubs surrounded by observation platforms and resting areas—even the belief that beneficence ‘trickles down’ like drips from trees—suggest an attempt to recreate the tropical home of their gods. I further believe, contrary to their own origin myth, that the city-builders came from the south, bringing their gods with them. The Sky-Scratchers were their temples.

Accordingly, we feel that any subsequent expedition in search of bite-coin should contact the more indigenous tribes, beginning with the Lost Feelies (since we have already made contact) and their neighbors, the Hollyweird.

***

This piece is a travelogue in the style of Fr. Diego de Landa. It is a fictional account of an expedition to the ruins of Los Angeles.

The Classic Maya civilization collapsed five centuries before Father Diego de Landa arrived in Yucatán, Mexico. He set to learning Mayan history, relying on contemporary villagers’ stories and his own primitive ethnography. In 1562, de Landa burned the 27 bark-paper books he had found, believing them to be the work of demons. In doing so, he wiped out almost all written Mayan historical records. Because of his vandalism, his account of explorations in Yucatán paradoxically provides much of what we know about Maya life.

***

07/17/25 - edited the image of ruined LA

Monday, July 07, 2025

MIcro-retirement

 Silicon Valley occasionally invents something really useful. This week they invented "micro-retirements" - two weeks off work every 12 to 18 months.



Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Fission #5 now available

 

Cover of Fission #5

Fission #5, edited by Gene Rowe and Eugen Bacon, is available now from wherever you get books. 

Among many others it features my short story "Hey, Marilyn."

Demos, a member of the Atropian sect pledged to end human life on Earth, learns Marilyn may be incubating a young AI.  Paul, one of a loose group of her friends, wants her to live--Marilyn, that is, not the AI.

Saturday, June 21, 2025

Science Fiction: How to find an Agent and how to promote your book


A friend asked me for advice on publishing and promoting a Science Fiction novel. I’ve never published one, so I researched it. I hope it will be of use to others.

Generally, advice for how to get your manuscript accepted and published is the same as for non-genre novels: Find an agent or find a publisher which accepts non-agented submissions.

Finding an agent

You can research agents and track submissions through sites like QueryTracker, MSWL (Manuscript Wish List), Reedsy and Publishers Marketplace. Some agents want you send to them exclusively (i.e. they do not accept a simultaneous submission) but given that they have up to six months response times, you may prefer to ignore that and send out queries in batches of 5-10 and wait for feedback. Based on the feedback, if necessary revise the query letter and/or manuscript and then send out the next batch.

In a hurry?

Lists of literary agents for Science Fiction:

https://blog.reedsy.com/literary-agents/science-fiction/

https://literaryagencies.com/science-fiction-literary-agents/

https://www.tckpublishing.com/literary-agents-accepting-science-fiction-and-fantasy-submissions/

No Agent?

Some book publishers accept non-agented submissions. They tend to keep it on the down-low because when they open up to submissions they get a flood of manuscripts from writers who have not bothered to read their guidelines and send unsuitable material. If you want to succeed, read the publishers’ guidelines. If possible, read some of their books. (This goes for finding an agent as well. Know what they want before you write them.)

Burmese dancer, bronze statuette
Unrelated Picture Because Posts
Without Pictures Get Less Engagement

How to find a publisher who accepts unagented Science Fiction manuscripts:

Authors Publish send out regular lists of publishers accepting manuscripts.

Aethon Books, Flame Tree Publishing, Arcadia, and Dark Age Press all have open submission periods occasionally, so you can check their websites.

A place of intent blog has a list of publishers https://www.aplaceofintent.co.uk/blog/science-fiction-and-fantasy-publishers-accepting-submissions

Science Fiction Book Promotion

Your book is published. Now you have to publicize it. This goes for both self-published and trad published books. Somehow, your book has to stand out from the 80,000 other books published this week.

Here are some places you can promote the book.

