The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion

by Lois H. Gresh

  The types of animals that are most easy to manipulate from a genetic standpoint will be the animals used as “genetic stock.” For example, if it turns out that pigs are best suited for genetic engineering, then we’ll see far more pigs than other animals in the “genetic stock” pastures or barns (or warehouses, laboratories, dungeons, prisons—wherever humans produce these poor animals; we can only pray that we’ll allow animals to live in reasonably pleasant environments). On the other hand, if horses are better suited for genetic engineering, then horses will be in abundance instead of pigs.

  If we genetically engineer animals to suit our purposes, then in the long run we may find that we’re destroying entire species, such as the original “pure” pigs, horses, cows, and so forth. If we “manufacture” pigs that are miniature assembly plants of other animals, then the real pigs that cannot give birth to peacock-lions or tuna-cows will go the way of the dodo: extinct. It’s a danger. Or will the last real pigs be in zoos? Will Old MacDonald’s Farm become merely an historical exhibit of stuffed dead animals at the Smithsonian?

  What I’m suggesting, and what the world of The Hunger Games portrays, isn’t as farfetched as you might think. Horrifying: Yes. Realistic: Unfortunately, yes.

  An article in National Geographic warned in 2005 that “Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that’s part human, part animal.”3 The report noted that as early as 2003, Chinese scientists fused human cells and rabbit eggs; that in 2004, the Mayo Clinic created pigs that happened to have human blood instead of pig blood.

  In 2010, the Arizona State Senate enacted a law that makes it illegal to create beast-human hybrids. The law relates to embryonic research, as in transferring nonhuman embryos into human wombs or “transporting or receiving for any purpose a human-animal hybrid.”4 If you want a few laughs, check out http://blogs.laweekly.com/stylecouncil/2010/06/human-animal_hybrids_top_7_now.php, which asks, “Is something weird going on in Arizona? Or are they just being preemptive? In Arizona, Dr. Moreau is not just a creepy guy, he is a class 6 felon.”5 Now-illegal hybrids cited by the LA Weekly blog include The Little Mermaid (fish-human), Firenze (horse-human) from Harry Potter, and the poor Wolfman.

  As National Geographic notes:

  . . . creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion’s head, goat’s body, and serpent’s tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have? There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.6

  If we’re heading toward beast-human hybrids, will we have giant red roses that smell so potent and sweet that they’re nauseating? Of course. Giant roses are possible due to transgenics, and certainly, fragrance requires minimal tinkering. If President Coriolanus Snow needs hyper-sickeningly-sweet roses to cover the reek of blood from his mouth sores, genetically engineered roses would do the trick.

  About the genetic engineering of roses, in particular, Michael Gross, who has a doctorate in physical biochemistry, writes:

  [Researchers] have isolated thousands of pigments from the petals of different varieties of roses, characterized them, tracked down the enzymes involved in their synthesis, and the physiological co nditions required for the proper coloring. After all of this, it dawned on them that blue roses cannot be bred as a matter of principle. All roses known lack the enzyme that would convert the common intermediate dihydrokaempferol to the blue delphinidine-3-glucoside. The only way out of this dilemma is to transfer ‘blue genes’ from different plant species. The DNA sequence encoding the enzyme in petunias could be identified and transferred to petunia mutants whose enzyme was deficient. In principle, it should be possible to transfer the gene into roses as well, and provide them with blue petals.7

  As an aside, plants—whether genetically engineered or naturally occurring—have appeared in dystopian post-apocalyptic novels as the root cause of the actual apocalypse. Forget zombies that eat human bodies. Enter John Wyndham’s human-killing triffids (The Day of the Triffids, 1951). In Wyndham’s dystopian view, humans pushed the boundaries of crop cultivation to feed an ever-growing population while satellites began circling the globe (this was written in 1951, after all). Lo and behold, with nobody really knowing where they came from, millions of triffid seeds floated down from the sky and planted themselves in soil all over the world. They were intelligent, and they ate people. Imagine for a moment: If we can make genetically engineered plants such as gigantic sickeningly sweet roses, we can also make flesh-eating plants. Such plants are known in nature, and cooked in a laboratory, we may end up with triffids some day. This isn’t how Wyndham described the origin of his triffids in 1951, but in a far-future Earth, one never knows.

