Biohacking is an umbrella term comprising synthetic biology, DIY science, bodyhacking, and health optimization
Elsa Sotiriadis, synthetic biologist
Biohackers, currently streaming on Netflix, is a fast-paced techno-thriller created by Christian Ditter with synthetic biology at the very center of its intrigue. In the journal Science Dov Greenbaum describes the German show as “a fictional tale centred around the sociotechnological movement known as do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, in which amateurs, professionals, anarchists, and civic-minded citizens push the boundaries of mainstream biology.” Greenbaum describes the show’s main characters as “a wealthy biopharmaceutical executive, a group of medical students, a number of stereotypical biohackers, and a community of transhumanists intent on modifying their bodies for seemingly impractical endeavors.” The show stars Luna Wedler as Mia Akerlund and Jessica Schwarz as Professor Tanja Lorenz; but the real star of the show is biohacking: human enhancement or augmentation to improve health, performance, or well-being. Biohacking ranges from efforts to improve brain function to faster weight loss. Some are relatively safe to try at home; others may pose health risks. Among others, the show features glow-in-the-dark mice, gene-modded weed, underwater pills that extend your ability to hold your breath, and payment microchips in your hand.
Scientist in hazmat suit confronts Mia, the soul survivor of bioterrorism on a train to Berlin
Biohackers opens with a disturbing scene of bioterrorism on a train headed to Berlin. All passengers suddenly choke and fall unconscious—except for young med student Mia Akerlund, who tries to help and fails.*
From that explosive flash-forward scene, the show jumps back to two weeks prior, as college freshman Mia settles into Freiburg University’s prestigious medical school, and betrays a particular interest in synthetic biology, biohacking and genome editing. We soon learn that she is obsessed by celebrated professor and geneticist/entrepreneur Tanja Lorenz (who runs a biopharmaceutical company and has an entire building dedicated to her research with huge neon logo of her name). Both women are connected by a dark secret to do with Mia’s twin brother who mysteriously died when still a boy. Mia quickly gains a position working for Lorenz, which plunges her into the dangerous intrigue of illegal genetic experiences.
“The truth will set you free” inscribed on the collegiate building of Freiburg University
A touching reflection of Mia’s quest sits emblazoned on the front façade of the collegiate building, where she has her first class: in gold letters, is the inscription “Die Wahrheit wird euch frei Machen” (The truth will set you free) from the Gospel of John. Ironically, we soon realize that she is a purveyor of many secrets, including her own name.
Lorenz lectures students
An early, rather enlightening, scene of the first episode is of Mia’s first introductory biology class given by celebrated gene therapy tycoon Professor Lorenz. Not only does the scene introduce the controversial subject of synthetic biology; it reveals a disturbing sense of what’s at stake and the danger of scientific hubris. Tall, svelte and confident in a smart haircut and tailored suit, Lorenz struts like a self-proclaimed goddess in front of a student-crowded lecture hall and preaches the benefits of synthetic biology. When she asks the class “What is synthetic biology?” and a student replies “with the help of synthetic biology, we can alter existing life forms or create new ones,” Lorenz prickles beyond her already frosty demeanor and impatiently berates the students for their lack of vision. She challenges them to think bigger: “Synthetic biology transforms us from creatures into creators. It’s not just the future of medicine, but of humankind. We can cease entire infections before the outbreak … We eliminate genetic disorders. But if we don’t do our work exceedingly well, it could end our species. It is on us to find a way; this is your future. Your responsibility. You are the creators of tomorrow. We make God obsolete…”
Lorenz obtains throat swab for DNA sequencing from a patient in a fertility clinical trial as Mia looks on
Mia uses Jasper (Adrian Julius Tillmann) one of Lorenz’s teaching assistants to get herself noticed and hired by Lorenz and we are soon introduced to the glossy Lorenz Excellence Centre, a prestigious biopharmaceutical firm. Mia also discovers that Lorenz keeps her illegally obtained DNA database and does illicit gene therapy work in a secret well-equipped lab in her home. Mia is after that database to prove what she fears is true.
Mia helps Jasper capture his glow-in-the-dark mouse, that had escaped in the library
The first season (of two) unravels an unconventional conspiracy plot delivered through slow-building suspense, using flashbacks and flash-forwards, until its cliffhanger ending. Science, academia and intrigue are skillfully woven in an intelligent mystery-thriller that not only represents science accurately but delivers commentary on the ethical and moral questions of this highly dynamic and rapidly evolving field of science.
Speaking of rapidly evolving field, I found it interesting that Dr. Lorenz makes note of this in one of her lectures in the show; after singling out Mia for relying on sources other than the textbook to solve a problem, Lorenz literally trashes the textbook in front of the class with a pithy comment on its being already out of date due to the dynamic nature of the field. I ran across this in my own experience as a university student in the field of cell physiology; my prof negated using a textbook, and instead suggested a huge list of journals for our edification.
