Tag Archives: science

Join the Laser Pistol Gang

I plead guilty…to violating many laws of science in my writing. But I’m not alone. I’m in good company with many other science fiction writers. Call us the Laser Pistol Gang.

Authors of so-called ‘hard SF’ should adhere to known scientific principles and knowledge, but aren’t above bending or breaking the laws of physics for the sake of a good story.

Mary Shelley really stretched biological science in Frankenstein when her fictional scientist animated a human from dead tissue. Jules Verne knew human astronauts wouldn’t survive the acceleration of a manned projectile launched from a canon in From the Earth to the Moon. H.G. Wells disobeyed temporal causality in The Time Machine. When he wrote Fantastic Voyage, Isaac Asimov understood the impossibility of miniaturizing people. From his medical training, Michael Crichton must have realized not enough intact DNA fragments remain to create the living dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

These represent a small sampling from SF literature. Don’t get me started on SF movies, which seem to break more laws of science than they obey.

On what charges could the science police arrest me? Consider my rap sheet:

  • “The Steam Elephant” (from Steampunk Tales, Issue #5 and The Gallery of Curiosities #3). The state of steam and mechanical technology in the 19th Century did not allow for a walking, steam-powered, quadrupedal vehicle.
  • “Within Victorian Mists.” Everything needed to invent lasers existed in the 1800s except the conceptual framework, so if it had happened, it would have required dumb luck.
  • “Bringing the Future to You” (from Cheer Up, Universe!). That story contains too many science violations to list, but I meant the tale to be funny.
  • “Leonardo’s Lion.” Some accounts state Leonardo da Vinci built a walking, clockwork lion. Even if true, it’s doubtful the creation would have supported a child’s weight or traveled over rough terrain, as it does in my story.
  • “The Six Hundred Dollar Man.” Yes, steam engines existed in the late 19th Century, but no one then could have made one small enough to fit on a man’s back and power the man’s replacement limbs.
  • “A Tale More True.” Try as you might, you can’t build a metal spring strong enough to launch yourself into space as my protagonist does.
  • “The Cometeers.” In this story, I violate the same laws Verne did in launching humans to space using a canon. In fact, I used his same canon.
  • “Time’s Deformèd Hand.” Nobody in 1600 AD built walking, talking automatons powered by springs. However, I did mention the wood came from magical trees.
  • “A Clouded Affair” (from Avast, Ye Airships!). You couldn’t build a steam-powered ornithopter in the 1800s, and you’d find it difficult even today.
  • “Ripper’s Ring” Human invisibility remains impossible today, let alone in 1888. Even if it were possible, it would render the subject blind.
  • “The Cats of Nerio-3” (from In a Cat’s Eye). Evolution allows organisms to adapt to new environments, but neither cats nor rats would likely evolve in such a rapid and drastic manner as my story suggests.
  • “Instability” (from Dark Luminous Wings). According to legend, a Benedictine monk constructed a set of wings and tested them sometime around 1000 AD. The wings work no better in my story than they would have in reality.
  • “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” (from Quoth the Raven). Just because Edgar Allan Poe wrote about a balloon trip to the moon didn’t mean I had to repeat his error.

With so much law-breaking going on, how can we hope for an orderly reading society? Must we be forever besieged by the criminal authors of the Laser Pistol Gang?

That answer, I’m happy to report, is yes. Authors write to entertain readers. That’s a writer’s ‘prime directive,’ to steal a phrase. If the writer must bend or break a rule of science to tell a good story, the writer is going to do it.

One key phrase there is ‘good story.’ The better the story, the easier it is for a reader to forgive a scientific flaw. Of course, if you can tell a good story while keeping the science accurate, by all means, do that.

If you aim to join the Laser Pistol Gang, be aware we have a tough initiation ritual. You have to write a story where a law of science gets broken. Not a very exclusive gang, I admit. But it’s a proud, longstanding group. Take it from one of its most notorious members, known by his gang name—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 18, 2023Permalink

The SF Obsolescence Problem

No matter how much a science fiction writer keeps up with science, the writer’s stories will go obsolete.

As science advances, our understanding of the universe changes. A spherical earth replaced a flat one. A sun-centered solar system replaced an earth-centered one. Birds replaced reptiles as closer descendants of dinosaurs. Continental drift replaced an unchanging map.

