Science in Science Fiction

At Imagi­Con last week­end, one of the pan­els was on the role of true sci­ence in sci­ence fic­tion.   It was a very inter­est­ing panel of South­ern sci­ence fic­tion authors.  Despite their dif­fer­ences in back­ground, the panel got along well.

• Allan F. Gilbreath started out the group.   He’s a nov­el­ist, poet, and short story writer.  He cov­ers a wide range of top­ics, espe­cially dark fan­tasy and sci­ence fic­tion. He had an open man­ner and a sense of humor that made the whole ses­sion a lot less stuffy.

• Stephanie Osborn was the most inter­est­ing author rep­re­sented, per­son­ally.   She has over twenty years expe­ri­ence in civil­ian and mil­i­tary space programs. With degrees in Astron­omy, Physics, Chem­istry, and Math­e­mat­ics, she had the strongest back­ground in sci­ence of the whole panel. She has writ­ten a mys­tery, Burnout, based on her expe­ri­ences at NASA, about a space shut­tle cat­a­stro­phe.  In the ensu­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, it turns out the dis­as­ter was no acci­dent.  Her work was at her editor’s when Colum­bia exploded, and she had a friend on board.  It took her a while to face her work again, but when she finally did, she dou­ble checked her accu­racy on the sci­ence and inves­ti­ga­tory pro­ce­dures at NASA.  She didn’t have to change a word.  I wish I had more time to lis­ten to her talk.  I did briefly get to sit in on the “Space Race” panel, where she told sto­ries of Soviet launches.  She also talked about our cur­rent space pro­gram, and how we sim­ply do not have the tech­nol­ogy nec­es­sary to go to the moon right now.

• William H. Drinkard was pro­mot­ing his new book, Elom. He describes it as “Clan of The Cave Bear meets Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind.”  He was frus­trated at his pub­lisher for try­ing to peg his book as fan­tasy because there was travel that was faster than light speed, which every­one knows is “not sci­ence.”  (At this, Stephanie snorted and asked, “How do they explain tachyons then?”)

• Van Allen Plex­ico is a comic book writer, cur­rently pub­lish­ing with a small press.  In fact, he was more inter­est­ing in that arena, and I plan to talk about small presses and self pub­lish­ing later.  As you can imag­ine, his comic books aren’t real hard scifi.  He joked that his stance on true sci­ence in Sci­ence Fic­tion was, “I’m agin it!”

A main theme of the night was that  sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion have a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship.   Obvi­ously, there are dif­fer­ent lev­els of sci­ence fic­tion.  A hard sci­ence fic­tion book that botches basic prin­ci­ples is a dis­as­ter, but space opera is given a lot more lee­way.  And comic books are expected to be pure fluff.   All of the pan­elists agreed that there was a time and place for all of these ele­ments.  No mat­ter how in depth the sci­ence really is can still serve to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion and drive the read­ers or view­ers to want to learn more.  The orig­i­nal Star Trek of the 60s, paired with the Apollo fire, inspired young Stephanie to enter the space pro­gram.  She looked at what was hap­pen­ing in real life, and real­ized peo­ple had died for this cause, and at the same time, she saw that Star Trek, or some ver­sion thereof, was where it could be going.   Many peo­ple were lit afire with the tales of what one day might be reflected in 2001.  While sci­ence obvi­ously inspires fic­tion, it can work in reverse, as well.  Inven­tions were “invented” in fic­tion decades before sci­en­tists fig­ured out how to make them work.  Psy­cho­log­i­cally, sci­ence fic­tion can pre­pare us for new things ahead of time.  We all know that a Kin­dle is really a proto Hitchhiker’s Guide.  War of the Worlds, writ­ten in 1898, fea­tured robotic work­ers.  These ideas enter our mind and make us able to grasp new con­cepts quickly when tech­nol­ogy catches up with the art.

We also dis­cussed the decline of hard sci­ence fic­tion, and how it coin­cides with fewer Amer­i­cans enter­ing sci­ence and math fields.   Dur­ing the panel, I was by far the youngest in the crowd.  At one point, a young girl had stopped in, lis­tened for a few min­utes with a bored look on her face, and then turned around and left.  Sci­ence is fail­ing to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of our young.  Isaac Asi­mov and Arthur C. Clarke are con­sid­ered too hard, or too bor­ing, for young peo­ple to read.  Also, most of the sci­ence fic­tion that is truly pop­u­lar right now is truly fan­tas­tic or just botched. Think about Armaged­don.  Most peo­ple didn’t even real­ize how crazy the sci­ence was.  I remem­ber being told to shut up and watch the movie when I was protest­ing about a whole aster­oid the size of Texas hurtling at the Earth that fast, but all of NASA just missed it.  And then they just swung good old Hub­ble over to take a gan­der at it!!

The same issues come up in his­tor­i­cal movies and nov­els, by the way.  Peo­ple don’t under­stand the basics, and are sat­is­fied with enter­tain­ment.  Some­one rec­om­mended that dis­gust­ing film, King Arthur, because I was a his­tory and Eng­lish major and it was his­tor­i­cally accu­rate!  I scoffed at the mere thought of a his­tor­i­cally accu­rate King Arthur movie, but I love the Arthuriad and all the myr­iad takes on it, so I watched it.  I hated it, and the his­tory was awful.  And please, some­one, tell Keira Knightly to eat a bis­cuit.  The rea­son she’s tol­er­a­ble in the Pirates movies is because you can’t see her pointy spine.  Ugh!

Instead of blam­ing sci­ence fic­tion of today,  we talked about the trends in sci­ence fic­tion reflect the trends in sci­ence, and vice versa.  As a soci­ety, we’re slip­ping in our edu­ca­tion.  We’re teach­ing to tests, and not get­ting fundamentals. As sci­ence and math are being dumbed down, so are sto­ries about them.  My (first grade!) son is learn­ing to use a cal­cu­la­tor in school before he has truly got­ten down basic addi­tion and sub­trac­tion!  Teenagers in Pre Cal and Trig are doing func­tions on their cal­cu­la­tors with­out hav­ing mas­tered long divi­sion.  There is an extent to which sci­ence builds on itself, and every com­puter pro­gram­mer doesn’t have to learn to pro­gram in binary. At the same time, sci­ence is UP in China and India.  Some­one joked about how we will be able to pro­vide fine enter­tain­ments for our new mas­ters, with our empha­sis on sports and Hol­ly­wood.   (It’s funny because it’s true!)

The true joy of sci­ence fic­tion is the joy of knowl­edge, learn­ing, and imag­i­na­tion. I left with an appetite for more, and am very glad that I went.  I left with many con­cepts to pon­der, and a few rec­om­men­da­tions of good authors to read.