Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
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Science in Science Fiction
November 22nd, 2008
In response to my post about science fiction as a science blogger, which I wrote in response to the upcoming discussion about using science fiction to promote and teach science at ScienceOnline09, I got an interesting response From a Sci-Fi Standpoint as part of a post titled “It’s science fiction, not science class.”
Yeah, but readers of books and watchers of movies learn from them anyway. Sometimes they learn crap, and it gives them misconceptions about how the world works, and sometimes they learn some true things, which gives them an appropriate perspective.
I am also taken to task there for caring about the people who won’t pick up a textbook or watch a documentary. At the risk of sounding like a Republican, that’s an awfully elitist comment. Plenty of people are too busy for active learning, working multiple jobs, raising kids, or just don’t like the effort of tackling difficult concepts. Putting that information in entertainment makes it easier to swallow and assimilate. Why care?
Because these people vote.
They vote for not only Presidents — and a lot voted for some mind-staggeringly anti-science politicians in my lifetime much to our detriment — but also for school boards. To the uneducated and scientifically illiterate, there does seem to be a valid controversy about evolution. Journalists have done a shitty job conveying the facts to the public on this topic. Why not let science fiction give it a go?
We live in a technologically complex world, and for better or worse many decisions are made by voting, and some woefully intellectually underprepared people actually manifest as viable candidates.
I would love to see stories that show the consequences of this, and the consequences of poor scientific understanding, become commonplace.
And besides, if you don’t want to get the science right in your stories, you should be writing fantasy where it is clear that the laws of nature may not be those of our own world. The worst case scenario is when it isn’t clear that the laws of physics are being broken, either because the writer is ignorant of them and has instilled that ignorance into his characters and plot, or because the writer is lazy and figures it doesn’t matter.
I’ve written about this before, and I’m sure I will again. It’s one of my things, the pinnacle of my triple passions of science, fiction, and education. Others are into this effort as well, like David Brin on his page about Science Fiction that Teaches, and even Seth McFarlane of Family Guy fame, who sits on the advisory board of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, which is trying to get Hollywood on board for promoting science.
And even if you don’t share my passion for this topic, why be complacent and think it’s okay for writers to get their shit wrong? We don’t settle for that in any other field of endeavor, except for perhaps politics, and that is the primrose path to doom when wedded with a lack of scientific understanding.
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Mike,
I’m going to take Bill’s side here just a bit and stress the entertainment part of literature.
Which is the point I think Bill was trying to make.
Now, I’ll admit that I’m not one of those SF readers who plug numbers into physics programs to determine if the Ringworld is truly stable or not and I’m pretty forgiving in general (yeah, ok, he stretched that one a bit but it’s still a hair into the plausible) but I do draw the line at outright ridiculousness. Technobabble gets you thrown across the room.
But if you want to throw an unexplained FTL drive into a rip-roaring adventure story – go right ahead, because I’m not depending on SF to ‘teach’ me these things.
What I am looking to it for is to entertain me AND open my eyes to scientifical things that I might not be aware of. (Or uses of the same that hadn’t occurred to me before.) If the use of such is sufficiently well displayed in the story, I’ll seek out authoritative texts that deal with the real.
If I subsuquently discover that the author was pulling the wool over my eyes, well then, we’ll have a nice little chat at some con somewhere.
I don’t expect disclaimers inside the book (From the publisher: The science presented in this story does NOT really work the way the author presents it or All scientific principals presented herein are based on actual fact!) but, especially in cases where the author makes claim to having a background and is writing as close to the line of real as possible, I do expect them to have a website and to offer explanations – kind of like you do.
As for television and movies – those media will always remain at the bottom of the least common denominator. The lower you go, the more money there is to be had. It’s an evolutionary kind of thing. Unfortunately, the tolerance for facts and ‘science’ down there is virtually nil. They do not want to think, only experience.
Good response, Mike.
A few further comments:
I don’t necessarily see elitism as a bad thing, in most contexts; but is it really elitist to expect people to use their own minds and take some responsibility for the state of their own knowledge?
Also, as I think I said in my own post, I think sf SHOULD endeavor to portray science accurately; I just don’t think it should feel OBLIGATED to do so in furtherance of some educational mission. A writer shouldn’t, for instance, rule out the use of FTL travel for fear it’s going to undermine public understanding of relativity.
I’m in a strange position, I suppose, because in some ways I’m very much with you. When I read or watch sf I’m very critical of the science content. And I sometimes fear the ideas people may pick up from sf and incorporate into their beliefs. For example, I absolutely cringe to think of the notions about cloning people could get from Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
On the other hand, I think science fiction creators should feel completely free to explore any idea and tell any story they want, in any way they want, and it’s up to the reader or viewer to judge the worth of it. If people lack a sense of scientific judgement, maybe that’s a failure of our educational system. If so, that would be a far better place to apply solutions, rather than using sf as a remedial science class.
Interesting read, and I get your point, but can’t agree entirely.
Here’s what you need to do, at a minimum, if you’re going to include something like FTL. You need to acknowledge that it violates what is currently understood and invoke some kind of loophole, and you need to do it explicitly. Hyperspace does that, implicitly, but few seem to get the implications. Anyone with an understanding of relativity is still going to have issues with the near universal neglect of the time travel that FTL implies.
Relativity is reality that is used in our GPS systems. Lightspeed is a limit to our electronics and communications that we all experience on a daily basis (e.g., seeing the delays when reporters operate via satellite). Ignoring such things is insulting and lazy on the part of the writer. Star Trek was originally pitched as Wagon Train in space, but space isn’t like the old west, and space war isn’t like world war II. It’s a different thing, and it’s more interesting, I think, to write about it the way it is.
