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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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Einstein on Science Fiction
January 2nd, 2009
I was reading a book of quotes, and one of the notes mentioned that Einstein, much to my consternation, believed that people should NOT read science fiction.
His reasoning?
It distorts science, and gives people the illusion of understanding science.
Hmm, shades of Buzz Aldrin here. I have some of the same objections as Einstein, but limit them to what I consider bad science fiction that makes a lot of scientific errors (distortion is a mild problem compared to some of the horrors out there). To give Einstein the benefit of the doubt, he did live in an era where science fiction wasn’t exactly rigorous about anything, from the quality of the science to the writing. I like to think he’d be more open-minded about hard science fiction and see the power of science fiction to inspire future scientists.
And recall, this is the guy who came up with all his best ideas by starting with thought experiments, like what it would be like to ride on a beam of light, or how in a rocket you can’t tell if you’re experiencing gravity or acceleration.
Sounds like science fiction to me, leading to fundamental scientific insights for Einstein personally, but perhaps also for the public at large who read about these stories.
Maybe some quality science fiction would have helped educate the public about relativity without, I think, much if any distortion.
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Einstein lived in an “error”? It was a pretty exciting time, and sure, some things were done that weren’t brilliant, but that’s a bit harsh.
Homonyms are not synonyms.
Moz
last night my friend told me that einstein was offered the presidency of Israel when they became a state in 1948, but he turned it down saying, “politics are temporary, but equations are forever.” which i thought was pretty awesome, not only because einstein said it, but because equations are cheaper than diamonds.
also, i don’t think error is a homonym for anything but words that don’t exist, like erroar or airer.
Heh, that was pretty funny. Considering that Einstein lived through Hitler, WW II, and the Holocaust my slip was pretty apropos. It’s strange to see what typos you make even after writing millions of words.
cuyler, yeah, that’s Einstein for you. He really hated nationalism and politics, and didn’t care what people thought of him and so dressed as he liked, said what he thought, etc. But he was actually very politically minded in his later years having learned a lot of hard lessons in his public life. He became very gracious in later years.
The Israelis felt compelled to offer him the presidency, and also tried to get him to come to Israel as a professor, but Einstein was too smart to take a job he’d hate in the first case, and too comfortable in his Princeton position to take the latter.
Wouldn’t you think the obvious reason Einstein would be against reading science fiction is all those stories about faster than light travel?
Yeah, but his thought experiments were very rigorous and scientific, and science fiction is more like flights of fancy.
You should ask the readers of your blog to propose the best SF book that Einstein should have read before his death to change his mind about SF. Einstein died in 1955. Since he was a peacenik he might would have liked Childhood’s End or The Day the Earth Stood Still.
I highly recommend Einstein by Walter Isaacson, a bio I read this past year that was the great at trying to set up what Einstein was thinking for each of his famous papers.
Jim, FTL would be one obvious issue, among too many. I don’t think there was much, if any, “hard science fiction” back in the day. Hal Clement would be one of the earliest that have passed the test of time. Have to check the dates of his books.
I have a Hartwell and Cramer anthology on the history of hard sf that I should check as well, although it is thousands of miles away at the moment.
SF can be both rigorous and fantastic, in my opinion. No reason it can’t be both. Reality is pretty fantastic when you push the limits.
I also read the Isaacson book and can recommend it.
It depends on how you define hard science fiction… Archimedes wrote a lot of what might be called science speculation based on ideas he couldn’t implement. Just because we commonly have the hardware today doesn’t mean it wasn’t science fiction yesterday. My suspicion is that Einstein as he aged would have got more interested in political speculation rather than (say) current space opera that at least I associate with hard science fiction.
I’m personally a bit over the current tendency to handwave politics away with “society is run by AI’s”. I don’t think resource contention and system constraints will go away just because computers get smart, nor will people suddenly care only about the few others they know face to face.
Cuyler, not everyone lives in Texas.
Really, I dont think hard scifi is innately better than other sci-fi. Just because it does have ftl travel its not hard scifi?
I just think Einstein was wrong on that. To like or dislike sci-fi you need to READ IT. How many sci-fi books have Einstein read? Maybe he read some when he was a teen (not many choices back then) and carried the same opinion the rest of his life. Maybe he never read some good books from Asimov and Clarke.
Maybe he only saw a few crap Hollywood movies and thought sci-fi was that. Maybe he hated any kind of romance.
In my opinion, Einstein was WRONG when saying sci-fi distorts science and gives people the illusion of understanding science. Well, you know, I bet most sci-fi readers understand science MUCH BETTER than people who never read sci-fi books.
No, you wont be able to calculate the trajectory of a space probe using gravitational slings by reading sci-fi. But if you didnt read sci-fi there are much larger chances that you wouldnt EVEN KNOW what is a gravitational sling. Or aerobraking. Or A LIGHT YEAR! (which many people still think its a time measure!)
Ok, maybe I am delusional in HOPING that humanity will discover some FTL travel, or that Burkhard Heim ´s equations actually work
Well, the FTL thing was a big deal to Einstein!!! People in that era had grown up without the speed limit concept at all, and every experiment ever done has supported his results.
And typical sf of the era was Flash Gordon and pulpy nonsense written by people without scientific understanding. Even HG Wells was mostly soft science fiction (about social trends rather than science).
As a teen, Einstein might have had access to some Verne, but perhaps not. He spent most of his time reading philosophy and science and the important books of the day. Very little sf then, and very little of importance or accuracy.
I wonder what books we could send back in time to Einstein to get him to change his mind. The Forever War, perhaps?
Maybe Einstein got some earlier version ´s of Hubbard ´s books… most soft sci-fi nonsensic space opera I ever read…
Mr. Brotherton,
A friend of mine is writing a paper on SF and physics and mentions Einstein’s views on SF. However, she cannot find a print source or journal she can use to cite this information. Could you please tell me what sources you used to come to your original statement?
Thank you for your time,
Katie
Katie, I thought I had replied to this a few days ago, but it looks like I failed to finish. The book I found the quote in that indicated this attitude is:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7921.html
Good luck for your friend!