Does Science Fiction Belong in a Museum?

A 2025 vision for the Salmon, and why you shouldn't ask your apprentice to cook magical food

Happy 2025, I know I’ve been on an extended break, but welcome to the new year! The reverberations of DeepSeek show we’re way past 1984 now. Science fiction is now a museum piece, roughing it with the dinosaur bones, fossil fragments and botany art.

So what does this year hold for the Salmon?

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time reflecting on biomanufacturing — the ease with which we can write about it, and the difficulties we encounter when trying to make it happen. Building better with biology is a revolution I am wholeheartedly behind. But revolutions are hard work and we’re seeing some cyclical trends in the market bear this out.

Growing a community from a movement

Before I zeroed in on engineering biology as a force of change in the world, I briefly dipped a toe in the space sector, right when the legwork was being done on advocacy for creating the Australian Space Agency. For those who know the space community you'll know it's a movement of people who see beyond the blue sky, who find satisfaction in developing technologies that touch on every aspect of our daily existence without anyone needing to notice. Time keeping, GPS, communications, thank you space.

Engineering biology is the same, it's this movement of people who see beyond the visible, but instead of looking out to the planetary scale, they look down to the molecular scale. This movement is almost singularly focused on finding solutions to the wicked problems our world knows too well - climate change, pandemics, supply chain fragility, pollution and waste. The engineering biology movement is uniquely poised to answer these challenges because each of these problems is based in biology.

Since starting this Substack, I've had some amazing people reach out and connect. This movement is real, it lives and breathes and finds form in the dreams we weave through engineering the biological substrates that knit together the fabric of our world. If we want to instantiate a more circular world, a more sustainable world, a world that can infinitely grow within its biological boundaries, then we need to look to the visions of engineering biology.

My hope is that across 2025 I can contribute a few words to this movement. My objective is a simple one, unchanged from last year. I want to push the boundaries of what you believe is possible. Because that’s the mission of Biofutures Instantiated, to bring you engineering biology and the salmon of doubt.

Not again with the salmon

The salmon is a direct reference to the collection of Douglas Adams’ posthumous writings. I reread this collection at the beginning of the year, and it includes an unfinished draft for the third book in the Dirk Gently’s Detective Agency series that had the working title of The Salmon of Doubt.

I love the provocation of this title, because it is in turn a reference to the Irish myth called the Salmon of Wisdom. In this myth there is a salmon that when eaten bestows all wisdom in the world. This salmon is eventually captured by a poet who spends seven years searching for it, he gives it to his apprentice to cook. The apprentice is not supposed to eat it… yeah I know, it’s like going into a dark room in a horror film. During the cooking process oil spits from the roasting salmon and lands on the apprentice’s thumb. When the poor kid licks their thumb they accidentally obtain all knowledge in the world.

The message is clear, knowledge can come at you in surprising and unexpected ways. Also, what kind of hero spends years searching for a salmon that gives you all the wisdom in the world, and then hands it over to their apprentice to cook? Just crisp that skin up yourself.

Actually, I’d wager most PhD students will sympathise with this myth, and I can think of no better metaphor to describe the life sciences.

The greatest discoveries come from the most unexpected of avenues, think CRISPR, or even the halo wearing double helix. Yet these discoveries always leave us with more questions than answers. Junk DNA, it turns out (unsurprisingly), is critical to the instantiation of life.

There is a cruel humour to this process of discovery, overhype and hubris. It is always followed by a dawning humility in the face of life’s complex majesty.

As we work our way through the verticals of engineering biology it’s critical to keep this front of mind. Engineering biology is not easy, it’s not even moderately complex - it is a few shades harder than terribly difficult. My hat goes off to the scientists who have trailblazed humanity to the point where the science fiction of the 1970s has become our commonplace reality in the 2020s. Imagine forward fifty years to where we might be, to what civilisation might become. Our choices today could never be more important.

Content content content

Last year I trialed three content types: the Verticals, Biofutures, and TL;DRs. I’m doubling down on these content types in 2025. I’m going to slowly and methodically work my way through a bespoke taxonomy categorising the reach and impact of engineering biology. I’ll reflect on the current state of each vertical via some special vector of opportunistic consequence, and then give you a scenario that tries to push the boundaries on where you think this vertical will go. Meanwhile, I’ll continue pulling apart reports, articles and events that speak to me.

But that’s not all.

I’m going to trial a few new content types at varying levels of frequency. I’m going to use the TL;DRs to remix collections of grey literature, podcasts and other Substacks that when pulled together create a coherent enough whole that one can weave a story, rebuttal or reflection around them. I’ve got some basic definitional work in mind. The life sciences are written in metaphor and multiscalar meaning unlocks the language of engineering biology. I’ll try and unpack some key terms across the course of the year. And then I’ve got some Cassobeary Sitreps planned.

I cut my teeth on cyberbiosecurity, technology surprise and great power rivalry. My Cassobeary Sitreps will creatively explore the future security issues we need to prevent before they’re possible. Secure-by-design should be the first principle of engineering biology and we’ll find out why by watching the trials and tribulations of Team Salmon playing the Cassobearies across the more-than-complex surface area of the cyber-biological domain.

Like you, I want all the benefits of engineering biology. I also want to minimise the risks. I hope the Sitreps will contribute to your understanding of where these risks might appear and who might want to take advantage of them.

Surely the can’t be more

Why yes, there’s more.

I’m all about iterative cycles that instantiate habits of expertise and routinise complex behaviour loops to the point where people begin to believe you can bend time. Which is is a fancy way to say that I’m making small changes.

I’ll be starting to curate Notes via Substack, so subscribe or follow for updates. I’ll make sure to syndicate these through Linkedin so you can track the latest wherever you might be.

I’m going to start curating Perplexity Pages on different items within the orbit of engineering biology, and I’ll be sharing these through socials and footnoting them in posts on the odd chance you’d like to AI more.¹

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I’m going to be scaling back new posts to once a fortnight. This will allow me to go deeper on research for each essay and bring you material with a sufficient modicum of quality such that my ultra-perfectionism won’t outright reject nor deeply detest it on a re-read.

I’m looking forward to this year and writing more for you. If you want to connect, share a virtual coffee, or throw down a comment under a pseudonym and then run for the hills, I’d love to hear from you.

From the Salmon I'm sending you my best wishes, and a sliver of doubt.

1. To start you off, I’ve curated a Salmon of Doubt and Synthetic Biology absurdity primer. I believe that Douglas Adams would have been all over AI the moment he could tinker with a transformer. This absurdity briefing genuinely made me question the creative potential of large language models - read through to the end if you want to see why.