BIOL 103 Biology Dept Kenyon College

In his classic guide, Wayne Douglas Barlowe's brilliant portraits bring to life 50 aliens from science fiction literature: Larry Niven's Thrint and his Puppeteer, Arthur C. Clarke's Overlord, Frank Herbert's Steersman, Robert Silverburg's Sulidor and more. Humanoids, insectoids, reptillians-even protoplasmic, gaseous, and crystalline life forms-are all faithfully and naturalistically depicted so that you can now visualize what could only before be imagined.

When the Time Traveler courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700-and everything had changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveler thought he could study these marvelous beings-unearth their secret and then return to his own time-until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.

by Kurt Vonnegut
Dell Publishing NY,NY 1985

Galapagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new, and totally different human race. Here, America's master satirist looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry-and all that is worth saving.

Set on the desert Planet Arrakis, a world more awesome than any other in literature, Dune begins the story of the man known as Muad'dib-and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream...

by Joan Slonczewski
Arbor House NY, NY 1986
Campbell Award 1986

by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bantam Books NY,NY 1993

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitovna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is to give Mars and Earth-like atmosphere. They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planet's surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces-for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent mars from ever being changed.
 
 

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now, one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true. Creatures extinct for eons now roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery and all the world can visit them-for a price.

What if there was a virus so lethal, it could kill people as quickly as they took a breath? What if it spared some people from instant death...but drove them hopelessly insane instead? What if the swiftest acting, deadliest, virus ever known to humankind could be spread, by no more than a gust of wind, from the remote desert site of its first massacre to the busiest cities in America...and the world? What, if anything, could stop it?

by Larry Gonick and Mark Wheelis
Harper Perennial NY,NY 1991

Have you ever asked yourself: 
Are spliced genes the same as mended Levis? 
Watson and Crick? Aren't they a team of British detectives? 
Plant sex? Can they do that? 
Is genetic mutation the name of one of those heavy metal bands? 
Asparagine? Which of the four food groups is that in? 

Then you need

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics

by Joan Slonczewski
Tor Books, 2000

What if alien microbes could give us whatever
our brains imagined--at a price?

"Brain Plague  gives new epic meaning to hearing voices inside your head.
Tune in or you’ll be sorry." -- Eva, Fantastica Daily