Science fiction inspired by an HN thread (5 min read) | Hacker News Reader

Science fiction inspired by an HN thread (5 min read)

davidlaprade.github.io

59 pointsuser05291920 comments

Inspired by some awesome comments in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33453037

Why would L-glucose taste the same and have the same effects on mood, etc. if nothing in nature could interact with it? I am not an expert in chemistry or molecular biology, but that seems odd.

I was wondering if anyone would catch that! Yeah, it's definitely part of the "fiction" here. L-glucose can bind to some things, e.g. taste receptors. "Nothing in nature can interact with it" was definitely an over-simplification

Great short story. Reminds me of something I would find in on of the collections of short stories le Guin or Vonnegut would show up on as a second or third editor.

Oh man, that's a _massive_ complement. So glad you enjoyed it :)

Nice!

Apparently one organism can use L-glucose, Pseudomonas caryophylli [0]. It's a plant pathogen [1]. No doubt other micro-organisms can as well. So would be a great reset of evolution back to the Cambrian era?

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40609/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkholderia_caryophylli

Edit: following this "great chiral collapse", the new evolution is multi-chiral providing a vastly greater range of protein structures, biochemical reactions, etc, etc...

Sweet, I actually love that! Upregulating a plant pathogen feels like it could be disastrous. If I had a better grasp of ecology I'd have thought of more examples like, haha. Might include it in a future iteration if you don't mind!

Fun quick read. Scary part to me is that this seems like something that could actually happen pretty easily.

I mean, engineering whole metabolisms pretty far off. Not out of the picture but pretty far off.

Reading material can't be a Show HN, so I've taken that out of the title.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Ah, my bad. I didn't realize this was an official category. Thanks for correcting

Nice prose, good explanations.

A little digression can be interesting.

I wonder about the plot: why not create the other bug, that converts glucose back? Then it'd reach an equilibrium.

Thanks so much for reading it! That's a really interesting idea -- honestly I hadn't thought of it. I guess the rough thought is that too much ecological damage is done too fast for us to reverse it. But I'll keep mulling this over

Nice concept. I really liked the beginning, but it comes a bit unglued at the end, too much explaining and not enough showing.

You know, someone else gave me similar feedback as well. I'm kind of reluctant to make it longer, but might be a better story if it is. Like: maybe have something about the government responses to it and what happens, etc, work some of the explanations in there. Going to keep this in mind, appreciate it!

Just to be contrarian, I like the ending. Always be wary of over-explaining in stories, especially in science fiction.

I find that you can trust the reader to deduce a lot of what you are explaining without having to explain it.

For a similar, grim, and much longer SF story see the Rifters trilogy by Peter Watts:

https://www.tor.com/2012/08/14/psychopaths-at-the-bottom-of-...

Spoiler: a biologically incompatible branch of life discovered in the deep ocean starts to outcompete everything on land once it's brought to the surface, leading to catastrophic breakdown of civilization.

"Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts." — James Nicoll

Oh awesome! I'll look forward to reading this. Thanks for the link

> Spoiler: a biologically incompatible branch of life discovered in the deep ocean starts to outcompete everything on land once it's brought to the surface, leading to catastrophic collapse of food production and civilization.

Isn't that also part of the backstory of Interstellar?

Awesome read! You should write on Storylocks :)

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