Andre at Biocurious points out an interesting piece in Nature. They interviewed four prominent SF authors–Paul McAuley, Ken Macleod, Joan Slonczewski, and Peter Watts about biology in science fiction. The resulting article is a good read, with lots of interesting anecdotes and examples, and if you go to the supplementary information page for the article, you can get a longer version, including bits that were cut out of the print edition.
That is, of course, assuming that you are surfing the Web from an institution that happens to have a site license for Nature, or have a personal subscription. If you’re just an ordinary schlub with a computer, it’ll cost you $30 to buy the article. And allow me to save you some money: It’s an interesting piece, but no way is it $30 worth of interesting.
It’s a shame, really, because the whole issue is devoted to marking the 50th anniversary of the “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, with a bunch of articles on the topic (helpfully linked from the lead editorial) that all look interesting. I consider them unbloggable, though, because every one of them is behind that paywall.
I’ve heard people say that Nature is one of the few publishers that “really gets Web 2.0.” I think this is based on the fact that they host several blogs, but really, blogs are not the be-all end-all of the web (or even the annoyingly buzzwordy “Web 2.0,” whatever that is). As long as they charge $30 to read a four-page feature story online, they don’t “get” the web in any meaningful sense.