1. Social Media and Online Communities

  • Goodreads: Join science fiction groups and participate in discussions or book clubs to build relationships with potential readers.
  • Facebook: Create an author page and join large sci-fi/fantasy groups such as "International Sci fi and Fantasy Book Club " or "Fantasy-Faction - Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Discussion." These groups sometimes allow self-promotion for active members.
  • Twitter/X, Bluesky: Use hashtags like #scifi, #amwriting, and #indieauthor to reach a broader audience.
  • TikTok: I know nothing about it but people are always talking about BookTok.
  • Instagram: Cover reveals and photos of your cat sitting on your book

2. Book Promotion and Advertising Platforms

  • BookBub: Discounted book promotions. BookBub features can significantly boost sales and visibility. Be prepared to pay.
  • BookBaby: Paid promotions, but also has a lot of helpful articles, written as “You would have to do this and this and this unless you hire us to do it for you” where this and this and this are perfectly doable if you’re motivated.
  • Other Promotion Sites: Consider sites like Freebooksy, Book Barbarian, and Books Butterfly. These platforms specialize in promoting books to genre-specific audiences.
  • Amazon Ads: Run targeted ads to reach readers interested in similar books. Amazon’s advertising platform allows you to set your own budget and track performance.
  • Facebook Ads: Boost posts or run targeted ad campaigns to reach sci-fi fans on Facebook.

3. Newsletters and Email Marketing

  • Substack: Free platform to start an author newsletter and build a subscriber base.
  • MailChimp: For managing larger email lists and automating campaigns.
  • StoryOrigin and BookFunnel: Use for newsletter swaps and group promotions, helping you reach new readers and grow your email list.

4. Book Reviewers and Influencers

5. In person promotion

  • Sell at Science Fiction Conventions, Comics and Games conventions. If appropriate for your work, conventions often have a dealers’ room/hucksters’ room. Rates for tables and booths vary.
  • Network at Conventions (WorldCon, New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention, Eastercon)

6. Free and Discounted Promotions

  • Free Ebooks: Offer free short stories or novellas to attract new readers and encourage sign-ups to your newsletter.
  • BookBub Featured Deals: Discount your book for a limited time to drive sales and climb bestseller charts.

7. Networking and Community Engagement

  • Writing Forums: Engage in forums like Writing Forums to network, share experiences, and promote your work. (To the extent allowed—note that spamming forums with self-promotion may get you shunned or banned.)
  • Writing Workshops: If the workshop allows it, discuss or promote your work at workshops. If not (or in addition) network with the other authors and share promotion success stories.
  • Beta Readers and Critique Partners: Use platforms like Voracious Readers Only and BookSirens to get feedback and early reviews.
  • Book signings at local stores: Ask your local bricks-and-mortar bookshop if they will host a book signing for a local author.
  • Book signings at local libraries: Ask your librarian if they have local author days.
  • Book signings at Friends of the Library bookshop: Ask your local Friends of the Library if you can place your books in their bookshop and if they would be open to hosting a talk or book signing for a local author.

 Good luck on your publishing journey!

Thursday, May 01, 2025

Hey, Marilyn in Fission #5 - out now

My story, "Hey, Marilyn," is in an anthology with stories by Steve Rasnic Tem and Gareth Powell - among other legends: Fission #5. I'm over the moon.

I'm looking forward to reading the other stories.

Many thanks to editors Eugen Bacon and Gene Rowe.


Cover of Fission #5



Sunday, April 20, 2025

Happy Easter

 Happy Easter from my Easter Bunny, Sparrow. 

He is decorated in folklore-accurate seashells and pendants*. 




*I made that up.


Monday, April 14, 2025

Seaweed Savior

In March, Black Cat Weekly published my story The Oathbreaker. A professor is swept up in the saga of a woman doomed to spend eternity with her Viking captor. He is studying seaweed on the coast of Anglesey, Wales, when three women recruit him to save her. 