SF stories based on outdated science seem backward, passe, naïve. Yet we still read them. Why?

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, she may have thought the technology to animate dead human tissue lay in the near future since Luigi Galvani had caused frog legs to twitch with jolts of electricity. Two centuries later, we still can’t animate dead humans. How silly it seems to have ever thought it possible at the dawn of the 19th Century. Yet we still enjoy Shelley’s novel today.

Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days astounded his reading audience at such a short duration for a globe-circling trip. Today, astronauts orbit the planet in just over eighty minutes. How quaint to think of an eighty-day circumnavigation as short. Yet we still enjoy Verne’s novel today.

H.G. Wells’ story The War of the Worlds gave us invaders from Mars. Today we can’t imagine fearing an attack from inhabitants of that planet. How pathetic to think people once swallowed that premise. Yet we still enjoy Wells’ novel today.

Why do we readers find these outdated, naïve, obsolete books—and others like them—still readable? Because science fiction isn’t only about science.

SF, like all fiction, is about one thing—the human condition.

True, readers of SF prefer stories in which authors adhere to the science at the time of writing. But as decades pass, readers know the progress of science may render a work of fiction obsolete. They forgive all of that for the sake of a good story.

They want to read about human characters struggling to achieve a goal, to win a prize, to survive. To live means to suffer, but also to strive against and despite that suffering. The struggle reveals the human qualities of bravery, ingenuity, perseverance, loyalty, love, and others. These timeless truths persist no matter how much science morphs our understanding of the cosmos.

As essayist James Wallace Harris stated in this post, “It’s the story, stupid.” Author Michael Sapenoff put it this way: “So while the language itself remains outdated, the ideas are not.”

You may shake your head, chuckle, or even sneer at the obsolete notions in SF stories, ideas since debunked or overturned by later discoveries. But remember, while looking down your nose, science fiction is more about the fiction than the science.

I encourage you to suspend your scientific skepticism and just enjoy the tale, follow the spinning of the yarn. Set aside the transitory and obsolete parts and appreciate the unchanging, permanent parts.

Maybe, in the end, the SF obsolescence problem isn’t a problem after all, for you or for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 19, 2023Permalink

Is Science Ruining SciFi?

Fantasy fiction writers have an advantage over science fiction writers—no scientist will come along and say the fantasy writer depicted her dragons incorrectly or that she botched a description of werewolves.

But scifi relies on facts about a field that’s frequently upending previous conclusions, so new scientific discoveries can invalidate your fiction at any time.

Still, do those discoveries render the affected novel unreadable? That is, just because your story, written before 2006, discusses the ‘planet’ Pluto, does the body’s new designation as a ‘dwarf planet’ make your novel passé, or so retro as to be unworthy of reading?

The pair writing under the name James S.A. Corey wrote an open letter to NASA about such an occurrence. Their novel Leviathan Wakes portrayed a human population on the asteroid Ceres as being so desperate for water that they obtained it from Saturn’s rings.

In 2015, a NASA mission to Ceres showed that it has plenty of water, easily enough for the millions of people living there in the novel.

Oops.

Does that mean nobody should read Leviathan Wakes or watch The Expanse?

In my opinion, it doesn’t mean that at all. As Corey points out in their letter, there’s a supportive feedback mechanism at work, a mutual admiration society. SciFi writers respect scientists, follow every discovery, and cheer them on. For their part, many scientists were inspired to pursue their passion by science fiction writers.

Many scifi short stories and novels will not endure; their fate will be to gather dust and remain unread. But, that’s not because scientific discoveries rendered them obsolete. It’s because those stories aren’t good fiction.

In other words, classic scifi becomes classic because of its high quality, not because it anticipates new advances in knowledge.

To take my favorite novel as an example, Jules Verne strove to keep Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as accurate as the known science of 1870 would permit. Today, however, we know:

  • A riveted steel submarine could not safely dive as deeply as the Nautilus;
  • A sodium/mercury battery would not propel a submarine at fifty knots (without taking up its entire internal volume);
  • No spot in the ocean is 16,000 meters deep;
  • Sharks do not need to turn upside down just prior to attacking;

…among many other errors. Does that mean you can’t read and enjoy the novel today? Of course you can.

