Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
THE 2076 ROACHSTER
WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMMING…
THE COMING OF THE MAYFLOWER
SOCIAL CLIMBER
LOST LUGGAGE
SING A SONG OF PORKCHOPS
DOWN ON THE TRUCK FARM
MATCHMAKER
HARD TIMES
THE HOMEMAKER
THE LAST WORD
THE PRICE
SPARROWHAWK
GREENHOUSE
WOODSMAN
THE TOWER OF THE GODS
SEEDS OF DESTINY
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
COPYRIGHT INFO
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2016 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
* * * *
The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
* * * *
The 2076 Roachster,” Road Test, November 1976
“When Life Hands You a Lemming,” Analog, May 1989
“The Coming of the Mayflower,” The Sterling Web, Summer 1989
“Hard Times,” Lan’s Lantern, May 1988
“Social Climber,” Pulphouse 2, Winter 1988
“Lost Luggage,” Starshore, Summer 1990
“Sing a Song of Porkchops,” Aboriginal SF, September-October 1989
“Down on the Truck Farm,” Magazine of Fantasy &Science Fiction, March 1990
“Matchmaker,” Analog, August 1990
“The Homemaker”
“The Last Word”
“The Price,” Rigel, Fall 1982
Sparrowhawk, serialized in Analog, October, November, December 1989 (New York: Ace Books,1990; Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000).
Greenhouse (New York: Ace Books, 1991; Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000).
Woodsman (New York: Ace Books, 1992; Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000).
Tower of the Gods (New York: Ace Books, 1993; Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000).
Seeds of Destiny (New York: Ace Books, 1994; Gillette, NJ: Wildside Press, 2000).
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
This volume collects, for the first time, all of Thomas A. Easton’s GMO-themed work: 12 stories and 5 novels…more than 1,400 pages of great reading. Please see the “Author’s Introduction” for more background info.
Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or use the message boards above.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
In the early 1970s, scientists first discovered that it was technically possible to move genes--biological material that determines a living organism’s physical makeup--from one organism to another and thus (in principle) to give bacteria, plants, and animals new features and to correct genetic diseases. The scientists were excited, but many people found the prospects alarming. Some even argued that genetic engineering (or gengineering) should be banned at the outset, before unforeseeable horrors were unleashed.
But the research went on. Today gene therapy is a reality (though it is still in very early stages) and foreign genes have been added to mice, tobacco plants, and many crop plants. Nor have the fears subsided. Despite a thorough lack of evidence that gengineered crops pose any hazards to humans or nature, protestors lobby against the technology. Some are so violently opposed that they destroy fields where new varieties are being tested. They want the technology banned, for it is unnatural. The old ways are best, despite the fact that the old ways are not up to feeding a growing human population.
My own response to this technology was on the more enthusiastic side. The first story in this collection, “The 2076 Roachster,” appeared in 1976 in Road Test magazine, as an imagining of a “tricentennial car.” Through the eighties, I continued to imagine where the technology might go. Then I turned to novels, and almost immediately after Sparrowhawk (1989, 1990) appeared, with its depictions of computer-controlled gengineered animals, scientists announced “robo-rats” and “robo-roaches.” A few years later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA; famous for its role in inventing the Internet, among other things) started working on “cyber-bugs.”
The next novel was Greenhouse (1991). Among its depictions were plants with built-in electronics. You could grow a computer complete with keyboard and monitor! And in November 2015, scientists announced that they had managed to implant electronic circuitry in a rose bush. And the opposition to gengineering has been growing, just as the stories predict.
My visions of the future might seem over the top, but so far--despite being fiction--they have come close to the mark. Will they continue to do so? I deliberately set the time of the stories well ahead of now (Sparrowhawk happens in 2044, when--strictly by coincidence--I will be 100), so there is time to hit many more marks. The most important mark, however, lies in the stories’ continuing insistence that gengineering is capable of wonders. It can reshape much more than crop plants
Gengineering is still a technological infant, barely taking its first baby steps. Just wait till some geeky teenager uses a home gengineering kit (simple ones are already available from Amazon) to do strange things with Mama’s African violets! Watch for pumpkin houses and giant bean stalks straight out of Mother Goose, sports cars that run away and go to sea, a garbage disposal that wants a career as a singer, moving vans that fly through the air with the greatest of ease—and wild moving vans that are the answer to that plaintive airport cry of “Where’s my luggage?”
