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.
Permalink | Tags: Science, Science Fiction | 11 Comments »
Ten Science Fiction Movie Series that Sank
November 12th, 2008
The inspiration for this post constitutes our first two entries:
‘Alien vs. Predator’ was ‘a pity,’ says Ridley Scott
A pity, yes. What a pithy way of putting it.
Alien (1) was a tour-de-force of science fiction horror. Predator (2), although not as ground-breaking, was also an entertaining film with some originality and nice monster-building.
Later installments have been stale at best. Unimaginative. Sucky, in a bad way.
Star Wars (3) has to be a bigger disappointment, however. It was all downhill after the Ewoks. I prefer to think that the three prequels don’t even exist.
It seems that it is all about money. Milking the cow. Even if the cow is going dry, people will still buy a stinky package labeled “milk” and selling crap is easier sometimes than finding something new.
Almost anything that comes out gets repeated until it stinks. There are exceptions, like the latest Batman, however. When you get something better than the original, it is because someone has tried to reinvent the product, not to keep it the same. This is the lesson, I think. Every movie, book, or TV show should strive for something new, even if it is with old characters.
Star Trek (4) sank. Maybe the reboot will follow the lesson of Batman rather than Alien.
Back to the Future (5) went back to the well two times too many.
The Matrix (6) went from cool to “whoa” in the next two movies, but not in a good way.
The Terminator (7) was an awesome movie. T2 wasn’t bad at all, either. The third, not so great, and I hear there is a fourth now in the works.
The interesting Pitch Black (8) grew into the “Riddick Trilogy” that ultimately got pretty dumb, in my opinion.
Robocop (9) anyone? I didn’t even remember there was a third movie.
Finally, a great movie with really stinky sequels to end this list: Highlander (10). The other movies in the series should be erased from the collective consciousness of humankind, forever. There can be only one, right?
I thought about writing a list of movies that improved upon the originals, but could’t think of very many examples. And most of those were undone by bad sequels themselves (think Star Trek II and how it eventually spawned Star Trek V, proof that if there is a god, he is a foul and evil creature lurking in the director’s chair, for giving us that shitty movie — yeah, I’m talking about you, Shatner).
There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon in written sf series as well, which I will leave for a sequel to this post, if it is popular enough, and I don’t have any better ideas…
Permalink | Tags: movies, Science Fiction | 1 Comment »
Ten Great Science Fiction Novels that Would Make Terrible Movies
November 11th, 2008
I’m going to hammer some popular books, books that I love, but for a number of reasons these stories just won’t translate well to the big screen. Maybe some brilliant director could do it, or the stories could be rewritten, or made into mini-series, or something, but I don’t see any winners here in the summer movie schedule, ever.
Startide Rising, by David Brin. Smart dolphins look dumb on film. Remember Johnny Mnemonic? And underwater chase scenes never come off that cool, either.
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. Let ´s watch the kid play video games instead of actually fighting aliens, or playing a video game ourselves. Why isn’t Ender’s Game a super-popular game on Xbox?
A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge Because of the alien multi-minded dog creatures, duh! Cool to read about, and think about. Confusing and dumb to watch.
The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov. Extra-dimensional alien scientists? Multi-minded merging creatures? Stories that connect only tangentially? Hard to follow I bet.
The Vor Game, by Lois McMasters Bujold. Or any of the other popular Miles Vorkosigan books in the series. Because reading about someone who is, for want of a better word, physically challenged, is a whole lot more engaging than watching. Audiences are shallow.
Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. Who wants to watch people get the plague and die for a couple of hours?
Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Maybe this could be a great mini-series, but it would be a mess crammed into a two-hour movie. I would love to see the Shrike come to life, however…
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin. Intellectual and introspective, a great read, but unlikely to carry to the big screen. I mean, if A Wizard of Earthsea can get screwed up so badly as what we saw on the sci0fi channel, this one has no hope.
Timescape, by Gregory Benford. As much as I hate to say it, this book brilliantly captures the culture and daily life of science, which is why it would fail on film.
