Some of the most compelling works of fiction rely heavily on reality (Jurassic Park, anyone?) New York Times best-selling authors James Rollins and Steve Berry are masters of weaving fact into fiction – and both will be at HMNS on Tuesday, Jan. 19 for An Evening of Thrills: How Science and History Make Great Thrillers.  They’ll each be signing their latest releases after the lecture; tickets are going fast – get yours here. Below, Rollins gives us a sneak peek into his method – and the science behind his latest release, Altar of Eden.

Best-selling author James Rollins.

As a veterinarian-turned-author, the subject of many of my thrillers explores the fringes of science and the threats inherent in new technologies. I love delving into the moral ambiguity that lies between the scientific method and the blind abuse of power. Daily, I pour through scientific magazines, journal abstracts, and reports for subject matters that might make for excellent fodder for a thriller. Over the years, I’ve probed and tackled the shadowy margins of nanotechnology, quantum physics, and human consciousness. I’ve written best-selling novels that have explored subjects related to geology, archeology, paleontology, anthropology, and astronomy.

Still, coming from a background in veterinary medicine, one subject matter is still of special interest, one that I’ve delved into in great depth in many of my novels. It’s the subject of evolutionary biology. In my novel, Black Order, I tackled the debate between creationism and evolution. In my book, Amazonia, I let loose a mutagen into the rainforests of Brazil to create a twisted bestiary of new creatures. And in my current novel, Altar of Eden, I play with an age-old concept of biology, one coined by a German zoologist named Ernst Haeckel back in the 19th century: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

The basic precept behind this phrase was that the stages of embryonic growth—from egg to fetus—follow the same evolutionary history as the organism itself, that as an organism develops it passes through the stages of its evolutionary past: from fish, to reptile, to mammal. This concept has been since discredited, but there remains some truth to it: locked in our genetic code are traces of our evolutionary past.

Newest research suggests that sections of our junk (or non-coding) DNA may contain fragments of ancient viral DNA, bits of genetic material left over from exposure in the ancient past. Then there are those rare cases of atavism, where genetic traits thought lost to a species reappear in an individual. Such as the birth of a whale with hind legs, a foal born with extra toes, a chicken born with teeth. So while ontogeny might not necessarily recapitulate phylogeny, a shadow of our evolutionary past remains locked in our genetic code.

And that’s what I wanted to explore in my latest book (Altar of Eden), to dabble in the science behind such “genetic throwbacks,” to posit what might happen if a group of scientists found a way to harness this genetic potential, to literally turn back the evolutionary clock in certain species. What horrors might arise?

One of the many creatures featured in the novel is a python born with reptilian limbs, a throwback to a time before snakes lost their legs. I thought I was making this creature up, a pure fanciful construct—until a few months later, I stumbled upon an article about a Chinese snake born with a fully functional reptilian limb poking out of its flank. Here’s a link to that article.

In such cases, I love when fiction and reality blur so perfectly. It allows me to push the boundaries even further. What if these same scientists began experimenting with humans? What might result? Where is the line drawn between who we are now and who we were in the past?

Such explorations are fraught with danger—and I wasn’t the first to tap into them. H.G Wells explored a similar line of inquiry, probing the border between mankind and animals, in his novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. In fact, I open my book with a very telling quote from that classic novel: The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.

So even back then, the moral ambiguity inherent in cutting-edge science was great fodder for a thriller. And it’s even more apt today. With scientific inquiry pushing boundaries in all directions, I’ll never run out of things to write about.