All this and more is to be found in these pages. Is it terrifying? Or exciting?
Your choice will determine just how likely the last three novels may be.
—Thomas A. Easton
October, 2016
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1970s, scientists first discovered that it was technicall
y possible to move genes—biological material that determines a living organism’s physical makeup—from one organism to another and thus (in principle) to give bacteria, plants, and animals new features and to correct genetic diseases. The scientists were excited, but many people found the prospects alarming. Some even argued that genetic engineering (or gengineering) should be banned at the outset, before unforeseeable horrors were unleashed.
But the research went on. Today gene therapy is a reality (though it is still in very early stages) and foreign genes have been added to mice, tobacco plants, and many crop plants. Nor have the fears subsided. Despite a thorough lack of evidence that gengineered crops pose any hazards to humans or nature, protestors lobby against the technology. Some are so violently opposed that they destroy fields where new varieties are being tested. They want the technology banned, for it is unnatural. The old ways are best, despite the fact that the old ways are not up to feeding a growing human population.
My own response to this technology was on the more enthusiastic side. The first story in this collection, “The 2076 Roachster,” appeared in 1976 in Road Test magazine, as an imagining of a “tricentennial car.” Through the eighties, I continued to imagine where the technology might go. Then I turned to novels, and almost immediately after Sparrowhawk (1989, 1990) appeared, with its depictions of computer-controlled gengineered animals, scientists announced “robo-rats” and “robo-roaches.” A few years later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA; famous for its role in inventing the Internet, among other things) started working on “cyber-bugs.”
The next novel was Greenhouse (1991). Among its depictions were plants with built-in electronics. You could grow a computer complete with keyboard and monitor! And in November 2015, scientists announced that they had managed to implant electronic circuitry in a rose bush. And the opposition to gengineering has been growing, just as the stories predict.
My visions of the future might seem over the top, but so far—despite being fiction—they have come close to the mark. Will they continue to do so? I deliberately set the time of the stories well ahead of now (Sparrowhawk happens in 2044, when—strictly by coincidence—I will be 100), so there is time to hit many more marks. The most important mark, however, lies in the stories’ continuing insistence that gengineering is capable of wonders. It can reshape much more than crop plants
Gengineering is still a technological infant, barely taking its first baby steps. Just wait till some geeky teenager uses a home gengineering kit (simple ones are already available from Amazon) to do strange things with Mama’s African violets! Watch for pumpkin houses and giant bean stalks straight out of Mother Goose, sports cars that run away and go to sea, a garbage disposal that wants a career as a singer, moving vans that fly through the air with the greatest of ease—and wild moving vans that are the answer to that plaintive airport cry of “Where’s my luggage?”
All this and more is to be found in these pages. Is it terrifying? Or exciting?
Your choice will determine just how likely the last three novels may be.
Thomas A. Easton
October, 2016
THE 2076 ROACHSTER
The following prophetic report first appeared, in slightly different form, in the November 1976 issue of Road Test magazine. Almost immediately it prompted “news” stories in The National Enquirer and Omni. Go figure!
With the final exhaustion of the fossil fuels in 2018 and the tragic failure of the Federal Fermentation Program half a century ago, it was only natural that the world turned the clock back to meet its needs for transportation. Horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, and even dogs were pressed into service in various places and times, and the problems of sanitation and stabling they brought in their wake were quickly solved.
But they cost our grandfathers one of their most valued pleasures. They met the needs of the commuters, the shoppers, and those who never drove their cars (remember them?) more than a few miles. They did not meet the needs of those who liked to escape from their city homes and cruise through the countryside, covering 100 or 200 or even more miles in a day at high speed. Resorts suffered. Summer homes were sold for a pittance. And the Interstate Highways were allowed to decay. All long-distance travel had to be done by rail, and if you couldn’t get there on a train, you mostly didn’t go.
Two generations grew up with these restrictions on their freedom. They accommodated themselves to a narrow-gauge world without even knowing they were doing so. And they would never have known what they were missing if it were not for General Bodies, the firm which first gave us the Sui Generator and made it possible to turn our garbage into a richly fermentable manure.
A decade ago, GB’s bioengineers began to address their efforts to the problem of transportation. They reasoned that a fast and efficient personal vehicle was still needed and that they were the only ones likely to provide it. Machines were impossible for lack of fuel, and animals were too slow. They would therefore produce a vehicle which was both alive, so it could run on such fuels as hay, and wheeled, so it could achieve convenient speeds.
