Fun Climbs Around The World

This month, BenBella Books published The Science of Dune: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science Behind Frank Herbert’s Fictional Universe, which contains my essay, “The Biology of the Sandworm”. In the essay, I speculate about what would be the characteristics of a 200-meter long sandworm living on a dry, desert planet like Frank Herbert’s Dune. How large can an animal get? And what would the sandworm eat on Dune? How does an animal that large move? And what’s its lifecycle? Where does the oxygen come from, since few to no photosynthetic plants grow on Dune’s surface?

I can hardly claim to answer all, or even most of these questions, but I do postulate several possibilities never envisioned by Herbert (after all, this book is unauthorized). Also, biology has advanced considerably since Herbert first created Dune in 1965, and I rely on new scientific findings to explain how the sandworm could possibly survive and flourish on Dune.

While I’ve been writing about science for years, I generally write about scientific meetings and interview speakers about their latest research. Such work appeared in New Scientist, Red Herring, HMS Beagle, Reuters Health, and other magazines and websites. This, my first foray into the science of fictional creatures on imaginary planets, has proven to be surprisingly controversial. I hope to respond to some of the questions posed in the coming weeks, once I either start another blog to deal with science writing, or metamorphose this one into a biology blog for a time.

Please leave your comments as to whether you’d like to hear about sandworm biology on this blog. To comment, click the red number to the right of the blog’s title.