Editors should do their best to provide footnotes or forwards that state where subsequent discoveries have made parts of a fictional work implausible. However, even if they don’t, most readers don’t turn to fiction for the latest scientific facts. Readers understand that scifi authors use the best-known science of their time…and then sometimes stretch that for the sake of a great story.

Science doesn’t ruin scifi. If anything, they reciprocally support each other. In that conclusion, I think James S.A. Corey would agree with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 18, 2020Permalink

Everything We Know is Wrong

Sometimes a movie can capture a profound thought in a simple line of dialogue. With a single, succinct line, the film How to Train Your Dragon (2010) provided good insight into the advancement of science.

The movie showed the young hero, Hiccup, learning from his father, village authorities, and the “Book of Dragons” that these beasts were extremely dangerous and must be killed on sight.

When he observed actual dragon behavior close-up, however, he discovered they were not as he’d been told, nor as he’d read. Surprised at this, he said, “Everything we know about you guys is wrong.”

This is a great expression of the way science advances in the real world. At one point, authorities agreed the Earth was flat, the Sun revolved around the Earth, species were unchanging, continents did not move, dinosaurs were reptiles, etc.

In each case, one open-minded person examined actual evidence and discovered previously accepted facts to be in error. In each case, the astonished person might well have uttered a statement similar to Hiccup’s. “Everything we’ve known about this is wrong.”

After that, there ensues a long struggle by that brave, lone person against established authority, and eventual acceptance by scientists of the new understanding.

Since these dramatic moments of dogma-toppling discovery occur in real life, they’re well suited to fiction, as in the dragon-training movie. The common elements of the everything-we-know-is-wrong story include:

  • A widely-accepted model or theory of how things are, codified by respected authority and regarded as true beyond question.
  • A hero character, who, by intent or accident, discovers that reality does not correspond to the standard model or theory. The hero is usually puzzled and surprised at the moment of discovery.
  • The struggle by the hero to convince others of the truth of the discovery through practical demonstration and empirical evidence. The hero becomes frustrated that people would rather believe a book or authorities than their own senses.
  • The escalation of that struggle until the hero must confront the authorities who are invested in the status quo. This is a second moment of high drama as the hero demonstrates bravery in speaking truth to power.
  • Eventual wearing down of the established order until authorities at last accept the new model as true.

We like to think of Science and scientists as being open to new discoveries, as inviting the advancement of new theories, so long as they’re backed up by evidence. In reality, scientists can get entrenched and stolid, just like any other authorities.

Of course, not everyone’s model-busting theory is true. Sometimes a crackpot idea is just a crackpot idea, and there are plenty of those.

Still, what legitimate paradigm-destroying discoveries await us? What remaining falsehoods do we all accept as true? How open and accepting will you be when someone comes to you with proof that everything you know about something is wrong?

Here’s a more intriguing question: what if you’re the one who makes the next such discovery? Are you bold enough to advance your theory to a skeptical world? Are you brave enough to defy well-established authority?

Whether it’s you or someone else who comes up with the next world-shaking discovery that proved everything we know is wrong, I’ll bet when it occurs, you’ll think of Hiccup, and you may also think of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 3, 2019Permalink

The History of Science Fiction…So Far

Many people have written histories of Science Fiction, including Anthony Gramuglia, Robert J. Sawyer, and (in infographic form), the artist Ward Shelley. What follows is my version.

I split SF history into five ages. For each age, I’ll give the years covered, some characteristic aspects, how the age reacted against the previous age, and a list of representative authors. The timeframe for each age is approximate; within each, some authors wrote works hearkening back to the age before, and some presaged the age that followed. My lists of authors are short and therefore incomplete. I’m only discussing text works here; the history of SF in movies tended to lag behind that of written works. Here we go:

Age of Wonder

This covered the time before the year 1800. There were few works, and they tended to involve pseudo-science and took place in exotic settings. They used magic or unexplained methods to convey characters to those settings, and often the character was a chance traveler and passive observer. Representative authors included Lucian of Samosata, Johannes Kepler, Cyrano de Bergerac, Margaret Cavendish, and Voltaire.

