Jeff VanderMeer was hiking the grassy, swamp-lined pathways of a wildlife refuge outside Tallahassee, Fla., a few years ago when he and a friend found themselves in the path of a charging wild boar. The area is a sea-level palimpsest of wetland and plains, all damp grass and grassy water, much of it as flat as the Serengeti — which made it possible for them to see the animal coming from across a vast, but still alarming, distance.
As the boar barreled toward them, growing slowly but irreversibly larger, VanderMeer felt his fight-or-flight reflexes stir — yet he and his companion still had plenty of time to discuss: Should they run, counting on the boar to wear itself out and lose speed over time? Would it be better to dive off the path and into the abutting reeds, or would they be pursued, forced to defend themselves against a full-grown, razor-toothed hog? Over a half-million feral pigs populate the backwoods of Florida, many the mottled-brown descendants of those brought to North America in 1539 by conquistadors, and though it wasn’t unusual to see them out scavenging peacefully during the day, articles about trappers whose legs had been sliced open by their sharp, curved tusks regularly surfaced in the local news. Eventually, VanderMeer and his friend decided to stand their ground, hoisting their packs like weapons — but then, the boar veered unexpectedly off the path, crashing through the thick stand of reeds and grasses and vanishing into the marsh.
The experience inspired a scene early in “Annihilation” (2014), the first volume of VanderMeer’s breakout novel trilogy “The Southern Reach.” In the book (which was made into a film starring Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac), a small band of women known by only their professional designations (“the biologist,” “the surveyor,” “the psychologist”) explore Area X, a mysterious, expanding zone within which the laws of nature have taken on an alien and forbidding aspect. As the group makes for their camp, they are charged from a distance by an enormous wild hog, the team’s first encounter with the modified fauna of the area. Readying their rifles and long knives as the creature draws closer, their leader shouts orders: Don’t get close to it! Don’t let it touch you! One member of the party, an anthropologist, falls victim to a fit of nervous giggling at “the absurdity of an emergency situation that was taking so long to develop.” As in VanderMeer’s real-life encounter, the beast suddenly turns from the group and disappears into the swampland, and the novel’s narrator notes its strange posture, “its head willfully pulled to the left as if there were an invisible bridle” and its expression “somehow contorted, as if the beast was dealing with an extreme of inner torment.” (continues)
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It’s 2071, and We Have Bioengineered Our Own Extinction
The micro- and macro-organisms that saved humanity from our climate crisis are now changing us — and might destroy us.
By Jeff VanderMeer
Editors’ note: This is part of the Op-Eds From the Future series, in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write Op-Eds that they imagine we might read 10, 50 or even 200 years from now. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments illuminate the urgent questions of today and prepare us for tomorrow. The Opinion piece below is a work of fiction.
In the past two decades, the explosion of unregulated biotechnological advances saved our planet from crossing a climate crisis threshold that would have destroyed human civilization, yet our triumph is overshadowed by a new threat. We are currently in danger of being destroyed by the very organisms — micro and macro — that saved us from extinction via pollution, carbon emissions and superviruses.
Although contractors and rogue biologists did the initial work, the formal application of biotechnology to the climate crisis began in 2048 with the Tardigrade Diaspora and the microbial inventions that followed. This conscious effort to direct the power of biotechnology was enabled not only by the global creation of carbon- and plastic-devouring organisms but, also — to borrow a word from the realm of horticulture — “cultivars” that reduced the probable extinction rates among wild animals and fast-grew even slow-growers like live oaks.
But biotech would not have been enough without a corresponding deep understanding of ecosystems. This understanding occurred in large measure because we finally took indigenous knowledge systems seriously and used land reparations to let firsthand experts turn that knowledge into actual policy, without interference. This was a positive step forward, even though it required a massive realignment of social and political axes and could not stop millions of deaths due to scarcity of food and drinking water in the interim... (continues)
As the boar barreled toward them, growing slowly but irreversibly larger, VanderMeer felt his fight-or-flight reflexes stir — yet he and his companion still had plenty of time to discuss: Should they run, counting on the boar to wear itself out and lose speed over time? Would it be better to dive off the path and into the abutting reeds, or would they be pursued, forced to defend themselves against a full-grown, razor-toothed hog? Over a half-million feral pigs populate the backwoods of Florida, many the mottled-brown descendants of those brought to North America in 1539 by conquistadors, and though it wasn’t unusual to see them out scavenging peacefully during the day, articles about trappers whose legs had been sliced open by their sharp, curved tusks regularly surfaced in the local news. Eventually, VanderMeer and his friend decided to stand their ground, hoisting their packs like weapons — but then, the boar veered unexpectedly off the path, crashing through the thick stand of reeds and grasses and vanishing into the marsh.
The experience inspired a scene early in “Annihilation” (2014), the first volume of VanderMeer’s breakout novel trilogy “The Southern Reach.” In the book (which was made into a film starring Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac), a small band of women known by only their professional designations (“the biologist,” “the surveyor,” “the psychologist”) explore Area X, a mysterious, expanding zone within which the laws of nature have taken on an alien and forbidding aspect. As the group makes for their camp, they are charged from a distance by an enormous wild hog, the team’s first encounter with the modified fauna of the area. Readying their rifles and long knives as the creature draws closer, their leader shouts orders: Don’t get close to it! Don’t let it touch you! One member of the party, an anthropologist, falls victim to a fit of nervous giggling at “the absurdity of an emergency situation that was taking so long to develop.” As in VanderMeer’s real-life encounter, the beast suddenly turns from the group and disappears into the swampland, and the novel’s narrator notes its strange posture, “its head willfully pulled to the left as if there were an invisible bridle” and its expression “somehow contorted, as if the beast was dealing with an extreme of inner torment.” (continues)
==
It’s 2071, and We Have Bioengineered Our Own Extinction
The micro- and macro-organisms that saved humanity from our climate crisis are now changing us — and might destroy us.
By Jeff VanderMeer
Editors’ note: This is part of the Op-Eds From the Future series, in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write Op-Eds that they imagine we might read 10, 50 or even 200 years from now. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments illuminate the urgent questions of today and prepare us for tomorrow. The Opinion piece below is a work of fiction.
In the past two decades, the explosion of unregulated biotechnological advances saved our planet from crossing a climate crisis threshold that would have destroyed human civilization, yet our triumph is overshadowed by a new threat. We are currently in danger of being destroyed by the very organisms — micro and macro — that saved us from extinction via pollution, carbon emissions and superviruses.
Although contractors and rogue biologists did the initial work, the formal application of biotechnology to the climate crisis began in 2048 with the Tardigrade Diaspora and the microbial inventions that followed. This conscious effort to direct the power of biotechnology was enabled not only by the global creation of carbon- and plastic-devouring organisms but, also — to borrow a word from the realm of horticulture — “cultivars” that reduced the probable extinction rates among wild animals and fast-grew even slow-growers like live oaks.
But biotech would not have been enough without a corresponding deep understanding of ecosystems. This understanding occurred in large measure because we finally took indigenous knowledge systems seriously and used land reparations to let firsthand experts turn that knowledge into actual policy, without interference. This was a positive step forward, even though it required a massive realignment of social and political axes and could not stop millions of deaths due to scarcity of food and drinking water in the interim... (continues)
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