Black Cat Weekly cover

Today, the BBC published an article about a real professor who studied seaweed on the coast of Anglesey, and who is credited with saving the Japanese sushi industry. Laver is a type of seaweed that grows in green-black sheets on rocks and is used in British cooking, particularly as Welsh Laverbread.  When Kathleen Drew-Baker attempted to cultivate Laver in her laboratory, she found that seashells in the bottom of the tank developed a reddish growth. She recognized the red growth as a species of algae called Conchocelis rosea. Studying it further, she realized that C. rosea wasn't a separate species at all. Laver has two different lifestyle stages, one as a red filament growing on seashells and one as blackish sheets growing on rocks. She published her findings in the October 1949 edition of the journal Nature.

Meanwhile, in Japan, a series of storms had decimated the production of Nori, the seaweed used extensively in Japanese cuisine, especially in sushi. Sea mines and general devastation of World War Two further reduced the supply. A Japanese professor read Drew-Baker's paper and realized that the closely related Nori could be cultivated the same way. Now, the conchocelis-phase Nori is grown on oyster shells in nurseries. Nets are placed over the shells until the adult phase of Nori attaches to them, and then the nets are taken out to sea, where it grows the thin leaves that can be harvested and processed for food.  Drew-Baker's discovery was the key to the recovery of the seaweed beds.

Seaweed growing on nets from the Nori Cultivation page

Kathleen Drew-Baker's story has another angle. Although she was an academic all her life, she was unpaid for most of it. Back then, the university would not employ married women. When she married she was offered the opportunity to continue working, but she was not on the payroll.

If my three angry women had met Kathleen when she came to Anglesey, they would have had a lot to discuss about the very slow pace of improvement in women's rights.


Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Federal Judge rules that FDA's attempt to regulate clinical laboratories exceeds its authority

Overview
On March 31, 2025, a federal court vacated the FDA's final rule attempting to regulate laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) as medical devices under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The ruling is a significant victory for clinical laboratories across the country.

FDA regulates test kits (like home Covid test kits) as "medical devices" and has developed stringent requirements for their manufacture and sale. An LDT is a service, agreed between the patient's medical doctor and the medical doctor in the laboratory, to test the patient's specimen for various "analytes" (antibodies to viruses, hormones, viral particles, etc.). These tests are developed by the laboratory because manufactured kits are not available for the exact test the patient needs. The FDA had asserted a right to regulate LDTs as medical devices.  

The advantage of LDTs is that they can be tailored to fit these needs quickly and for far less cost than asking a kit manufacturer to create a specialized test and obtain FDA approval. LDTs are regulated by the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments (CLIA) which require the lab to "establish performance characteristics" --prove that the test works as claimed-- and retain the proof for inspection by CMS. 

FDA's decision to regulate LDTs would have resulted in double regulation (CMS and FDA), slowed innovation and cost billions of dollars, which would ultimately be passed on the patient.

The rule would subject about 79,114 existing LDTs and 1,181 labs to FDA premarket reviews, post-market surveillance, and quality system requirements. "FDA acknowledged that the costs of the proposed rule would be significant. Specifically, it estimated that the cost of preparing and submitting [applications] for existing laboratory-developed tests would exceed $35 billion and could reach $113 billion. It also projected that, going forward, annual compliance costs for affected laboratories would range from $4 billion to $14 billion." (From the judgment linked below.)

On March 31, 2025, a federal court vacated the FDA's rule to regulate LDTs as medical devices, marking a significant legal setback for the agency. Judge Sean D. Jordan of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that the FDA lacks statutory authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and CLIA to oversee LDTs, which he characterized as diagnostic services rather than physical medical devices.

The court emphasized that Congress designed CLIA as the primary regulatory framework for clinical laboratories, delegating oversight to CMS rather than the FDA. LDTs were deemed "proprietary methodologies" rather than physical devices, placing them outside the FDA’s jurisdiction.


Of course, FDA may appeal the decision, or Congress may act and change the requirements by law. 


I know laboratories have already spent large amounts attempting to get ready for the May 2025 deadline. (I should have taken up the offer to act as a consultant...too late now.) My advice is to keep doing all the things the FDA has so far required. No harm, and possibly great good, will come from having properly documented complaints procedures and test development and change files beyond the original CLIA requirements. 