Otherwise, it should be clear that it’s some kind of fantasy. Star Wars fits the bill here with its magic. I could have liked the prequels if they hadn’t sucked on other grounds. I don’t consider Star Wars science fiction.
Wanted is a nice contemporary fantasy. It’s clear that making bullets bend around objects and telling the future with the looms isn’t the world as we know it. I liked it.
The Charlie’s Angels movies had all sorts of stunts that defied the laws of physics without being explicit that it was a fantasy world, and even for an over the top adventure I found myself losing interest fast. Anything could and would happen to advance the story, things that weren’t in reality, but not so far outside reality that it was an obvious fantasy.
I’m probably just coming down as a curmudgeon about people needing to obey my definitions of what is science fiction and what is fantasy.
Bill, do you think that the public will have problems with a big screen Hollywood version of The Forever War? The conceit of the story is based on relativity. Audiences will likely need to be educated on relativity. The public, back in Einstein’s day, seemed interested in understanding. Now it seems like one of those topics outside the mass consciousness reserved for scientists and engineers who need to know about it.
My biggest fear is that they’ll substitute suspended animation for relativity. Storywise, it does almost the same thing, and is a simpler concept that audiences will be familiar with. And there goes the opportunity to educate millions about science that is already a century old.
Both of you are really smart, interesting guys with things to say. Starting from there, I am wondering more about the “elitism,” and what is appropriate to expect for the public at large. Half of the population is below average, but that doesn’t mean that the entire public can’t be educated. Or does it? And where is the responsibility? As a university professor who has taught non-major intro astronomy, I see a lot of people who are interested in learning, but really have no clue about how to do it other than going to school, and even then it is hit or miss and depends on their classes.
Your average student takes 2-3 science classes in college, and that’s it. Chemistry or physics, biology, and maybe something else like geology or astronomy. And frankly the material there, and the experiences, are little deeper than a good high school course. They are there to learn something about the process. The specifics of 2-3 semesters of classes cover a tiny fraction of our scientific knowledge. The process is boring to most non-science types, and what you do in a lab as a student is hard to link to relativity, or the structure of DNA, or the existence of black holes — the cool stuff.
Anyway, just thinking aloud some more on an issue that I face regularly in my professional life. I usually take responsibility for what the non-majors learn (or don’t), but for majors and grad students, that’s up to them.
Mike.
don’t you have a novel you should be writing? (lol)
Talk about science fiction – I started out as a marine biology major and ended up graduating with an English lit degree. Not that I couldn’t handle the work – it was a girl what done it to me.
I appreciate the defense of a hard and fast definition of SF (and completely agree with your characterization of Star Wars as fantasy); I’m finding that much of today’s fodder that is marketed as SF would be more aptly defined as ‘magical realism’.
But then we get to works that are now generally referred to as ‘space opera’ (they’re even lumping Niven and friends into that category) – which is basically SFnal style backgrounds used for good ol adventure or explorations of ‘softer’ sciences (psychology, sociology…).
I find much of the ‘cyberpunk’falling into the fantasy realm as well – little regard seems to be paid to maintaining consistency or even old fashioned logic.
But when all is said and done, each of us decides what is and what isn’t science fiction – to invoke Damon Knight.
In regards to ‘elitism’ – here’s my perspective. I’ve worked in several different fields, more often than not from the beginning of those industries and have found a consistent pattern. Once a market is identified and the investors begin to arrive, the pressure to broaden the market (and increase the ROI) overwhelms everything else. Purity (and even sensibility) is ultimately lost in the quest for more dollars and everything eventually reaches that lowest common denominator level where the ‘brand’ appeals to the widest possible audience and barely resembles the thing it started out as.
It then achieves a self-sustaining level (the dollars earned being used to reinforce that ‘vision’ of the brand) and the faux-whatever becomes the THING – whether it really is or not.
Just as a small example: I’ll bet that far more people have downloaded Hubble or Spitzer screensavers because they ‘look cool’ than because they have any understanding of what the pictures represent or the technology (and science) behind gathering them. If they’ve downloaded spitzer images, they would be SHOCKED if you were to show them that area of the sky through a scope: “where’s the colors?” is the question you would hear most.
I wonder how many of your non-major undergrads would argue the moon landing with you: it is far easier to sell government conspiracy than it is the science required to show them how ridiculous the hoax is.
It simply takes too much money to truly educate people: good god, if they had powers of discernment, they might not buy the ‘new’ lavender scented window cleaner, and then where would we be.
I don’t see it as being elitist, I see it as recognizing that right now, the power of the dollar is almighty and getting more dollars means dumbing things down.
Mike, you’ve provided a lot of food for thought. Keep on thinking out loud.
I would HATE to see Hollywood do The Forever War and sweep relativity under the rug. (I haven’t read it yet, actually, but I’m familiar with the basic concept of it.) And that’s just the sort of thing Hollywood would do, unfortunately.
Steve has posted before about the dumbing-down problem in tv and movies, and anti-intellectualism in our culture generally, and I think that’s a huge part of the problem right there: cultural values that downplay (even ridicule, often) the importance of anything intellectual. Many kids are proud to do poorly in math and science, and there have always been special names (geek, nerd) for those who do well.
My guess is that forces like that have much more to do with people’s attitudes toward science than what people get from science fiction. But that’s only a guess.
On FTL and time travel, I just remembered, since I’m reading his Hyperion series right now, that Dan Simmons addresses this issue, as does Le Guin in her Hainish novels (and she’s not even a “hard sf” writer). But yes, I agree completely that too often it is overlooked.
I’m reading your “Top Ten Issues for Hard SF” — very interesting!
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