Biohackers touches on several ethical and moral questions, such as genetic modification of stem cells, access to advanced gene therapies, and privacy and consent surrounding genomic data. Synthetic biologist Elsa Sotiriadis warns that, “this topic will likely become an ethical minefield in the coming years. On the one hand, we need large and diverse datasets to train medical AI and develop therapies. But on the other, there’s nothing as personal as your literal blueprint. Unlike stolen credit cards, you can’t change your genomic data. I like that Biohackers brings this up.”
Mia’s roomates enjoy a biohacker’s party
Dov Grenbaum’s article in the journal Scienceentitled “Biology’s brave new world” celebrates the show for its accurate representation of complex laboratory equipment and procedures and how it accurately represents the intricacies, motivations and ethical issues of biohacking from sophisticated big-business gene therapies to DIY homespun biology. Jasper, Lorenz’s teaching assistant, has his own biohackspace where he develops the gene therapy for his rare genetic disease. It’s housed off-campus in a makeshift van on some scrubby property in the woods. With professional lab machines being extremely expensive, Jasper relies on DIY lab equipment.
Jasper in his off-campus biohackspace
Smartlab Architects helped make Biohackers as technologically accurate as possible and connected the directors with lab industry experts to create the modern labs and DIY biohacker space featured in the Netflix series. They also take you on a brief tour of Jasper’s biohackspace set up and equipment.
Professor Lorenz’s university lab in the Lorenz Excellence Centre, where she runs her official studies and where Jasper and Mia work, was actually located in LMU Biocampus Martinsried and used by students and professors for their regular research.
Lorenz interrogates Jasper in the lab of her Excellence Center
Smartlab Architects also designed Professor Lorenz’s secret private lab located in the basement of her mansion: “We designed this lab with the goal to build he most futuristic automated and sexy laboratory one could imagine.”
Jasper and Mia in Lorenz’s secret lab in her house
Thanks to the emergence of the open-source movement, greater access to reagents and devices, lowered costs of sequencing costs, and increased access of tools and methodologies for non-experts, expensive genetic engineering experiments that could previously only be carried out behind the walls of big institutions can now be done on a kitchen table with ingredients bought on eBay. For instance, there is Chen-Lu (Jing Xiang), the “introverted nerd,” a DIY biologist who genetically modifies fungi and plants (to make beef-tasting mushrooms or to create a bio-piano); Ole (Sebastian Jakob Doppelbauer) does various bodyhacking self-experiments and uses an NFC microchip in his hand to pay in shops. It’s worth noting here that biohacking is illegal in Germany.
Sotiriadis notes that, “the cut-throat Machiavellian culture of Lorenz’s secretive big-budget lab clashes with the free-spirited biohackers who are engineering mushrooms with new flavours to make livestock farming obsolete and “CRISPR together” in a camper van lab in the woods and at home. It’s a nicely captured contrast.”
Sotiriadis adds that, “the series shows experiments as multi-step scientific protocols that sometimes go wrong, which is refreshing.” Sotiriadis further describes the show as: “Part revenge plot, part young adult love drama, part dismantling a large-scale conspiracy; the unconventional pieces sometimes move smoothly together and sometimes clash, but the plot is glued together with lots of visually appealing synthetic biology experiments and bioluminescent matter of diverse natures.”
Greenbaum has the last words: Biohackers “serves as a pedagogical vehicle to raise many timely and interesting ethical, legal, and social concerns. From bioluminescent mammals to the collection of genetic material for clinical trials, the series’ storyline highlights how cavalierly we sometimes approach genomic data and genetic engineering.” Greenbaum cites one of the characters who suggests that the ends of her research justify the experimental means, even though her methods demonstrate a gross disregard for test subjects who may suffer as a result. The show also offers insight into the motivation for DIY biology: a friend confides to Akerlund on how Lorenz is willing to sell a cheaply acquired drug to desperate patients for inflated prices. “Such frustrations are what drive many citizens operating outside traditional institutions to develop their own pharmaceutical solutions.”
“It is ironic that Biohackers is set in Germany,” says Greenbaum, “one of the few places where genetic engineering experimentation outside of licensed facilities is illegal and can result in a fine or even imprisonment.”
*An interesting note here; the show was initially slated to first air in April 2020; however, given the highly disturbing opening scene and its likeness to COVID-19 currently raging at the time, the show’s premiere was pushed to August. While Biohackers isn’t about a pandemic, its chilling first scene was thought to stir up too many fears from an already disease-stricken public. Another science thriller that covers similar themes and issues of synthetic biology is Regenesis, a Canadian TV show currently airing.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
I rock on the cedar swing on my veranda and hear the wind rustling through the gaunt forest. An abandoned nest, the forest sighs in low ponderous notes. It sighs of a gentler time. A time when birds filled it with song. A time when large and small creatures — unconcerned with the distant thrum and roar of diggers and logging trucks — roamed the thick second-growth forest. The discord was still too far away to bother the wildlife. But their killer lurked far closer in deadly silence. And it caught the birds in the bliss of ignorance. The human-made scourge came like a thief in the night and quietly strangled all the birds in the name of progress.
excerpt from “Robin’s Last Song” by Nina Munteanu
My short story Robin’s Last Song was republished recently in the superlative online magazine Metastellar. The story was first published in 2021 in Issue 128 of Apex Magazine and an earlier version of the story called Out of the Silence appeared in the literary magazine subTerrain Magazine Issue 85 in 2020.
