Bio-tech in Scifi

[Warren]

Parts is parts

Science fiction prepared the public for many of the advances of the 20th Century.
We were psychologically ready for the moon landing.
I don't see that happening with bio-tech.
We've advance medically more in the past ten years then in the last thousand.
We appear to be on the edge of another industrial revolution
except this time it involves our bodies rather then machines.
Yet it's seldom included in sci-fi stores.
Very odd.

from the US Department of Health and Human Services 
-within 20 years regenerative medicine will be the standard of care for replacing all tissue/organ systems in the body
-… regenerative medicine could begin producing results within 5 years. At the 5-year mark, complex skin, cartilage, bone, and blood vessel products would begin to reach markets. Within 10 years, organ patches that repair damaged tissues would potentially be available. Within 20 years, full organ regeneration is a strong possibility.
-regenerative medicine has potential to exceed $500 billion in the next 20 years

http://medicine.osu.edu/regenerativem...

[Aloha]

This is very interesting. I think maybe it's not in SF as much because it doesn't have the action/drama/sexy potential as much as some of the other ideas. I think this would have been a more original and compelling idea in The Windup Girl, rather than genetic modification and bio-terrorism. I wonder how that could fit into a plot to make it into a breathtaking SF?

[Warren]

Replaceable body parts and longevity change almost any story line.
It doesn't have to be the main point but it should exist.
If your writing science fiction (emphasis on science)
its part of the landscape. It's like leaving out airplanes or electricity.

I don't think that an imaginative author will have too much trouble
developing a story that involves the effect of age roll back. (AKA- Old Mans War)
In fact I wonder what effect this will have on insurance rates. Olds folks with fresh new bodies. A "hold my beer and watch this" attitude.

[Charles]

Ummmm, there's the sub-genre Biopunk, which does just what the OP was describing...

[Warren]

I'm not talking about genres or tropes.
We're on the edge of another Industrial revolution.
This time involving bodies rather then machine.
I'll drop it.

[Celtic]

There's a fair amount of advanced biotech featured in Neal Asher's novels; though as background elements rather than the focus.

[Ulmer Ian]

There's plenty of books about the effects of longevity. The one off the top of my head is the Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson and his book in the same continuity 2312. Kim Stanley Robinson really pays attention to the sociological effects of new technology. 2312 especially is about people having a mid-life crisis when they're in their 150s. :)

Have you read any singularity fiction Warren? I have a goodreads book shelf of it if you need examples. It addresses the potential changes of bio-engineering by making it irrelevant.

[Dharmakirti]

I can't remember how China Mieville describes the technology of the aliens in his novel Embassytown but it was some of the more interesting bio-tech (organic-tech?) that I've read.

[Trike]

Warren wrote: "Replaceable body parts and longevity change almost any story line.
It doesn't have to be the main point but it should exist.
If your writing science fiction (emphasis on science)
its part of the landscape. It's like leaving out airplanes or electricity.

I don't think that an imaginative author will have too much trouble
developing a story that involves the effect of age roll back. (AKA- Old Mans War)
In fact I wonder what effect this will have on insurance rates. Olds folks with fresh new bodies. A "hold my beer and watch this" attitude."

To make an assertion like this, I'm guessing you just haven't read very widely in the genre.

Virtually every single one of John Varley's novels and short stories deal with this sort of thing. Many of Joe Haldeman's works do, as well. The excellent novel Buying Time is all about longevity and its impact on society. (And the lessons derived from it are particularly apropos during this election season.)

Bruce Sterling's excellent cyberpunk novel from 1994, Heavy Weather, has a sub-plot dealing with advances in medicine and the regulations surrounding them. In fact, lots of cyberpunk from the 80s and 90s deals with the biological revolution, what with their desktop DNA devices and garage-band-style genetic tinkering. Not just the obvious ones like Gibson and Sterling, but also Pat Cadigan.

Paul McAuley's The Quiet War series deals with biotechnology as part of the world-building, but most of his novels have that sort of thing in them. (He's a botanist.) McAuley's 1991 short story Gene Wars is biotech through and through. I just recently finished Alan Dean Foster's novel Body, Inc. (Which I didn't like, but it's part of a series that has biotech as a main feature.)

Wil McCarthy's 1998 novel Bloom talks about genetic engineering going very badly. I just got The Games by Ted Kosmatka from the library. The description on the flap is dodgy, but it might be a fun beach read -- it's at least timely because it deals with genetically-engineered creatures battling in Olympic gladiator games.

And you can't even have this conversation without mentioning Huxley's brilliant 1931 book Brave New World, with genetics run amok.

In cinema, you have movies such as Gattaca and In Time by Andrew Niccol, 1997 and 2011 respectively. Children of Men has genetics as the driving force of the story. But even going back into the past you have excellent films such as The Island of Lost Souls based on The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. More recently there was Splice and other not-as-good films.

I could go on, but if you're really interested in the field, look up Biopunk.

[Warren]

Thank you for the book suggestions.
I'm not articulating my point so I'll drop it.