But there aren t many technothrillers that do this on the biological sciences. They do it on medicine, which is a biological science, but usually it s disease threat, an outbreak. So in Darwin s Radio I could play it both ways. The next human species will appear in the next book, Darwin s Children - if and when that gets written, probably in the next five years . In broad terms, science fiction and science have always danced around each other.
Science fiction is the subconscious of science.
It s what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do. So they read science fiction. It s a vicarious thrill. Most of the movers and shakers in the science world today started off reading science fiction as kids. I learned this by moving to Seattle, running into a lot of these people at Microsoft and elsewhere, and finding out they were all raised as science fiction readers - not necessarily fans, but they definitely read it.