Left, “subTerrain” Issue 85 carries “Out of the Silence”; right, “Apex Magazine” issue 128 carries “Robin’s Last Song”
I raced up the stairs to the auditorium then quieted my breath and listened at the door, heart thumping like a bird trying to escape. Professor Gopnik was ten minutes into his lecture; I could hear his commanding voice: “… estimates that the entire number of birds have been reduced by a third in five decades—I mean common birds like the robins, sparrows, warblers, and even starlings…”
He was talking about Rosenberg’s paper in Science. The study shocked the scientific community; but I had already observed the decline of the house sparrow around my aunt and uncle’s house near the Old Mill. And the robin—my namesake, whose song heralded spring for me—had grown quiet.
I imagined Gopnik waving the journal at the class in his typical showman style. He had a habit of wandering the stage like an evangelist, fixing each student with intense blue eyes as if challenging them to believe. I thought him an over-confident condescending prig. But for someone who looked as young as the students he was teaching, Gopnik was brilliant. And what he was doing was so important. I wanted so badly to work under him as a grad student. But he terrified me.
Excerpt from “Robin’s Last Song” by Nina Munteanu
The Story Behind the Story
It all began with my discovery of an emerging bioacoustic tool, soundscape ecology, that measures biodiversity and ecosystem functionality. I’d just read the disturbing 2019 Science article by Rosenberg and team who determined that our slow violence of habitat degradation and toxic pollution has reduced the world’s bird population by a third in just five decades. I was devastated; I could not imagine a world without the comforting sound of birds. What would it be like if all the birds disappeared?
Map and chart of bird decline since 1970
Already primed with research into genetic engineering for the sequel to my 2020 eco-novel,A Diary in the Age of Water, my muse (often delightfully unruly) played with notions of the potential implication of gene hacking in ecological calamity and how this might touch on our precious birds: when nature “is forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded;” her secrets “reveal themselves more readily under the vexations of art than when they go their own way.”
Robin’s Last Song is a realizable work of fiction in which science and technology are both instigators of disaster and purveyors of salvation. Today, gene-editing, proteomics, and DNA origami—to name just a few—promise many things from increased longevity in humans to giant disease-resistant crops. Will synthetic biology control and redesign Nature to suit hubris or serve evolution? What is our moral imperative and who are the casualties? As Francis Bacon expressed in Novum Organum, science does not make that decision. We do.
I also recently sat down with Rebecca E. Treasure of Apex Magazine for a conversation about story, ecology, and the future. Here’s how it begins:
Apex Magazine: The Way of Water in Little Blue Marble is such a powerful piece touching on water scarcity and friendship, a dry future and the potential for technology to overtake natural ecology. Robin’s Last Song explores extinction, human fallibility, friendship, and again, that conflict between technology and nature. Do you think we’re heading toward the kind of dystopia shown in these stories?…
“Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds. The early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Discarded robin’s egg in the forest in spring, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
p.s. May9: I just learned that Robin’s Last Song was selected by the NYC Climate Writers Collective as part of an exhibition in the Climate Imaginarium on Governors island. The exhibition, starting May 18, will run throughout the summer of 2024.
Fledgling robin rests on a patio chair in spring, ON (photo by Merridy Cox)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
McGill University, view from main gate on Rue Sherbrooke (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I’ve just returned from Montreal, where I was invited to participate in a two-day conference hosted by McGill University’s Bieler School of Environment at Esplanade Tranquil. Named after Kim Stanley Robinson’s eco-fiction novel New York 2140, the conference brought together a diverse assemblage of scientists, academic researchers, urban planners, speculative fiction writers, artists, and students in a small setting dedicated to encourage cross-pollination of ideas and visions through panels and workshops. I sat on a panel and a roundtable with other writers, urban planners, engineers, scientists and activists to discuss futures through science and story. Much of the event focused on the literary genre called Hopepunk—a sub-genre of Speculative Fiction devoted to optimistic themes of scientific transformation, discovery and empathy. Resulting dialogue explored forms of communication, expression, and ways not just to deal with growing solastalgia, eco-grief, and environmental anxiety but to move forward through action and hope.