The Dragon’s Egg, by Robert Forward. First, this book lacks for human characters and much of a plot from our point of view. And a history of microscopic aliens on a world so alien it might as well be virtual, well, not much to engage the emotions. Hard to even imagine what this story would look like from the alien perspective.
Did I miss something obvious? Disagree?
Permalink | Tags: Science Fiction | 14 Comments »
Low-Gravity Longevity?
November 10th, 2008
A friend of mine emailed me to ask about something he remembered Timothy Leary saying in a speech 30 years ago:
“Our enemy is gravity. That’s why we die. We are all fighting the earth’s gravitational pull. We will live forever, once we escape the pull from Mother Earth.”
Leary had some kooky ideas for sure, involving his Exo-Psychology theory and searching for a higher intelligence and building space colonies. LSD was, in his view, was to prepare us for way out environments like space. I kind of like his idea, metaphorically at least, that humanity can live forever once we stop putting all our eggs only in the basket of Earth, but Leary was perhaps being literal.
My friend doesn’t take Leary seriously, but he was wondering if there was any truth to the notion that escaping our gravitational existence could improve our longevity.
The short answer is that there may be, but we don’t know. There are certainly long-term physical changes that occur in microgravity environments that have been studied on Mir and the ISS, but these are not clearly related to longevity. There is evidence that high-gravity environments may shorten lifespans, but that doesn’t mean that low-gravity environments will necessarily do the opposite.
I am wondering though how Leary may have influenced science fiction. In the movie Contact S. R. Hadden moves to Mir to prolong his life, and somehow the microgravity there is supposed to slow his cancer. I recall other science fiction stories about people moving to space when their health required it. Maybe this was just the idea that if you’re old and feeble, with weak bones, space is a less demanding environment on your system. I’m not sure though. Anyone remember any specific stories?
Anyone have suggestions about where this idea comes from in science fiction? Is it Leary? It isn’t known experimental fact in humans or animals — mammals at least. Or is it just speculation that too many people borrowed from each other, like how only humans can navigate hyperspace, or how looking at hyperspace will drive you mad, or something odd like that?
Permalink | Tags: gravity, orbit, Science, Science Fiction | 9 Comments »
On Science Journals and “Wrong” Papers
November 6th, 2008
The other day I linked to this story from the Economist called “Publish and Be Wrong.” They were making the criticism that scientists may be overselling their results to get into the most prestigious journals, and hence the top journals were more likely to be publishing “wrong” results.
Well, I have been thinking more about this and have some criticisms of the article. Sorry. I know criticizing economists can be like kicking a dead horse, but…sometimes you just feel the urge to rear back and kick the hell out of the thing.
Most science publications are called “journals.” I see papers published in them as the official public version of the research journal of mankind. It is totally normal in a journal to get excited about preliminary results, to look at small samples before examining larger data sets, and to engage in some informed speculation to help motivate future work.
A paper is wrong, and only wrong, when mistakes are made.
A spurious correlation is not a mistake. A speculation that turns out to be wrong after additional observations or experiments is not a mistake. Sometimes these things turn out to be right, and fast and high-profile publication directs people to work on them right away and check them out.
In astronomy, we have a journal exactly for this: Astrophysical Journal Letters. Short papers, fast publication, more timely, may be more speculative:
Timeliness — A Letter should have a significant immediate impact on the research of a number of other investigators or be of special current interest in astrophysics. Permanent, long-range value is less essential. A Letter can be more speculative and less rigorous than an article for Part 1 but should meet the same high standard of quality.
Related to this post is the sloppy nomenclature of writers talking about “failed” experiments. Experiments test ideas, giving a result in support of, or contradictory to, a hypothesis or theory. An experiment is only a failure when it doesn’t provide a test. Science is about learning things, not confirming things. Engineering is about making things work. Don’t confuse the two.
Permalink | Tags: astronomy, Science, writing | 1 Comment »
Interview with the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, about Death from the Skies
November 3rd, 2008
I am pleased to offer an interview with Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, on the release of his latest book, Death from the Skies.
1) What was your inspiration for writing this book?
I have always been fascinated by the biggest and bangiest of things in the Universe: exploding stars. They have everything: titanic explosions, incredible densities, vast energies, and as a fun bonus they leave behind screaming neutron stars or voracious black holes. For my PhD I studied a star that exploded back in 1987, and went on to work on other violent events, too.
