I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was four year’s old. I’d been a fan long before, thanks to the read-along books and the action figures, but actually seeing the film mad equite an impression on me. One of the things that bugged me, though, were the references to the off-screen “Clone Wars.”
I did not, after all, have the faintest clue what a “clone” was.
Eventually, after struggling mightily with the word to see if I could wrest meaning from it, I asked my Dad what clones were.
He said “It’s a process where you can make a copy of someone by taking a piece of their skin and turning it into a baby twin.”
I said “Wow, you can make a copy of me, just with a piece of skin?”
“Not really,” he said, “it’s just a cool idea for a story.”
Already having some idea of how science fiction worked, I asked the next logical question: “So…is it possible some day? Or is it just pretend?”
“It’s just pretend,” he said. “Some people think it might be possible in a hundred years, but that’s a long time–longer than you’ll be alive.”
In the intervening decades, cellular biologists have discovered a whole class of cells called “pluripotent stem cells.” These are cells that are created in the first generation of pregnancy–a zygote is a pluripotent stem cell at fertilization, and the first few generations of replication produce more pluripotent stem cells until the cells start differentiating.
I love living in the future–it’s been a quick hundred years!
jdsawyer
After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him.
Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past.
To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world.
For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net
Of course, when a movie ABOUT the clone wars was actually made, everyone hated it…
And then it got made into an animated series that took a huge smelly dump all over Star Wars…
On the other hand, the post – endor Expanded Universe has (almost) never disappointed!
Hoopy Freud
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Of course, when a movie ABOUT the clone wars was actually made, everyone hated it…
And then it got made into an animated series that took a huge smelly dump all over Star Wars…
On the other hand, the post – endor Expanded Universe has (almost) never disappointed!