Breakout groups in Seeds of Good Anthropocenes Workshop (photo by Nina Munteanu)
McGill faculty in Panel on ‘Turning Research into Hopeful Stories’ (photo by Nina Munteanu)
In the Thursday morning writer’s panel, in which we explored the role of science knowledge and hope in story, I shared the writing process I underwent with my latest published novel A Diary in the Age of Water, which I categorize as a hopeful dystopia (‘Hopeful dystopias’ are much more than an apparent oxymoron; they are in some fundamental way, the spearhead of the future—and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster):
The main character in A Diary in the Age of Water was a limnologist like me who kept a journal (the diary referenced in the title of the book). This part of the story took place in the near-future when the water crisis and associated climate change phenomena had become calamitous. Being a scientist with so much intimate knowledge of the crisis, the diarist became cynical and lost her faith in humanity. I recall my own journey into despair as I did the research needed to convey the character’s knowledge and situation. I found myself creating a new character (the diarist’s daughter) much in the way a drowning swimmer takes hold of a life-saver, to pull me out of the darkness I’d tumbled into. The daughter’s hopeful nature and faith in humanity pulled both me and the reader out of the darkness. The cynical nature of the diarist came from a sense of being overwhelmed by the largeness of the crisis and froze her with feelings of powerlessness. The diarist’s daughter rose like an underground spring from the darkness by focusing on a single light: her friend and lover who pointed to a way forward. As Greta so aptly said once, “action leads to hope” and hope leads to action. Despite the dire circumstances in the novel, I think of A Diary in the Age of Water as a story of resilience. And ultimately of hope.
I came to the conference as a writer, scientist, mother, and environmental activist. What I discovered was an incredible solidarity with a group so diverse in culture, disciplines, expression and language—and yet so singularly united. It was heartwarming. Hopeful. And necessary. This conference ultimately felt like a lifeline to a world of possibilities.
Organizers brought in a wide variety of talent, skill, and interest and challenged everyone through well-run workshops to think, feel, discover, discuss, collaborate and express. Workshops, panels, and multimedia art incited co-participation with all attendees in imaginative and fun ways. On-site lunches and drinks helped keep everyone together and provided further space for interaction and discussion.
Student-led break out group discussing ways to transform eco-emotions into hope (photo by Nina Munteanu)
At every turn, I made contacts across disciplines and interests and had stimulating and meaningful conversations. I discovered many hopeful ‘stories’ of Montreal and elsewhere on hopeful visions and endeavors. These included “Seeds of good Anthropocenes” (small ground-rooted projects and initiatives aimed at shaping a future that is just, prosperous, and sustainable); turning scientific research into hopeful stories; and world building as resistance. I talked with artistic creators, students doing masters in Hopepunk literature and co-panelists on all manner of subjects from urban encampments, greening and rewilding Montreal, to how Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring informed a main character in Liu Cixin’s novel The Three Body Problem.
Creating visual art via MAPP (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Marc-Olivier Lamothe stands next to a MAPP projection (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Conversations often led to an acknowledgement of art as an effective means of expression and creative therapy in the context of the climate crisis. I met creatives such as Marc-Olivier Lamothe and his colleagues at MAPP and had the chance to experiment first hand with his creative tools. I had wonderful discussions with storytelling visual artist Alina Gutierrez Mejia of Visual Versa, whose evolving mural of each day’s events was truly mesmerizing to watch—and rather revealing.
Alina Gutierrez Mejia creates a visual representation of the day’s conference (photo by Nina Munteanu)
In future, I’ll post more on these and other creatives I encountered at the conference.
Program for Montreal 2140
THURSDAY morning began with an introduction by BDE Director Frédéric Fabry.
This was followed by a panel entitled Hopeful Stories Across Science and Fiction, in which I participated, along with fellow writers Su J. Sokol (author of Zee), Alyx Dellamonica (author of Gamechanger), Rich Larson (author of Annex and Ymir), Genevieve Blouin (author of Le mouroir des anges) and Andrea Renaud Simard (author of Les Tisseurs). The panel was moderated by McGill geographer Renee Sieber and McGill urban planner Lisa Bornstein.
After lunch, a panel entitled Faculty Workshop: Turning Research into Hopeful Stories was moderated by McGill researcher Kevin Manaugh and Annalee Newitz (journalist and author of Four Lost Cities). McGill researchers included: Caroline Wagner (bioengineering), Hillary Kaell (anthropology and religious studies); Jim Nicell (civil engineering); Sébastien Jodoin (law); and Michael Hendricks (biology).
McGill students who lead the workshop on Hope and the Future stand with one of the conference organizers Daniel Lukes (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The faculty panel was followed by the Student Workshop, Hope and the Future, led by McGill students Tom Nakasako, Rachel Barker, Tatum Hillier, and Lydia Lepki.
Annalee Newitz gives her keynote (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Annalee Newitz closed the day with their keynote presentation Worldbuilding Is Resistance that explored the dystopia binary of environmental science fiction. A theme to which the next keynote by Kim Stanley Robinson would touch on as well.
Elson Galang presenting Seeds workshop (photo by Nina Munteanu)
FRIDAY morning started with Elson Galang and Elena Bennett (McGill University), who led the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes Workshop, which introduced the concept of seeds programs then further explored through breakout discussion groups they moderated.