  Finally, if we can manufacture animal hybrids and totally new types of animals in the lab, someday we might have bird muttations such as jabberjays and mockingjays. The jabberjays operate as spies, hearing and repeating conversations, used initially by the Capitol as weapons against the people. The mockingjays are the result of the mating of these jabberjays with mockingbirds. Again, this isn’t as strange as it sounds. The genetic construction of the jabberjay could indeed include the possibility of mating with mockingbirds.

  As for replicating sounds, birds in the wild—real birds that haven’t been genetically altered in any way—are very attuned to vocal sounds and learn melodies at an extremely young age.

  Some real birds, such as parrots and parakeets, can replicate human words. In fact, there’s a parrot named N’Kisi that reportedly knows anywhere from 560 to 950 human words. According to USA Today, the parrot’s abilities to communicate with humans are impressive, though along with many other sources, USA Today isn’t quite so sure about the purported telepathic capabilities of the bird.8 (If you had a parrot who could have conversations with humans, would you also claim a telepathy angle? Isn’t it enough that the bird possesses such an amazing vocabulary?) Many researchers with impressive credentials do point out that parrots do far more than mimic sounds: They can analyze and think before they “speak.”

  As for replicating warbles, deep tones, and songs with multiple verses (for example, see The Hunger Games, 43, and Catching Fire, 92), real mockingbirds are known for mimicry. They imitate the songs of nuthatches, wrens, cardinals, purple martins, blue jays, kestrels, kingfishers, woodpeckers, gray catbirds, swallow-tailed kites, flickers, and other birds. A mockingbird will imitate calls from one type of bird repeatedly, then follow directly after with songs from other birds. Three phrases, four, five, six, eight: It doesn’t matter to mockingbirds, for they just instinctively know how to imitate the sounds and will rapidly mix them as if they’re some electronic wizard spinning sounds on mixed recordings. Within one minute, a mockingbird may produce fifteen or twenty different songs. Within ten minutes, it can produce as many as 200 songs in total. And within thirty minutes, more than 450. However, the male mockingbird does seem to make up songs as he goes along, and he also increases his repertoire and creativity when trying to attract females.

  On expert, Donald Kroodsma, a Professor Emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Visiting Fellow at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, estimates that the male mockingbird might know 100 different songs, and he points out that other expert researchers put the number at 200 different songs, at 167, and at 148. The numbers vary from bird to bird, from researcher to researcher because the “males increase their vocabulary size from one year to the next,” says Kroodsma. “The mind of the mocker is dynamic, never completely settled, as he continually changes all that he can say.”9

  Among bird experts, the mockingbird is known as the ultimate learner of songs with a phenomenal ability to mimic new sounds. Any society, such as the Capitol, that can genetically create such a wide variety of animal muttations in the lab can also create a jabberjay that remembers and repeats human sou
nds. Assuming jabberjays mated with mockingbirds, it’s not a stretch to think that the resulting mockingjays can mimic human vocal sounds and repeat songs. Just as the Capitol figures the mockingjay will never survive in the long run, they underestimate the ability of the true mockingjay—Katniss—to survive, as well.

  AD 2001–NOW

  As 2001 rolled into place and none of the apocalyptic prophecies centered on AD 1999 and 2000 came true, the predictions died down. But they didn’t entirely cease, of course. That would be contrary to human nature.

  Added to the doomsday mania was the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The horrors of this particular day somehow wasn’t foreseen by any of the doomsday prophets.

  And now, we’re back to “same old, same old,” with people predicting the coming of Armageddon, nuclear holocaust, a pole shift, aliens, UFOs, flying saucers, plagues, etc.