The judge's ruling in full.

Thursday, March 27, 2025

A Rant Concerning AI helpiness, and how terrible everything is nowadays

 Google search is useless. 

I know this will surprise you young whippersnappers, but back in the day, if you typed something in the Google search bar, it would look for and bring up documents that used those words.  This was a very useful feature. It didn't bring up any sponsored pages, ads or inane commentary supplied by the "AI." 

If you typed 

generals gathered masses just like witches

It would find the lyric sheet for the song "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath, and because those words all appear in the first few lines, that would be in the first page of results.

A couple of days ago, I typed 

the winter life is coming back

expecting the algorithm to name the song by the group Cream that contains the line. This is what I got.


"the winter life is coming back" AI Overview Learn more Given that it's March 22nd, 2025, and you're in San Juan Capistrano, California, it's unlikely that "the winter life" is returning, as you are in the midst of spring. San Juan Capistrano experiences mild winters and warm, dry summers.  Here's why: Time of Year: March 22nd marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, not the return of winter.  San Juan Capistrano Climate: San Juan Capistrano has a Mediterranean climate, characterized by mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers.
Screenshot of search and results

In other words, the AI just started arguing with me about whether the line in the query bar was true or not!

The song turns out to be, as I'm sure you're all eager to tell me, "Deserted Cities of the Heart" by Cream. 

I asked Google what it thought it was doing, and it replied, in part: 

does google do boolean search terms like it used to  Examples: "bacon eggs" (or bacon eggs) - finds pages containing both words  bacon OR eggs - finds pages containing either "bacon" or "eggs"  bacon -eggs - finds pages containing "bacon" but not "eggs"  "San Juan Capistrano" - finds pages with the exact phrase "San Juan Capistrano"
Screenshot


And this - Google's own AI's answer - is wrong, or at best highly misleading. 

"bacon eggs" written that way does not find pages containing both words. It finds pages where the words "bacon eggs" appear in exactly that order. (For example, "Serve it with bacon, eggs, and toast.")

To find pages where both bacon and eggs appear but not necessarily together in that order (for example, "people like to eat bacon with eggs"), you would have to type the words without quotation marks, as below:

bacon eggs

On Twitter, oh I'm sorry X, these days, I see a huge percentage of people answering a Tweet by asking Grok, Twitter's sorry X's AI, to explain what the Tweet meant, or if the Tweet was "true." Depending on the phrasing, Grok will say different things to different people. A whole host - millions of queries - using lakes' worth of water and thousands of dollars worth of electricity - of utterly useless questions and even more useless answers, many of which are probably taken as gospel by the question asker. 

No good can come of this. The incredible investment in AI cannot pay off for the companies building out capacity and pinning their business plans on some fairytale of return. A 2000-style dot com crash is imminent. The only lasting effect of AI will be dumbed-down people fighting in their bunkers for their interpretation of everything based on idiomatic peculiarities in their queries. One hopes (with little confidence) that the fighting will remain virtual and not spill into the real world.



Wednesday, March 26, 2025

San Juan Capistrano Swallows Day Parade 2025

I attended the San Juan Capistrano Swallows Day Parade, but didn't get around to seeing much because I was a little hoarse.

a small horse outside a white horse trailer

The 2025 San Juan Capistrano Swallows Day Parade was held on Saturday, March 22nd. This event is part of the broader Fiesta de las Golondrinas, which celebrates the return of the swallows to the San Juan Capistrano Mission, a tradition that coincides with St. Joseph's Day on March 19th.

The parade is a significant event in San Juan Capistrano, highlighting the city's rich equestrian heritage and featuring equestrian teams, dancers, and marching bands. The theme for the 2025 parade was "Lassos and Lace." 

The tradition of celebrating the swallows' return began in the 1920s, initiated by Father O'Sullivan, who encouraged the swallows to nest at the Mission since their nests were being destroyed elsewhere in the town. Over time, this event has grown into a major cultural and tourist attraction for San Juan Capistrano.