This was followed by faculty-led Teaching and Learning for Hopeful Futures Workshop, in which McGill instructors from varied disciplines (including education, political science, environment, urban planning and planetary sciences) discussed translating science into hopeful narratives.
pre-meet on Zoom of participants of the Roundtable
I then participated in a roundtable of authors, scholars, researchers and planners entitled Telling the Story of the Future, moderated by Chris Barrington-Leigh (McGill BSE/Health and Social Policy). The roundtable included fellow authors Alyx Dellamonica and Su J. Sokol. Other participants of the roundtable included Stephanie Posthumus (languages, literatures, cultures at McGill), Jayne Engle (public policy at McGill) Richard Sheamur (urban planning at McGill), and limnologist Irene Gregory-Eaves (biology at McGill).
BDE Director Frédéric Fabry introduces the conference (photo by Nina Munteanu)
The final keynote was given by Kim Stanley Robinson (author of New York 2140 and The Ministry of the Future).
Storyboard of the first day of the conference by Visual Versa (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Banyen Books & Sound on corner of Dunbar and W 4th Avenue, Vancouver (photo by Nina Munteanu)
One of my favourite bookstores in Vancouver is Banyen Books & Sound on the southwest corner of W 4th Avenue and Dunbar. So, whenever I go back to my home town to visit family and friends, I stop there to linger amid the shelves of wonder and erudite adventure. Then I usually cross Dunbar to Aphrodite’s Organic Pie Shop for a delicious fresh pie—usually peach, if it is available. So good! Two things I love: books and pie!
Aphrodite’s Organic Pies, next door to Banyen’s, Vancouver (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Pacific Spirit Regional Park, Vancouver, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)
During my recent visit this year to Vancouver, my friends and I had a fulfilling walk one morning through the big tree forest of Pacific Spirit Park near UBC. Margaret suggested we go to Aphrodite’s Organic Café for lunch, located across 4th Avenue from Banyen Books (the sister restaurant to the pie shop). After a delicious lunch, we wandered into Banyen, like desert nomads looking for water, and lost ourselves in a treasure of books, magazines, crystals, cards, singing bowls and other spiritual/healing items. Like a braided river, we dispersed according to our wayward interests.
Water Is… at Banyen Books, Vancouver (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Then friend Anne soon found me and pulled my sleeve. “Your book is here!” She led me to where my book Water Is… stood, face out, on the top shelf marked ‘Water: Life Force & Resource.’ In truth, I already knew through Pixl Press that the book was selling there. But here it was, showcased so nicely! It sat rather stately amid Emoto’s Secret Life of Water and Ryrie’s Healing Energies of Water.
Banyen customers find Water Is… and find a chair to take a look
One of the perks of Banyen Books are the comfortable seats for easy browsing. When I teasingly asked one of the clerks if they noticed people lingering for the day, they said, “yeah! They might leave for lunch then come back for the afternoon!” I can see why; Banyen is an entire world to discover. It is called Canada’s most comprehensive Body-Mind-Spirit bookstore, “offering a broad spectrum of resources from humanity’s spiritual, healing, and earth wisdom traditions…Our service is to offer life-giving nourishment for the body (resilient, vital), the mind (trained, open), and the soul (resonant, connected, in-formed). Think of us as your open source bookstore for the ‘University of Life’.”
“Banyen is an oasis, a crossroads, a meeting place…for East and West, the ‘old ways’ and current discoveries and syntheses.”
“The Golden Lotus Restaurant and Natural Food Store on Fourth Avenue at Bayswater was a hothouse for spiritual seekers, new vegetarians and spaced-out hippies grounding through good work. Banyen was born in a tiny book corner of the Golden Lotus. That lovely place was a connection to India, meditation and spiritual growth from 1967 to 1970. As its sun set, what was to become the Naam restaurant, Lifestream, Woodlands, Nature’s Path, and Banyen Books arose.”
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
She imagines its coolness gliding down her throat. Wet with a lingering aftertaste of fish and mud. She imagines its deep voice resonating through her in primal notes; echoes from when the dinosaurs quenched their throats in the Triassic swamps.
Water is a shape shifter.
It changes yet stays the same, shifting its face with the climate. It wanders the earth like a gypsy, stealing from where it is needed and giving whimsically where it isn’t wanted.
Dizzy and shivering in the blistering heat, Hilda shuffles forward with the snaking line of people in the dusty square in front of University College where her mother used to teach. The sun beats down, crawling on her skin like an insect. She’s been standing for an hour in the queue for the public water tap.
The Way of Water was first published as a bilingual print book by Mincione Edizioni(Rome) in Italian (La natura dell’acqua, translated by Fiorella Moscatello), and English along with a recounting of what inspired it: The Story of Water (La storia dell’acqua) in 2016. The Way of Water has been reprinted several times, in magazines and anthologies, since its first appearance in 2016.
It all started with an invitation by my publisher in Rome in 2015 to write about water and politics in Canada. I had long been thinking of potential ironies in Canada’s water-rich heritage. The premise I wanted to explore was the irony of people in a water-rich nation experiencing water scarcity: living under a government-imposed daily water quota of 5 litres as water bottling and utility companies took it all.