When it came time to write a second book, the topic seemed pretty natural. Plus, there’s a renewed interest in asteroid impacts; I can’t go a week without seeing some documentary on TV lovingly showing just how devastating a big impact would be. But they always get it wrong! They make them too violent, or not violent enough. They don’t talk about the actual risk, the really low likliehood that you’ll get creamed by an impact.
So I sat down and brainstormed every single astronomical event I could think of that could wipe out life on Earth. I have to admit, it was fun.
2) What attracts you to astronomy and death?
I’ve always been in love with astronomy, since I was five and saw Saturn through a telescope. That hooked me instantly! And being a little boy, I would make starship models out of Legos and blow them up with firecrackers. So merging the two seems natural enough.
And honestly, who doesn’t love a good disaster movie! That’s what this book is, a disaster movie in 9 movements, with the Earth getting whacked in each one.
3) What sort of research did you do to write this book?
I have a decent general knowledge of astronomy, with some expertise in some fields. But I don’t know much about the actual series of unfolding events after an impact, or what happens if the Sun belches out a monumental solar flare in our direction. So I read a lot of general articles, quite a few journal (professional) papers, made a lot of phone calls, and sent out a ton of emails. Happily, I have friends who are experts in these other fields (including one who studies what happens when a nearby supernova tears away our ozone layer, for example). I had a lot of ground covered with these folks.
I did a lot of math, making sure I understood the scale of some of these things. I have a few notepads filled with calculations about black hole masses, particle radiation propagation effects, and how hot and bright the Sun gets as it swells into a red giant. That last one creeped me out. The death of the Sun really got to me; it’s inevitable, even though we have a few billion years to fret over it.
The hard part was calculating statistics. For some I had experts to rely on; the lifetime odds of dying in an asteroid impact turn out to be about 1 in 700,000, roughly the same as being killed by a terrorist or on an amusement park ride. But what about being swallowed up by a black hole? Out came the notepad again. But I think I was able to nail some down to within a factor of ten or so (a table of the risks was published online by Discover Magazine here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/28/hive-overmind-of-death/). Good enough for astronomy!
4) Does this book have a theme or message you’re trying to impart?
A few, actually. One is that the Universe is incredibly inhospitable, yet we have this planet that’s doing OK by us. Another is that the Universe is incredibly cool and interesting. Black holes are really fun to think about. Actually, most of this is mind-stretching and fun. What happens to the Sun after 100 quadrillion years? One hundred octillion? A googol?
But a strong point I make is how unlikely most of this stuff is. Some are inevitable (the Sun expanding, the Milky Way colliding with the Andromeda galaxy, the eventual decay of matter) but won’t happen for a long, long time. Others could happen tomorrow (asteroid impact, giant solar flare), but are really long odds. And in some cases, we can minimize or prevent their happening, like moving asteroids out of the way before they hit us.
5) Who are your favorite authors and books now and when you were growing up?
When I was a kid just about all I read was hard SF or related to it. Asimov was a biggie. Clarke (I have an autographed The Coming of the Space Age!), Heinlein, Niven, all the biggies. I stopped reading SF for a few years, but now I’m back! John Scalzi, Joe Haldeman (I’m rereading The Forever War right now), and (sycophantically) a book by Brotherton is sitting on my desk, too.
As far as science non-fiction, I love Sagan of course. Neil Tyson is another; I have a lot of astronomy friends who have written great books. I have a lot of skeptical books, too: Shermer, Randi, Wiseman, Kurtz, Harris, Dawkins.
6) What projects are you working on now?
Mostly two big ones: my Bad Astronomy Blog (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy), which keeps me hopping a good chunk of the day, looking for new things to gripe^h^h^h^h talk about, and being president of the James Randi Educational Foundation (http://www.randi.org). Randi is an icon in the critical thinking movement, and I’m pleased and — pardon the expression — in disbelief that I am playing this part Randi is the big reason I got into skepticism, and to work with him now is a dream come true. I can’t know for sure — who can? — but I think that we can make a big impact on the world by promoting rational thought in every field of human endeavors. Politics, history, science, technology, business… everything is touched by irrationality, and if we can get enough people to just *think*, well, I imagine this would be a much finer place to hang out.