A person in a bull costume drives a covered wagon
One of the paraders outside the Mission


Sunday, March 23, 2025

Oathbreaker (short story) Published in Black Cat Weekly today

Cover illustration, dragon and space suited woman, title of magazine Black Cat Weekly and list of contributors including lyle hopwood
Cover, Black Cat Weekly #186

I'm thrilled to announce that my short story "Oathbreaker" appears in Black Cat Weekly #186, out today.

It's the adventure tale of a Welsh professor whose trip to the coast to teach a course on seaweed is hijacked by ghosts who need help rescuing a woman enslaved to a cursed Viking raider a thousand years ago.

Black Cat Weekly is an action-packed magazine - there's an entire novel in this one, along with the usual short stories and features, for just $2.99 (ebook).


 

Wednesday, March 05, 2025

Bioscience Ethics at 50: Asilomar and the beginning of genetic engineering

In 1973 the Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids took place at New Hampton, Hampshire, where advances in recombinant DNA technology were discussed. The scientists had concerns about the ramifications of the new technology. Was there a possibility of harmful organisms escaping the laboratory?

One researcher, Paul Berg (who went on to a very distinguished career and died only recently) was working with SV40, a cancer-producing simian virus (as an aside, SV40 had been accidentally injected into many polio vaccine recipients in the 1950-1960s).  Berg pioneered using restriction enzymes to cut DNA loops and then using other enzymes to rejoin them, creating new combinations of genetic material. Others at the same time were working on similar “recombinant” technology.

Here’s a video of Berg discussing his work and his belief that a “moratorium” of this technology should be called. Partial transcript of the video:

The point was that we were going to be propagating SV40 genes in E. coli. The concern was that E. coli is a natural inhabitant in humans, and the worry was whether we could inadvertently infect humans with the E. coli we were propagating, potentially leading to cancer. This concern sparked intense debate. Depending on where you stood on the issue, you were either vociferous about it or dismissive, saying, "Forget about it. It's not serious."

After many conversations, I became convinced that I could not dismiss the risk and make it zero likelihood. So, I decided to put the whole thing on the shelf, and for a while, the issue died down.

About a year later, Janet Mertz, a graduate student in my lab, discovered that EcoRI made cohesive ends. She found that she could take any two DNAs and join them together. This breakthrough allowed Stan Cohen and Herb Boyer to begin making recombinants using E. coli plasmids, checking for drug resistance, and showing they could create chimeric DNA molecules.

They presented their work at a Gordon Conference, which sparked a similar reaction among a small minority of the audience. Some expressed alarm, saying, "Oh my God, you guys could really make some dangerous things." At that conference, Maxine Singer and Dieter Soll, the co-chairs, were persuaded to draft a letter to the academy, published in Science. The letter highlighted the great promise of being able to create new kinds of DNA molecules while also addressing the possible dangers and risks.

When the president of the academy received the letter, he asked, "What do I do with it?" Maxine suggested, "Call Paul Berg, because he's thought about this problem."


The papers presented at the 1973 Gordon Conference alarmed the proto-molecular biologist conferees, who voted to send a letter to Philip Handler, President of the National Academy of Sciences, about the possible consequences of the new technology. The letter read:

Guidelines for DNA Hybrid Molecules

Those in attendance at the 1973 Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids voted to send the following letter to Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and to John R. Hogness, president of the National Institute of Medicine. A majority also desired to publicize the letter more widely.

We are writing to you, on behalf of a number of scientists, to communicate a matter of deep concern. Several of the reports presented at this year's Gordon Research Conference on Nucleic Acids (June 11—15, 1973, New Hampton. New Hampshire) indicated that we presently have the technical ability to join together, covalently, DNA molecules from diverse sources. Scientific developments over the past two years make it both reasonable and convenient to generate overlapping sequence homologies at the termini of different DNA molecules. The sequence homologies can then be used to combine the molecules by Watson-Crick hydrogen bonding. Application of existing methods permits subsequent covalent linkage of such molecules. This technique could be used, for example, to combine DNA from animal viruses with bacterial DNA, or DNA's of different viral origin might be joined. In this way new kinds of hybrid plasmids or viruses, with biological activity of unpredictable nature, may eventually be created. These experiments offer exciting and interesting potential both for advancing knowledge of fundamental biological processes and for alleviation of human health problems.