I named the story “The Way of Water” (“La natura dell’acqua”), about a young woman (Hilda) in near-future Toronto who has run out of water credits for the public wTap; by this time houses no longer have potable water and their water taps have been cemented shut (as was done in Detroit in 2014); the only way to get water is through the public wTaps—at great cost. She’s standing two metres from water—in a line of people waiting to use the tap—and dying of thirst.
“The Way of Water” captures a vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with global resource warfare. In this near-future, Canada is mined of all its water by thirsty Chinese and US multinationals—leaving nothing for the Canadians. Rain has not fallen on Canadian soil in years due to advances in geoengineering and weather manipulation that prevent rain clouds from going anywhere north of the Canada-US border. If you’re wondering if this is possible, it’s already happening in China and surrounding countries.
The Way of Water, in turn, inspired my recent dystopian novel A Diary in the Age of Water, which explores the lives of four generations of women and their relationship to water during a time of severe water restriction and calamitous climate change.
Publications (excluding online pubs) that featured The Way of Water
“The Way of Water evokes a sense of awareness about issues of access to water and about the dangers of imbalances in that access.”
Derek Newman-Stille, Speculating Canada
“In a short story in which every word has its weight, Nina Munteanu manages to describe a dystopia with ecological, political, social and economic elements and Hilda’s reactions to her situation with a great emotional intensituy. To avoid thirst, Hilda ends up embracing an extreme idea, a last hope linked to water. The Way of Water is a story of the kind you hope is science fiction but you fear is not.”
Massimo Luciani
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
“The truth isn’t about telling; no one just tells you the truth. It needs to be coaxed, even tricked, out. The truth is carefully hoarded—like water—and only flows among privileged acolytes who have proven themselves.”
Lynna Dresden
“Those of us who are captivated by fear, who despair in a dead zone—we need to consider new ways to tell familiar stories, to envision different endings. A book like this can change the way that you see the world at this moment, can allow formulae to take root in fiction and grow into a different kind of solution.”
Marcie McCauley, THE tEmz REVIEW
Jackson Creek in early fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Critical reception for Christopher Nolan’s science fiction blockbuster movie Interstellar was widely mixed. Reviews ranged from being dazzled and awestruck to thinking it utterly ridiculous and silly. Much of the range in opinion had in fact to do with the hard science: hard science that Nolan insisted he get right by hiring theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to best approximate what a black hole and a wormhole will look like and behave. Science so good that it generated a discovery worthy of reporting in a scientific journal (see below). The forums and chats that debated the last half-hour of the movie and its significance were entertaining, if not informative. Interstellar also generated a spate of vitriolic, accusing the film as propaganda for American colonialism (see a few examples below).
I first watched it in an IMAX theatre (the only way to see such an epic—it was filmed using 70mm Imax film, after all), which helped achieve its grandness. Since I was five, I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut. And I’ve always been a sucker for good space adventure—especially well-researched, realistic depictions defined by a good story. And that is exactly what Interstellar is. And so much more…
The ship enters the wormhole
I’ll admit openly that this film swept me up like a giant wave. I sat humbled yet exalted as I journeyed to some magnificent alien worlds: deep space; a powerful spherical wormhole; vast shallow waters between mile-high waves of a tidally locked planet; skimming beneath ice-clouds of a barren ice-planet; and falling—literally—into a black hole. All to the recursive echoes of a mesmerizing score by Hans Zimmer. While I was openly moved during the film, its aftertaste caught me unawares and impressed me the most about Nolan’s talent for subtle paradox. I realized that the journey—and deep space—felt inexplicably vast and intimate at the same time.
the Black Hole, Gargantua
The research by Thorne and Nolan’s visual team generated a scientific discovery. To accurately portray a black hole in the film, Thorne produced a new set of equations to guide the special effects team’s rendering software. Black holes apparently spin at nearly the speed of light, dragging bits of the universe along with it. Based on the notion that it was once a star that collapsed into a singularity, the hole forms a glowing ring that orbits around a spheroidal maelstrom of light, which curves over the top and under the bottom simultaneously. The team then discovered that “warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” explained Paul Franklin, senior supervisor of Double Negative (the visual experts). “So, rather than looking like Saturn’s rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.” Thorne confirmed that they had correctly modeled a phenomenon inherent in the math he’d supplied and intends to publish several articles in scientific journals, based on these findings.
Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer defines good science fiction as: the literature of change; it’s about something “large” (world-important), arises from a scientific premise; and is generally pro-science. Interstellar achieves all of these criteria, particularly the latter.
Murph overseas the burning of blighted wheat
The movie begins in the near-future on a post-climate change Earth, plagued by dust storms and failing crops in a society reverted to parochial superstition. Cooper (Mathew McConaughey), once a NASA pilot and now a farmer, laments: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”
In a scene reminiscent of present day schools removing cursive writing from the curriculum or the controversy of teaching evolution (e.g., in favor of creationism), Cooper’s daughter’s teacher, Ms. Kelly, informs him at a parent-teacher meeting that the history textbooks have been rewritten to make known the “truth” about the moon landing: “I believe [the moon landing] was a brilliant piece of propaganda,” attests Ms. Kelly, “that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines…And if we don’t want to repeat the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century, then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.”
