Genetics, Steampunk, and Fantasy

Donna Hole on Friday brought up a good point in the comments (I'll restate here so you don't have to click through):

"While reading this, I was wondering if you couldn't equate Sauron with a mad scientist with all the gene splicing to create his orks and Brukhi (I know, I spelled it wrong, but I didn't want to get up to get the book). There have been other fantasy novels also that the evil wizard practiced a form of organic or genetic fusing to create the creatures that did their nefarious bidding. Cave weights, Kabold, Dark Elves, gnomes."

Genetics, if anyone remembers science class, was first codified by the monk Gregor Mendel in the mid-19th Century while experimenting on inherited traits in pea plants. However, people have been cross-breeding plants and pets (dog breeds are an example) since ancient times. Classical Sparta practiced selective breeding in its citizens -- look at the movie 300 for an object example. In the opening scenes, we see an elder of Sparta investigating a baby to see if he passes muster for inclusion into Spartan society. If he did not, then the child could've expected instant death.

Simple genetics thus deals with traits inherited from two "parents," whether human, animal, or plant. In this manner, wizards like Sauron and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy can be considered mad scientists because they blend Orcs and Goblins into the new Uruk-hai, a race of creatures that can move in the sun like Orcs but have the strength of Goblins. This simple usage of inherited traits falls under the general umbrella of genetics.

With steampunk, genetic manipulation takes on a more contemporary feel. In Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, for example, we see the British Army using fabricated animals crafted after Charles Darwin's discovery of DNA and genetics. Truth be told this is actually an expansion on what we know about DNA manipulation -- modern science only allows for very simple organisms to be built, not anywhere near on the scale of the whale airships in that novel.

A simple search of "genetics in fiction" brings up a list of books both at Barnes&Noble and Amazon, but much more in the future/near-future science fiction realm than in steampunk or in standard fantasy. Of course, this could also be tied to people not always considering certain things as genetic science rather than "magic" as in fantasy.

Genetics offers such opportunity for authorial hand-waving or even honest-to-goodness fictional science, that I'm slightly surprised it hasn't quite been done to death in modern fiction. Then again, it might have been without me noticing (which is entirely possible).

But I'm curious: what other novels, films, or video games can you think of that deal in genetics as a plot point? And do you think genetic manipulation and its consequences has been overdone in storytelling?

Steampunk'd

Bad pun, yes I know, but I couldn't resist.

So the whole point of this post is to explain a little about the lovely genre known as Steampunk (because two reviewers at Public Query Slushpile asked), which is itself a subgenre of science fiction/fantasy. The simplest method of defining the style is to call it Neo-Victorian which, while true, doesn't really get across the whole point in the best fashion. Especially if you don't know anything about the technology of Victorian England (add that to my list of random bits of knowledge).

Anyway, the history of the genre goes like this ... cyberpunk came first, with its dystopian themes and cyborgs and people who have wires coming out of their heads, plugged into electronics in the near future (what tvtropes.org calls Twenty Minutes Into the Future). Steampunk resulted as a response to the harsh metallic gleam of cyberpunk by taking that technology and plopping it into Victorian England with the level of knowledge that period already had. One of the first novels was MORLOCK NIGHT (1979) by K.W. Jeter.

With steampunk, everything's made of copper, brass, wood, and steel -- and still somewhat dystopian -- but without the same metallic sterilization (ooo ... big word) of near-future cyberpunk. Charles Babbage's mechanical computer sparked the Information Age a hundred years early, steam power through James Watts and others was developed into flying machines and cars and armored tanks, and even mechanical robots than run on punchcards (THE AFFINITY BRIDGE by George Mann) can make an appearance. The cyborgs are still there, but this time they run on steam power.

Then you get into the idea of the "punk" side of the genre, which is intended to be a rejection of the system. The interesting thing about steampunk fantasy is that it sometimes doesn't even involve a dystopia. All it has is highly advanced steam technology that's capable of doing most everything we do with our technology now. Except mobile phones don't exist, nor do credit cards, or anything else that requires the plastics developed post-1920s and 1930s.

There's my brief (well not so much) explanation of what steampunk is. It's a heckuva lot of fun to write in, let me tell you. Especially because that means my random knowledge of thermodynamics is actually useful outside of random trivia. Which is always a good thing.