It would also, of course, be large enough to carry up to four passengers and their luggage, breathe air, go for many miles between stops, and be easily controllable. It sounded like an impossible order to fill, and indeed the first models were shabby, crippled affairs, not even comparable to a pushcart. But GB did succeed in the end: this year it introduced a truly successful replacement for the automobile, and we can once more know the pleasure of the open road.
How did they do it? The only simple step was choosing the kind of animal to start with. It had to have the potential of growing wheels, which meant it had to be a hardshelled insect or crustacean. In fact, it had to be both, the one for its lungs (or spiracles) and the other for its size.
They thus began with a cockroach and a lobster and took a few thousand cells from each. They then fused the cells, a pair at a time, into hybrid cells and grew them into half-roach, half-lobster chimeras. Since the cell fusion process is not perfect, but usually results in the loss of some of the genetic information from each “parent,” the resulting creatures varied greatly, allowing GB’s bioengineers to pick several which showed promise.
The next step was to grind each prototype into its constituent cells, irradiate them to produce mutations, and grow a second crop of adults. They could then select a new generation of likely prospects and repeat the process until they had an air-breathing creature over ten feet long and covered with enormous hollow warts. Only then did they turn the technology of genetic surgery to the task of giving the beast wheels.
Since a lobster’s or cockroach’s shell is laid down by an underlying membrane, and since the chimera’s warts were only in the shell, they were able to adjust the genes which controlled the shell-making membrane’s behavior. When they were done, the membrane produced two layers of shell instead of one. The layers were joined in such a way that they could be cut to leave a wheel turning upon a central pivot.
The last step was one more round of grinding, irradiating, and cloning to select specimens with a wheel-wart beneath each leg and another, larger wart atop the thorax to be used as a passenger compartment. The resulting creatures could not, however, move—the wheels interfered with the action of the legs. It has taken all of the last four years to produce a model whose legs are not only hinged backward, but are also small enough and mounted high enough on the body wall to run atop the wheels, thus propelling the Roachster along the road.
The first production models went to police departments around the country, who found the heavy claws, retained from the original lobster, very convenient. But it was not long before clawless models were offered to the public. They were snapped up so quickly that GB could not keep up with the demand. Waiting lists grew to unreasonable lengths, and not even RT could get its hands on a test model in less than eight months.
The wait
was well worth it, however. I have been privileged to frive a 1978 Volkswagen for a mile and a half—as far as half a pint of bootleg gasoline would take it—and the 2076 Roachster is definitely an improvement. It is smoother and quieter at low speeds, and it handles nearly as deftly. It is roomier and offers more sheer comfort. And it is cheaper to operate than even the Volkswagen was in its heyday.
When you visit the GB dealer to pick up your Roachster, the first thing that strikes you is the beast’s sheer size. The photos in the brochure are no clue to the truth—over twenty feet long and seven feet high, it dwarfs all possible conception of an insect or lobster. But at the same time, its ancestry is unmistakable. The stalked eyes are flanked by headlights, the antennae are covered with filigreed metal tubes, the mouth parts are tucked neatly behind a rubber bumper, and the eight legs are precisely positioned over their matching wheels.
The second is the way the Roachster seems all one piece. The only additions to the animal body are the bumper and the various pieces of electrical equipment—the lights, antenna sheaths, radio, control board, and air-injection pumps—and even they are sculpted and colored to blend into the Roachster’s own contours. The passenger compartment—walls, seats, and doors—is genetically tailored to require an absolute minimum of modification. All the engineers needed to do was make a few cuts and install glass, hinges, and upholstery.
When you climb into the driver’s seat, you are amazed at the comfort. There is plenty of legroom, the control board is in easy reach, visibility is nearly perfect, and the seat itself fits you like a skin. And the slight quiver of the underlying muscles is a pleasant allusion to the power you are about to tap.
The inconspicuous control board bears no steering wheel, and there are no floor pedals. Instead there are a simple right-left slide and a throttle knob, both wired directly into the Roachster’s nervous system. These two controls are mounted just below a curving display of meters and indicator lights, and they fall as easily to hand as a set of reins. To start the Roachster, you turn the board on, twist the throttle to “slow,” and use the slide to steer it onto the test track. To stop it, you pull the throttle knob toward you, whereupon the legs cease driving the wheels and the spiked tail digs into the ground to slow you down.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 1