Age of Science

This age spanned from 1800 to 1920. With the advent of the Industrial Age and the Scientific Method, authors incorporated scientists actively discovering or inventing, and then exploring in their steam-driven machines. The settings were exotic, but more realistically described. This age rejected the magic and chance of the Age of Wonder, and highlighted the scientist deliberately creating his invention. Representative authors included Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Age of Engineering

Covering the years 1920 to 1980, this age exploded the genre with a lot more authors and stories. It was the age of aliens, robots, space opera, pulp fiction, atomic power, and mad scientists. Aimed at a largely white male audience, the heroes were often white male engineers who reasoned out the problem using science, rescued the woman, and saved the universe. This age rejected the primitive naiveté of the Age of Science, updating it with the latest rocketry inventions and astronomical/nuclear discoveries. Authors included Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Larry Niven.

Age of Punk

This age ran roughly from 1980 to 2010. It explored the consequences of computers and artificial intelligence, often with dystopian results. It gave us numerous alternate universes, epitomized by cyberpunk, steampunk, and many other punks. Female writers proliferated. Heroes were less often white males, and antagonists had backstories and motivations beyond pure evil. It reacted against the Age of Engineering by including racial and feminist themes, and warning against the hubris of over-engineering. Representative authors included Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Connie Willis, William Gibson, and K. W. Jeter.

Age of Humanity

Spanning from about 2010 to the present, this age turns inward more than any previous age. It’s about humanity in all its variants, and less about exotic settings. More than just women and blacks, we see LGBTQ authors delving into the future and consequences of sexual options. This is science fiction about biology and climate change. It includes mundane science fiction taking place in our solar system, without extraterrestrials or faster-than-light travel. Reacting against the negativity of the Age of Punk, it’s more a positive celebration of what it is to be human. Representative authors include Neal Stephenson, Melissa Scott, Robert J. Sawyer, Ted Chiang, and Charlie Jane Anders.

Age of…?

What’s next? I don’t know. Perhaps the next age of Science Fiction will be created by someone reading the blog posts of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 16, 2019Permalink

Orwell or Wells—Can Science Save Humanity?

Will Science save humankind, or lead us to our doom? The Internet is buzzing lately with various online outlets reprinting this article by Richard Gunderman in The Conversation, about a debate between H. G. Wells and George Orwell on this topic.

H.G. Wells, best known for his science fiction novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, believed science was the best hope for humanity’s future. George Orwell, an essayist, critic, and author of 1984 and Animal Farm, took a less optimistic view.

The article makes it sound like a lively back-and-forth argument ensued, but from the essays cited, it seems rather one-sided. In the early 1940s, H.G. Wells was in his late 70s and near death. George Orwell was in his late 30s, (though not too far from his own death at 46). From what I can glean, this was mostly Orwell criticizing Wells, not the other way around.

Before we explore the ‘debate,’ let me define terms. Science is a systematic process for gaining knowledge about the universe through experimentation. Since it involves the accumulation of knowledge, it’s unlikely that Science, by itself, can either save or destroy humanity. I think of Engineering as the application of scientific knowledge to design, invent, and produce useful products.

When both Wells and Orwell refer to Science, I think they meant to include Engineering. For the purpose of this blogpost, I’ll use that same shorthand meaning of Science.

Wells grew up in an era far different from Orwell’s. He saw the rapid development of science—automobiles, submarines, airplanes, relativity, skyscrapers, rocketry, and medicine—and foresaw amazing wonders that would benefit mankind. He figured the same scientific process that could produce those wonders could also lead to better government if we placed scientists in charge.

Let’s give Wells some credit, though. He was no Pollyanna. Many of his novels portrayed the misuse of science for destructive ends. But George Orwell seized on some of Wells’ more optimistic—though lesser known—writings.

In the early 1940s, Orwell watched with growing horror at the growth of Hitler’s Germany and saw it as the embodiment of Wells’ ideas, a nation of submarines, rockets, and airplanes, with science-minded people running the show. To Orwell, Deutschland was no Utopia. He castigated Wells in a couple of scathing essays.

In his article in The Conversation, Gunderman claims the debate is still relevant today. It’s been 75 years since Orwell penned his criticisms; have we learned enough to settle the argument?

Since that time, Science has split the atom to provide electricity, visited the Marianas Trench, landed on the Moon, built and commercialized the Internet, put instant communication in our pockets, sent probes to explore the outer planets, multiplied crop yields, mapped the human genome, and extended lifespans through medical breakthroughs.

