The Oyster’s Garter

Margaret Atwood, writer of quality dystopias, apparently dismissed scifi as “talking squid in outer space.” Clearly, her brain has been eaten by Ursula Le Guin’s decaying corpse of genre fiction. But before you angrily stick your copy of Handmaid’s Tale where the sun don’t shine (that is, right next to the mouldering stack of Xanth books), please take a moment to contemplate the horrifying truth: Atwood is NOT WRONG.

This glorious website from scifi author Vonda McIntyre features the finest collection of “talking squid in outer space” novels, stories, and illustrations this side of the Goodwill Store. Please enjoy such treasures as the featured story and the Squidliography. If you still require more scifi squid, head over to Space Squid Zine. Or just get yourself a pet squid.

Via Metafilter

Man builds fish-car. Puns ensue.

Just one example:

He said: “I get plenty of fishy looks from people, but I generally have a whale of a time with it.

Via Chaos Theory

For the low low price of $2250, you can have an acrylic & neon Space Jelly! They’re made by Eric Ehlenberger, a New Orleans artist (and emergency room physician!) as part of his “Realm of Neptune” installation. Personally, I want to decorate my house in his luminous glass jellies - they’re glowy and very very pretty.

We do not speak of the space dolphins.

Via Nature News

The space fish shall be transported by space elevator. Now where’s my flying car?

The only thing better than tardigrades (they’re the cutest little moss creatures that you’ll ever see) is TARDIGRADES…IN SPACE!

And these tardigrades don’t have tiny spacesuits, either. They are going to experience the cold vacuum without any protection. If they live, they will be the most badass invertebrates of all time. Cause there’s no way the run-of-the-mill scary invertebrates like giant squid or stomatopods could survive SPACE.

And what really puts the delicious butter cream icing on the nerd-cake is that the acronym for this project is TARDIS.

Thanks to Jarrett Byrnes from making this glorious experiment part of my life.

Past fish in space posts.

Make sure your space fish are thoroughly cooked - salmonella bacteria become more virulent in space.

This isn’t because they are happier floating about in zero-g - though I bet their tiny little sensory organs are as delighted as they can be. It’s because they are free of fluid shear, the mechanical force of fluid around a cell. This is pretty rough on a tiny little cell, so bacteria like to congregate in low-shear environments, like cracks and crevices and intestines.

Clearly, we require technological breakthroughs so that we may safely have space sushi.

Baby fish are orbiting Earth right now! The inner ear development of these Mozambique tilapia are being studied in zero gravity in order to figure out how balance develops. Fish inner ears are pretty similar to human inner ears, so perhaps free-floating fishies will give insight into balance and vertigo disorders.

Between being underground, on Mars, and in orbit, it’s an exciting time to be a tilapia! (Though I bet the ear-research fish meet much the same end as the fish-stick fish.)

According to Jennifer Jacquet of Shifting Baselines, tilapia are going underground and possibly into space. Four teachers from Arizona have discovered a way to farm the fish underground in Arizona. And NASA has conducted studies on growing tilapia for human settlements on Mars, since “tilapia eat human waste and are safe for human consumption afterward.”

Though a little disconcerting because of toilet-to-plate feeling, tilapia are handy like that. As a meat eater with notions of environmental responsibility, I think that tilapia are one of the best options for cheap, tasty sustainable protein. (Well, I don’t think they’re THAT tasty, but with lots of butter and garlic…).

Tilapia sure is better for people’s health and the ocean than tuna, another common source of cheap fishy protein. Tuna are top predators with high mercury contamination. Though tuna these days may be “dolphin-safe,” the purse seine fishery continues to have huge bycatch problems, especially sharks and turtles.