Certain such hybrid molecules may prove hazardous to laboratory workers and to the public. Although no hazard has yet been established, prudence suggests that the potential hazard be seriously considered. A majority of those attending the Conference voted to communicate their concern in this matter to you and to the President of the Institute of Medicine (to whom this letter is also being sent). The conferees suggested that the Academies establish a study committee to consider this problem and to recommend specific actions or guidelines, should that seem appropriate. Related problems such as the risks involved in current large-scale preparation of animal viruses might also be considered.

(signed) MAXINE SINGER  DIETER SOLL

From this initial burst of activity, scientists reached a consensus that the as-yet unnamed science of Genetic Engineering should be put under a moratorium. Experiments were to cease until the ramifications could be discussed and amelioration put into place.

The conference meeting was held at Asilomar, in Southern California, in February 1975. The outcome was a set of guidelines for handling recombinant DNA, physically (biological containment facilities) and experimentally (using only hosts that would die outside a laboratory). 

That was 50 years ago.

I wasn’t a “Genetic Engineer” in those days. I’m old, but not that old. I learned about the conference in 1979, as I studied genetics for my degree. 

The burgeoning field of genetics had a vertical take off between the first “restriction enzymes” in the early seventies and the routine gene engineering of the 21st Century. In fact, the modern understanding of heredity is less than two hundred years old: The understanding that for all sexually reproducing species – plant or animal - two parents provide heritable material to an embryo, which can then pass down half its own heritable material to its offspring.

A brief timeline:

1. Mendel's experiments showing that various plant characteristics were not “blends” of their parents’ characteristics: 1865

2. The concept of evolution set down in writing by Darwin. The Origin of Species, 1859, The Descent of Man published on February 24, 1871

3. Mendel’s experiments verified (and rediscovered) by Hugo de Vries, Carl Erich Correns and von Seysenegg, 1900

4. Proof of DNA's role in heredity:  The Hershey-Chase experiment, which demonstrated that DNA, not protein, was the genetic material, 1952

5. Discovery of DNA structure: The double helix structure of DNA was identified by James Watson and Francis Crick in mid-March 1953, with their paper published on April 25, 1953

6. Experiments showing DNA replication: The Meselson-Stahl experiment providing experimental proof of DNA's semiconservative replication: 1958

7. The first paper describing a restriction enzyme published by Hamilton O. Smith, Thomas Kelly, and Kent Wilcox. The isolation and characterization of the type II restriction enzyme Hind II from Haemophilus influenzae: 1970

8. The Human Genome Project:

Started in 1990

Declared complete on April 14, 2003 (covering about 92% of the genome)

"Complete genome" level achieved in May 2021

Final gapless assembly finished in January 2022

Recombinant technology has moved on at a tremendous rate since the seventies. Several other conferences have been held, including this year at the "Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology" conference in February 2025, and work continues.

The Asilomar conference marked the first significant time that researchers stopped and thought, “Just because I can, it doesn’t mean I should.” Scientific Ethics have been in the news again and again after 1975 and there are very good reasons for that.

Another thing that has been in the news over the past few years, as well: the possibility of “lab leaks.”

What did people in 1974 know about lab leaks?

“This [genetic manipulation] would call for technical re-education of the average microbial geneticist or molecular biologist, whose manipulation of bacteria chills the blood of anyone accustomed to handling pathogens.” (Emphasis mine.)

Thank you, Professor E. S. Anderson of Colindale. [Nature (250(5464), 278–280. doi:10.1038/250278b0]

For background, reading, please see Paul Berg's video and/or my earlier posts on Asilomar,

https://peromyscus.blogspot.com/2013/06/genetics-library-project-political.html

https://peromyscus.blogspot.com/2015/03/genetic-engineering-birds-do-it-bees-do.html

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