The Cooper farmhouse after a dust storm
The danger of turning away from scientific exploration—particularly space exploration—in times of great social and economic insecurity is a theme that runs deep in the film. Not only are scientists and engineers portrayed as whole individuals, both smart and compassionate, but they are also marginalized in a future world looking more to blame than to fix. “We didn’t run out of planes and television sets,” the principal of the school tells Cooper. “We ran out of food.”
When a gravitational anomaly leads Cooper and his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) to a secret NASA base in the middle of nowhere, an old colleague, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), recruits him to pilot the interstellar Endeavor, NASA’s “Noah’s Ark”, into the far reaches of outer space to repopulate the human race. NASA has turned covert due to public pressure against “irrelevant or politically unfeasible” spending. After showing Cooper how their last corn crops will eventually fail like the okra and wheat before them, Brand answers Cooper’s question of, “So, how do you plan on saving the world?” with: “We’re not meant to save the world…We’re meant to leave it.” Cooper rejoins: “I’ve got kids.” To which Brand answers: “Then go save them.”
The crew arrive on the first planet
Unbeknownst to us—and to Cooper, who leaves his precious children behind on Earth for what turns into a one-way mission—the intention is to literally leave the rest of humanity behind. You see, Cooper’s ship—headed toward one of three potentially habitable worlds beyond a wormhole near Saturn—contains the seeds of humanity and other life that the four astronauts aboard are meant to distribute and nurture. Cooper and Brand’s daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway), one of the other three astronauts onboard, both believe that the real ark sits back on Earth in the form of a huge spaceship—awaiting Brand’s solution to the gravity issue. Brand knows, but keeps to himself, that the solution is insolvable and sends his intrepid crew off, knowing that Cooper will never see his young son and daughter again.
While Nolan admits to some iconic comparisons with Kubrick’s 2001; A Space Odyssey, Interstellar actually shares much more with the film Contact (in which Kip Thorne and McConoughey also participated). Contact also centered on a ground-breaking scientist daughter who misses her lost father. Mark Kermode, in a Guardian review also saw the relationship:
Murph solves the problem of gravity
“In both movies, it is these daughters who detect the first stirrings of an “alien” encounter: Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) identifying recurrent sequences in the white noise of interstellar radiation in Contact; Murph (very affectingly played in her younger years by Mackenzie Foy) spying Morse code in poltergeist disturbances in Interstellar. From such discoveries are missions launched, voyaging across time and space at the apparent instruction of a superior intelligence offering cryptic hands across the universe. Intergalactic portals are breached, timescales bifurcated, science and faith reconciled. Crucially, for all their astro-maths exposition, the constant in both stories is neither time, space, nor gravity, but love. More than once I was reminded of Contact’s Ellie striking the outer limits of the universe and breathlessly declaring: ‘They should have sent a poet.’”
The crew investigate the first planet they reach after passing through the wormhole
Interstellar received widely mixed reviews, described as anything from sublime to ridiculous. Its American-centric presentation generated some criticism (e.g., NASA acting alone without any international help; all American actors; American flags erected on settled colonies). Some even vilified the film as “a dangerous fantasy of US colonialism”. Journalist Abraham Riesman raises valid issues to do with human-centric expansionism in Interstellar:
“Coop and his coterie make one assumption that the movie never questions: Humanity (which, for all we ever see, is white, English-speaking America with a couple of black friends and one British guy) deserves to go to the stars and will suffocate if it’s confined to its current environs. That logic was, of course, one of the main justifications for most imperial expansions since the dawn of the 1800s. No one stops to ask whether this civilization (which, in the movie, appears to have murdered its home planet through human-caused climate change, though, for some reason nobody talks about that) needs to make some fundamental changes in its approach to social construction and resource use. Indeed, when we see the bright new future on Cooper Station, it’s all baseball and manicured lawns. Perhaps more important, no one questions whether human expansion will kill off the new planets’ current residents. Sure, we’re told that the planets are uninhabited … but uninhabited by what? Carbon-based humanoid life forms? What if we immediately kill off whatever fragile ecosystems we find once we take off our helmets and exhale our Earthly germs? Of course, I’m reading too much into a movie that isn’t even implying any of the messages I’m inferring, but that’s the problem right there: No one’s even asking the questions, and for humans, that kind of attitude usually leads to bad answers.”
What saves Interstellar from skidding into 20th Century pseudo-jingoistic expansionism with undertones of patriarchal rationalism, is its subversive theme. And because of it, the movie transcends into artistic commentary.
I speak of love.
Love embodied by two of the main characters—both women: Cooper’s daughter, Murph, and his shipmate, Amelia Brand. Love that is irrational. Love that is unscientific. Love that is inexplicable. And love that is all powerful. Inviolate. Eternal. And, I believe, our salvation.