  The Hunger Games series contains quite a bit of speculative science, the stuff of traditional science fiction. Several of the most obvious are the muttations, including the mockingjays and the tracker jacker venom. But the books include other forms of science that either already exist or will exist in the very near future. Examples are the zapping force fields on the rooftops and in the arena; the night-vision glasses; the body armor; Peeta’s prosthetic leg; the high-tech showers; the automatic clothing and food devices; and the Holo contraption. Because the speculative science is part of the “wow” factor of the entire Hunger Games phenomenon, we’ll touch upon a few of these topics; but keep in mind that the science is really quite minor in the series compared to other subjects: hunger, survival, love, death (and its many ways of happening), evil, torture, weapons, repressive regimes, strength, honor, ethics, determination, and even compassion in the face of terrible odds.

  Let’s begin with the force fields, which are used several times throughout The Hunger Games series. For example, in the first book, when Peeta and Katniss are at the edge of the Training Center roof in the Capitol, Peeta tells her that he asked Cinna why the officials don’t worry about tributes leaping to their deaths. The reason is that there’s a force field that tosses people back on the roof if they try to jump off. In Catching Fire, we learn that Haymitch won his Hunger Games when the girl from District 1 threw an ax at him, he ducked, the ax flew over a ledge, and then, bam! the ax hit a force field and flew back up and buried itself in her (Catching Fire, 202). And of course, Peeta and Katniss encounter a force field, as well, during training; it protects the Gamemakers from the tributes. Finally, there’s a force field in the Catching Fire arena.

  Force fields are common gimmicks in science fiction. They seem to be in almost every episode of Star Trek. They’re typically used like invisible walls and deflector shields. Force fields are still the stuff of science fiction more than science reality. However, some progress is being made in developing them.

  In 2010, British researchers described new force-field technology that they’re developing to protect military vehicles from incoming fire. As described by science correspondent Richard Gray, “When a threat from incoming fire is detected by the vehicle, the energy stored in the supercapacitor [in the armor of the vehicle] can be rapidly dumped onto the metal plating on the outside of the vehicle, producing a strong electromagnetic field.”1

  Then there’s the Trophy Active Defense System (ADS) that a company called RAFAEL developed along with the Israeli Defense Research and Development Directorate. According to officials at General Dynamics, which bought the force-field technology from RAFAEL, “the system demonstrated effective neutralization of antitank rockets and guided missiles, high safety levels, insignificant residual penetration and minimal collateral damage.”2

  As for night-vision glasses, you can easily obtain these devices now, and they do enable you to see objects that are two hundred yards or more away—in total darkness. Rue tells Katniss that the officials supply a few kids with night-vision glasses during harvest season so the work can continue after dark.

  Apparently, the Capitol has an excellent type of body armor, and when Cato’s wearing it, Katniss just can’t seem to kill him. But the mutts eventually chew and destroy the full-length body armor and nearly kill him (The Hunger Games, 335–37).

  Body armor has existed since the beginning of human history. For thousands of years, every advance in weaponry brought an equal advance in personal armor, until the invention of guns and cannons in the sixteenth century changed the world. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that armor managed to catch up with weaponry, but just barely.

  Bulletproof vests provide the user with some protection against gunfire, but all too often, not enough. A modern bulletproof vest doesn’t use metal but high-tech woven fibers to protect the wearer.

  This soft body armor is based on the principle of spreading the energy at the point of impact of a bullet (or other missile) over a wide area. This dispersal occurs using an interlaced net of anchored tethers that form an interlocking pattern, which absorbs the energy no matter where the projectile hits. In most bulletproof clothing, long, thin strands of Kevlar fiber make up the netting. Kevlar is a lightweight fiber made by DuPont that is five times stronger than a similar piece of steel. When thickly woven, Kevlar is extremely dense and almost impossible for a regular bullet to penetrate.