At least until the inevitable destruction of the planet. But that gives us plenty of time to figure things out.
Permalink | Tags: astronomy, bad, death, interview, reason | 2 Comments »
The Future: Writing as a Career or Hobby
November 1st, 2008
I was talking to Mike Resnick at a convention and he remarked about the print run of his first book, which was close to six figures. Now, he’s a good, big name writer, but new writers in SF today as opposed to decades past rarely have print runs at that level and the average is much smaller. There are more books published today with smaller individual audiences, which, all in all, is a good thing for fans. I would rather have a wide choice of reading options, with some being exactly what I want.
But this downsizing is going to continue, and with electronic publishing, transform. E-books are not the standard in publishing yet that MP3s are in the music industry. I don’t even buy CDs any more, and keep everything on my ipod.
It may take another decade, but we will get to this technology with books, too. It may not be amazon’s kindle but it will be the ipod version of the book. I am living abroad right now, and it killed me to only take a dozen or so books with me to Brazil, but I took my entire music collection.
What I am getting around to is the notion that the business model for books will break soon much as it broke for the music industry, and more recently the movie industry. There will have to be a new model.
The big winner in music has been itunes, the first system where large numbers of people paid for legal music downloads. On-demand movies have been somewhat successful, too, although this industry will need to meet new challenges as compression technology and bandwidths improve.
Books are next.
Even if a business model similar to itunes pops up with success, the lower risk involved in publication given the potential elimination of printing and shipping fees will likely mean more books published with even smaller audiences and smaller advances. On average.
What I am getting at, which I indicated in my title, is the notion that even fewer writers are likely to be able to make a full-time living at writing. There aren’t many today, but there do seem to be more than when Resnick broke in, perhaps a sweet spot in terms of numbers. I am suggesting that while there is still some money to be made by writers, it is going to get harder to make enough to live on very well (and I don’t think most full-time writers live in the lap of luxury).
My full 12-month salary as a professor in the physical sciences just broke six figures (including the summer salary I can pay myself when I have research grants). The figures that open writers like John Scalzi provide suggest they don’t make this much, which is consistent with what I hear from friends who don’t publish their incomes in public. It would take a really big book to convince me to move out of a tenured faculty position to write full time at this point.
So, I know I am not the first to make this point and won’t be the last, but writing is likely to remain in some sense a hobby for me (a very, important business-minded and passionate hobby) but not a full-time gig. I also think this is going to an increasing rule in the future.
You can google up alternative models to my itunes for books proposal. The thousand true fans thing, for instance, and other variations of patron systems. But I think there’s a likelihood that a lot of the artists of the future will be better described as hobbyists.
Permalink | Tags: Science Fiction, writing | 10 Comments »
The Difference Between Science and Engineering and “Engineering Fiction”
October 30th, 2008
I double majored in college in electrical engineering and space physics, before going on to get advanced degrees in astronomy. I made a conscious choice to pursue science rather than the more lucrative engineering.
Why does this matter? Why should you care?
I am interested in the issue of politics and science, and the more general issue of support for science. I recently read an article suggesting that the pro-science neocons like Newt Gingrich are actually pro-technology when it enhances our ability, and resistant to science that suggests we have problems that forces us to control ourselves.
So, engineering is about the application of existing knowledge produced by science. It is solving an intrinsically solvable problem in an optimal fashion. Engineering discoveries tend not to be fundamental, but incremental, using our scientific knowledge to make improvements.
Science is about discovering fundamentally things about how the universe works, not using them to do anything in particular.
I was more scientifically inclined. I was an awesome engineer because I thought like a scientist, looking for deeper understanding, but that scientist thinking made me less enamored with engineering. I wanted to work on problems that didn’t necessarily have answers, or had answers that couldn’t be imagined from the start. I wanted to discover fundamentally new things.
The real engineers I knew just wanted to get the answer. They were more practical than me. I usually corrected them when they made mistakes, but they were full steam ahead whereas I was slower and more careful. On the other hand, I was faster and more practical than most physics majors.
