So how do we create something new from the old? I find that one of the best ways of 'filling the well', as creativity teacher Julia Cameron calls it, is surfing the Internet. Yes, dear old maligned Twitter comes in handy for many things.
This week I was reading an article about scientists sequencing the genome of tardigrades, otherwise known as water bears - and getting a big surprise. These microscopic animals are virtually indestructible. They can survive freezing, drying out, radiation bombardment, and the vacuum of deep space. And scientists have now found that 17.5% of their genome comes from plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Apparently tardigrade DNA breaks into pieces when they dry out, and when they re-hydrate and return to life they drag in DNA from the organisms around them.
Hmm. It doesn't take much leap of the SF writer's imagination to see someone using bioengineered tardigrades as weapons. Or as remedial organisms sent in to restore dead worlds. But if these things are virtually indestructible, and they reproduce, what happens when they mutate into a deadly form?
Or how about taking the idea of the 'wood-wide web' a little further. The mycelium that links trees in forests extends for miles under the trees. What if someone on an occupied world found some way to use the wood-wide web as a biological Internet? Covert operations to overthrow the occupying force would be much easier that way.
I haven't thought of stories linked to these two ideas yet, but they're rattling around in my brain, fermenting. And some day the perfect story vehicle will present itself. And chances are that, when it does, it will arrive as a fully-formed story. That's the way my subconscious works.
I never know how, or when, my constant research will pay off, but when it does it's often in surprising ways I would never have expected.
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