Murph Cooper
Aspects of “imperialist expansionism” and “patriarchal rationalism” interplay through Cooper, who embodies both in his “cowboy” science. It is love that propels his evolution to transcend them. In Cooper, we see the constant tension between rationality of science and the “irrational” faith of love. Related to this, Cooper must continually choose between the personal and the whole in defining his humanity and ultimately his hard choices. First with his daughter and her “ghost”, then with Amelia Brand in their mission to another galaxy.
Amelia Brand
After a botched mission, Amelia appears to abandon the very tenets of hard science to ask the defining question: “Maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory. Love is the one thing that transcends time and space.” She describes love as a cosmic force, a kind of empathic drive that provides the very basis for humanity’s survival: a link to our wholeness as living beings within a breathing multi-dimensional universe. When Cooper challenges Amelia’s unscientific notions, she responds with, “Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful … Maybe it’s evidence, some artifact of higher dimensions that we can’t consciously perceive.” Repeating, almost word for word, what Cooper said to his father about choosing his interstellar mission, Amelia admits, “yes, the tiniest possibility [of seeing Wolf again] excites me. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” To which Cooper answers just as his father did: “Honestly…it might.”
Amelia nails it when she, in turn, challenges Cooper: if the second choice turns out bad, they will have enough fuel to do only one of two things: go on to the third planet in hopes of distributing the seeds of humanity OR go back home to his children and the end of the world. Which will he choose? It’s interesting what he does end up choosing: he chooses love. Love drives him to do impossible feats, like dock his shuttle with a damaged and recklessly spinning Endeavor:
CASE: That’s impossible
COOPER: No, it’s necessary
Love for Murph drives Cooper into the black hole … and out of it. Love directs him to that precise quantum moment where his love for Murph transcends into love for all humanity: to save the world. This is the secret. The secret Mann in his intellectualized definition of what it means to be human could not touch. The window for connection to the whole is through a single tiny grasp of it. The glimpse into Eternity is through the lens of Love. I am reminded of a quote in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: “What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” In Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Itzhak Stern quotes the Talmud: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
So what is love, then? Is it gravity? Does it communicate through the God particle in the fractal fabric of the Higgs field? What other phenomenon grows from nothing? What other phenomenon is not lessened but in fact grows by giving it away? What other phenomenon provides the very weight and structure—the meaning—of our existence? What other phenomenon is like a whisper in a crowded room, yet creates the most beautiful symphony? Is it that simple?
If gravity is a plane of existence, a fifth dimension that can exist across space-time, is a black hole simply a doorway? Like death? Is love the fuel of evolution, lifting us up into a higher state?
Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft shares: “…Gravity is love on a material level. In fact, [gravity] has two movements: one is towards union, back to the center, the big bang, the past by gravity. And the other is to give itself out to all other beings, out into the future, the expanding universe, by energy and by entropy, which is energy giving itself out to the empty places.”
What struck me the most about Interstellar was how it simultaneously evoked my breathless awe in the vast universe’s existentialist grandeur with a personal connection and incredible intimacy. Interstellar was soul-nourishing, dream-engaging; and its recursive themes called of “home”.
Definitions:
Wormhole: Officially known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would fundamentally be a shortcut through spacetime.
God Particle: Also known as the Higgs boson or Higgs particle, the God particle is believed to be the subatomic particle that gives everything mass. Without it, nothing would have weight or even structure. The Higg boson is an elementary particle with no spin, electric charge or colour charge. It is considered the smallest possible quantum excitation of the Higgs field that unlike the more familiar electromagnetic field cannot be “turned off”; instead it takes a non-zero constant value almost everywhere.
Higgs Field: In two papers published in 1964, Peter Higgs posited that particles obtain mass by interacting with a mysterious invisible energy force field that permeates the universe: the Higgs field. It is the stuff of stars, planets, trees, buildings and animals. Without mass, electrons, protons and neutrons wouldn’t stick together to make atoms; atoms wouldn’t make molecules and molecules wouldn’t make us. The presence of the Higgs field explains why some fundamental particles have mass while the symmetries (laws of nature) controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
“Climate change is larger than all of us. It speaks in the language of finality. And mostly through water.”
Lynna Dresden
“An eye-opening story for those who are still on the fence about climate change. This is the perfect read for both sci-fi readers and eco-interested readers alike.”
“There simply aren’t enough Canadians to protect our wilderness; but if there were enough of us, there’d be no wilderness left to protect.”
Lynna Dresden
“Strangely compelling.”
BURIED IN PRINT
“A Diary in the Age of Water, is simply and beautifully told, profoundly true; a novel that invites us to embrace the wisdom of ages. The story stirs its readers, teaches them about the importance of water, and leaves an imprint on the canvas of the literary and scientific world.”
LUCIA MONICA GOREA, author of Journey Through My Soul
Boys explore the shore of the Otonabee River, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
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