  The momentum from a bullet is often powerful enough to break bones, which is why bulletproof vests are usually made from several layers of woven, twisted Kevlar netting and layers of plastic film. The plastic film helps spread the force of the impact from the bullet over a wide space, thus lessening the blunt trauma caused by the projectile. To increase the protection offered by soft body armor, ceramic and metal plates are often inserted in pockets in the front of the armor.

  Even more advanced, a human exoskeleton suit consists of a robotic-type device that can be strapped on or attached directly to the human body. The device adds muscle power for heavy lifting, long-range running, and walking. It also enables the user to wear heavy armor without being affected by the weight.

  It seems unlikely that the Capitol has provided tributes with exoskeletons. After all, the tributes aren’t leaping extraordinary heights, running incredibly fast as if barely on the ground, or functioning as if they have artificial pneumatic muscles. Besides, if the tributes were protected by exoskeleton armor, the Games would cease to amuse the Capitol and its citizens.

  As for Peeta’s prosthetic metal-and-plastic leg, every reader of this book knows that these devices are available now. Prosthetic limbs are artificial replacements of flesh-and-blood limbs.

  Peg legs are the simplest type of prostheses, and they have no electronic components. Another simple type of artificial appendage is an arm that ends with pincers rather than a hand with fingers; this simple limb is attached to whatever is left of the patient’s real arm. It is also attached to a harness that is strapped around the patient’s shoulders. When the patient moves his shoulder, the harness moves, pulling cables that open and close the hooks.

  However, far more sophisticated devices do exist. Dynamic protheses contain electronic components and are based on myoelectric properties. In short, a myoelectric prosthesis contains sensors that respond to the electricity created by the movement of flesh-and- blood muscles. When a patient tenses his muscle—say, in his upper arm—the sensors in the prosthetic portion of his arm detect the myoelectric transmission and sends the corresponding signals to the artificial hand. Run by batteries, the hand opens or closes. Some prosthetic limbs even have sensors that detect temperature. These devices send hot and cold information to electrodes in the skin, enabling a patient to “feel” with his prosthetic limbs.

  Today’s advances include artificial feet that cushion the body on the ground as if they are real; and feet with electronic components that enable patients to balance their weight more evenly. For example, the Elation Flex-Foot contains “flex-foot technology” along with adjustable heel heights. The Elation Flex-Foot automatically adjusts its mechanical pi
eces—known as foot blades and rocker plates—based on the amount of weight placed upon it. If a patient is heavier than average, if he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, or if he leans heavily in one direction, the foot blade presses more strongly against the rocker plate, thus changing the cushioning or impact of the foot against the ground. According to the makers of the Elation Flex-Foot, “A narrow, anatomically correct foot cover with a sandal toe contour is bonded to the foot, making it suitable for dress shoes, sandals, cowboy boots and other types of footwear.”3

  Prosthetic devices are commonly made from carbon fibers, titanium, and polypropylenes, which are flexible plastics. Prostheses can be constructed of a bulletproof material called Kevlar. To make limbs really strong, a prosthetic can be devised of a layer of carbon, a layer of Kevlar, and another layer of carbon.

  According to Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry Magazine,4 much research is being done to create materials that emulate human muscles. For example, a full-size plastic skeleton named Mr. Boney roams around the University of New Mexico Artificial Muscle Research Institute. Mr. Boney’s microprocessor-controlled heart pumps a chemical fluid through his body, and this fluid is what actuates his artificial muscles.

  One major “wow” feature of The Hunger Games series are the high-tech shower, closet, and food dispenser that Katniss uses in the Training Center. She can choose more than a hundred options for her water, shampoo, oils, and sponges; and she can also instruct her closet to create clothing for her. Right out of the old Jetsons cartoon, she can mention the name of a tasty food, and within a minute, get a plate of it (The Hunger Games, 75).

  So how is all of this done?

  I wrote a novel called TechnoLife 2020 (ECW Press, 2001), in which Joe Leinster, my main character, uses a lot of smart devices: doors that recognize him and open; home butler systems that prepare foods and clothing; showers that adjust to his needs; surfaces that require no dusting.