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."
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-- 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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False Dichotomies and Science/Science Fiction
November 24th, 2009
This is just going to be a short post tonight on a topic I have discussed before and will likely continue to discuss.
Politics in the United States has become so polarized that few politicians cross party lines. It is one team vs. the other, rather than real issues with real solutions that are not solved by the mindless application of simple positions.
While politics is the most clearly visible example of false dichotomies plaguing us today, we have them in both science and science fiction and they are quite similar: style vs. substance.
Too many people on both sides see it as an either or. Scientists care about getting all the substance right, and getting it all in, with little care for the style of presentation or the reception. Too often they feel like the facts, no matter how boringly presented, should speak for themselves. On the flip side, writers and filmmakers and a lot of other folks don’t worry about getting the details all right, or even mostly right, but only seem to care if the final product is cool and well received by a large number of people.
In short, the science side cares only about substances. The Hollywood crowd and most of the public primarily care about style. Both sides seem to want to pick a side, and align with it. This is somewhat ludicrous.
Why can’t we start with the premise that BOTH ARE IMPORTANT?!
A scientifically accurate presentation is fatally flawed if it is correct but boring.
A gripping, entertaining bit of science or science fiction is flawed if it is fun but inaccurate.
It isn’t either/or.
It can be both. There’s a solution in essentially every case. Flawed movies can be fixed. Boring documentaries can be enlivened.
More on the details of this coming soon as time permits, but the first step is setting aside the limiting beliefs that style and substance are mutually exclusive. That’s small-minded thinking on exhibit.
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I like you point. Now I feel a little bit guilty about creating a web site to vote on whether something is or is not Science Fiction: http://isitsciencefiction.com
Maybe I should create an Is it Entretaining? to compensate. I’m sure I would list a lot of Neil deGrasse Tyson in there.
“A gripping, entertaining bit of science or science fiction is flawed if it is fun but inaccurate.”
I basically agree so long as the distinction is maintained between that which is using science fiction tropes for purely fantastical purposes (I’m thinking THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES as a good example).
What’s not acceptable is dropping a big steaming pile of scientific absurdity in a story that otherwise seems to be attempting to be science fictional. The Matrix’s use of the “human battery”, for example, which took me right out of the story with a groan of frustration—it would have been so easy to use something that at least made a passing attempt at plausibility, like humans being kept alive in simulations as objects of study. Or even something like Dan Simmon’s use of human brains for computing in the Hyperion novels.
I think this problem is really a specialization problem. The scientists specialized in substance and the writers specialized in being entertaining of stylized. And most in either camp were exhausted enough to not to worry what they lacked.
Didn’t Heinlein say “specialization is for insects”? Personally I prefer authors who pay attention to substance and reality. And I think it would be great if scientists got their style to be so entertaining that science would be a breeze to understand.
{{{ The Matrix’s use of the “human batteryâ€, for example, which took me right out of the story with a groan of frustration—it would have been so easy to use something that at least made a passing attempt at plausibility, like humans being kept alive in simulations as objects of study. }}}
Actually is the most fantastic exception to any rule I have encountered.
The Matrix was a religious/metaphysical allegory put into a science fiction setting. The Matrix is the culture we live in and it is using us up via consumerism. But the whole thing is a distraction to keep us from focusing on things that really matter.
Why was Neo the 6th ONE? Because on the 7th day God rested. So the last movie ended with the dawn of the 7th day. The Architect and The Oracale were Yang and Yin. The levels of meaning in that movie were absolutely amazing. It is one of the rare cases where scientific accuracy was trivial compared to the BIG PICTURE.