Here’s the final point. The engineer wants to solve a problem fast and efficiently. The scientist wants to get at the truth about how the universe works, however that is, however long it takes. Science is NOT about developing new technology.
Stories about new technology giving people great abilities is really more appropriately called “engineering fiction” rather than science fiction. Science fiction, being pure about the term, is about discovering new things about the universe. Truths. Not super powers.
Permalink | Tags: engineering, Science | 7 Comments »
Mind-Meld on Science Fiction’s Effects on Enthusiasm for Space Exploration
October 29th, 2008
Over at sfsignal.com, there’s a new Mind-Meld topic I’m participating in:
Q: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin said fantastic space science fiction shows and movies are partly responsible for the lack of interest in real-life space exploration among young people. Do you agree with this assessment? Why?
In addition to myself, participants include Larry Niven, David Brin, J. Michael Straczynski, Jack McDevitt, John Scalzi, Alastair Reynolds, and others. I found John C. Wright’s response particularly interesting as an experiment in sf hindsight.
I blogged about this over the summer, and there’s a poll there, too, and now update my answer:
I have to be a weenie and equivocate. For some people yes, for some people, no, and for some people it isn’t an issue.
While I think Buzz Aldrin has a point, it isn’t anything close to the complete story. I’ll take my own stab at blaming something at the end of my comments.
There are people like myself, and many science fiction fans, who are enthusiastic about space exploration. Exploration of the wonders of the universe is what we like, and we like it both for real and in the imagination. We’re more fans of exploration and because one is easier doesn’t sour us on the other. This group is important for two reasons. First, there is always going to be base support. Second, the ranks of the scientists and engineers will be filled by many people from this group. Science fiction inspires us to pursue space exploration for real. Unfortunately, we’re something of a minority of the public at large.
Then there are people who are Earth-centric. They just don’t see the point. This can result from extreme political, religious, or humanitarian views. Why spend money on space when there are other, more important problems (from their perspective), on which it can be better spent? Another line of reasoning is that we were given the Earth, the best place in the universe for us to live, so why go anywhere else? Fortunately, this diverse but uniformly uninterested group is also the minority.
That leaves a larger swath of the public that constitutes the “public” that Buzz Aldrin is referring to. Average people who aren’t avid science/science fiction fans and who don’t immediately dismiss space exploration out of hand. This broader segment is influenced by movie science fiction rather than that found in books, and Aldrin is correct that movie science fiction is often based more in fantasy than science. Real space exploration has been slow, expensive, and dangerous, a far cry from rugged, unintellectual heroes and their droids popping into hyperspace, or taking a quick excursion to blow up an Earth-destined asteroid the size of Texas.
While this sort of thing won’t help the general public jump behind real space exploration, I don’t think it does great damage to that cause (scientific literacy, yes). Other issues have larger effects. More damaging is the financial crisis of the stock market which will make people focus on fiscal responsibility and problems here on Earth. Shall we rail against the deregulation than has dampened public interest in space exploration? Hardly.
I am going to blame some things now. The media, for starters. There’s precious little serious coverage on the TV news about space exploration, and what little there is comes out dumbed down or twisted, or bumped to make way for more minutes devoted to Paris Hilton or whatever sensationalist scandal of the moment happens to be. There are fantastic stories happening all the time in space exploration of all forms, from NASA to China to commercial efforts, from astronauts to space science, and few journalists take the time to dig it up and present it effectively. Their editors or backgrounds may not let them, granted, but this one group is to blame, and I could blame them for a lot of other things, too.
But there’s more blame to go around. Advocates of space exploration need to go make their own case to the public. More books, movies, and TV shows should be created about the real deal. There are a few bright points: The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and October Sky come to mind. These were all terrific, exciting stories about the real thing, and the existence of Star Wars doesn’t diminish their power. A top ten TV show about colonizing the moon or visiting Mars would do wonders. NASA and the National Science Foundation already provide funding for public education, and good public education would also be inspiring, engaging on a personal level. I would love to see NASA sponsor script contests, or produce movies that were realistic about space exploration and possessed some educational component (just getting the science right would count in my book). There’s already a lot that these organizations do, but astronauts visiting colleges to give speeches doesn’t have anything like the impact of a popular movie or TV show.
While I doubt the media is going to change, or we’re suddenly going to get a realistic and wildly popular movie about going to Mars, I have hope. As I write this, computer game pioneer Richard Garriott is in orbit as a space tourist. Only multimillionaires can afford to do this now, but as the prospect of personally going to space becomes a tangible possibility, public interest will increase. Buzz Aldrin is surely correct that for some people the contrast between the reality and fantasy of space dampens the interests of some, but I don’t think the effect is the only one at work or the most important.
Permalink | Tags: Science, Science Fiction, space | 1 Comment »
Why, primarily, do you read science fiction?
October 26th, 2008
The poll the other day on the Mars stuff was so overwhelmingly one-sided, even for science fiction readers and fans of science, that I wonder about my audience here. Let’s take a poll and please leave comments, too.
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Personally, I read science fiction for a glimpse into a different world that is based in reality. The here and now doesn’t have to be the way we experience it here today on Earth. Science let’s us see many other possibilities. I want to see the other. How about you?
Permalink | Tags: Science Fiction | 7 Comments »
Mars Forever?
October 24th, 2008
Buzz Aldrin is at it again.
He’s making the case that we should send people to Mars, but not bring them home. He thinks we should go into space for good, for real, for the duration. Well, maybe they could return at retirement age if it’s feasible by then.
I am sympathetic to this idea. With Apollo, we went to the moon a few times, and then that was it. We haven’t sent people out of Earth orbit since then. The moon race was a cold war stunt. With the Chinese and the Indians getting into space recently, we could see another race and more stunts, but stunts do not constitute a long-term program working toward serious long-term goals.
I have no doubt that there would be highly qualified volunteers to go live on Mars. That would be a cool thing to do, and many people have the correct temperament to do so. There are great risks about whether we could in fact do it successfully.
Stephen Hawking is in favor of space exploration with the long-term goal of getting our eggs out of a single basket. He’s worried that something could occur to wipe us out on Earth — asteroid, biowarfare, something else. I think he’s right, but I don’t know that we have the will yet to put the resources into colonizing Mars in any serious way. The economic crisis right in particular probably makes a lot of people see a manned Mars mission of any kind as an expensive waste of money.
What do you think?
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Permalink | Tags: buzz aldrin, mars, space | 3 Comments »
The Smell of Space
October 17th, 2008
According to this article:
NASA has commissioned a specialist to recreate the smell of outer space – which has been described as being similar to fried steak and hot metal.
Too bad there’s not another presidential debate, or we could hear about the money John McCain will save us by stopping such foolishness. (Sorry for the political aside, but he crapped on the planetarium request again in the last debate.)
But more seriously, this is pretty cool. I think that NASA should not only recreate the smell, they should market it and apply profits to the space program. Getting people to participate, through watching, listening, and even smelling, makes them feel like they’re invested in the effort.
Although I have to say that NASA should think about how to improve the smell. It’s coming from their suits, equipment, electronics, and materials. A good space hotel on the drawing boards ought to consider smells as part of the design.
There’s a book I have on my shelf that I refer to for things like this. It’s written by an astronaut and answers a lot of questions that you won’t find answers to in physics books. Check out Do Your Ears Pop in Space and 500 Other Questions About Space Travel by Mike Mullane.
One of the good pieces of advice floating around there about fiction is to include sensory information. Many of us are already overtly visual, or aural, but smell and touch are often ignored even though those experiences are a little more personal, and hence stronger. There’s a rule of thumb, if you will, for writing that says to include a smell every three or four pages. Personally, I don’t worry about it that much, but do think about it on revisions. When you do your worldbuilding, think about how things smell. And the question of how aliens smell to each other may have major implications for how we regard them, if we ever encounter them. I have no doubt they will smell like something.
So, while it may be true that in space no one can hear you scream, be aware that when they find the body it may stink. The movie 2010 did a good job remembering this, and I remember that scene very clearly even now.
Permalink | Tags: Science, Science Fiction | 3 Comments »
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