On the other hand, Science also brought us nuclear weapons, the Apollo 1 fire and two space shuttle disasters, Chernobyl, computer viruses, armed drones, and electronic spying. Soon, perhaps, an artificial intelligence Singularity may be looming.

In my view, science is a tool, like a knife or hammer. People can use it for good or evil. It amplifies our capacity for both. The concepts of good or evil reside in the individual human mind. To ask if Science will save humanity is like asking if a hammer will save humanity. It depends on how we use the tool.

The real question is whether our good natures will prevail over our evil ones. I think there are far more good people than evil ones, but the evil ones have greater influence per capita. For some reason, a few clever evil people can sway many good people to their side.

So far, across the span of human time our good natures have won out and the products of science have proffered more benefits than harm. On average, life is better now than in the past, for most. But it’s a close thing, and our history shows frequent backsliding.

Whether humanity achieves Utopia, destroys itself, or some outcome in between, Science will deserve neither credit nor blame. Only the human capacity for love or hate will determine our future. And that’s the realm of fiction writers like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 31, 2017Permalink

An Analysis of Effortless Story Writing

“That story wrote itself,” I’ve sometimes said. But I exaggerated; it didn’t really happen that way. Still, it got me thinking. What if a story could write itself?

I decided to find out. Being rather sciency, I reckoned I’d conduct a careful and thorough experiment. I would give a story every conceivable chance, every possible opportunity, to write itself. Not because I’m lazy, you understand. This was for Science.

It’s time to shift the tone of this blog post to scientificalic language, lest you start to suspect I’m some kind of…not scientist.

Laboratory Setup – laptop still not writing

Ahem…the laptop was positioned in a roo—I mean—laboratory accustomed to having stories written in it, at a temperature of 24° C at normal atmospheric pressure. The laptop was turned on, plugged into a 120-volt alternating current power source, and word processing software was accessed.

The experimenter then left the laboratory and engaged in other, non-writing activities. These included cleaning other rooms, mowing the lawn, reading books, making and consuming lunch, and driving around town on various errands.

After a period of 8 hours and 24 minutes, the experimenter quietly re-entered the laboratory and discovered that a story had not been written. Even a part of a story had not been written, not a paragraph, sentence, word, letter, or punctuation mark. Neither had any new computer files been stored.

To gather more data, further opportunities were presented to the laptop on subsequent days. Longer time periods were tried, durations up to 73 hours and 53 minutes, with the same result. The experimenter engaged in a wider variety of non-writing activities, at greater distances from the laptop. Some trials were conducted with the laboratory door open, and some with it shut. Actual writing occurred in 0% of these cases.

Similar experiments were conducted with ink-filled pens and reams of blank paper. This served to eliminate the laptop and its software as the causal factor. Despite every opportunity and considerable time provided, the pens created no marks on the paper.

The experimenter tried to “spur” or “seed” the process by writing a first sentence, and allowing both laptop and pen to merely complete the story. These attempts likewise resulted in failure.

Numerous graphs were developed to document the results of these trials. They are not included here because the independent variable refused to depart from the axis; that is, the results were 0 in every case. 0 writing produced no matter what other quantity was being tested.

One common factor in all these trials was the experimenter himself. He therefore consulted several other writers and 100% of them reported the same outcomes in their “experiments,” though their trials were far less scientifical, with no white laboratory coats anywhere in evidence, and they had utterly failed to note the temperature. Mention of them here is included as anecdotal evidence only.

The experimenter is therefore forced to a surprising, though tentative, conclusion—it may be possible that stories do not, in fact, write themselves. The creation of stories appears to require the active participation of a writer. Significant participation actually, in every written story so far. At least this seems true for stories involving this single experimenter.

Further research is clearly indicated to validate or (hopefully) disprove this conclusion. Perhaps some necessary initial condition was overlooked, some nuance of temperature, pressure, time duration, or distance. Maybe positive results might occur under certain lunar phases or planetary alignments. A breakthrough may well await some future experimenter in this exciting research field.

For the advancement of Scientificness, this experimenter encourages others to conduct similar trials, particularly those authors writing in the same competitive genres as this experimenter. Feel free to send your own scientilic trial results as comments to this blog post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 18, 2017Permalink

Arte/Scienza

Here is the fifth post in my series. I’ve been discussing how the seven principles put forth by Michael J. Gelb in his book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci relate to fiction writing. Today’s principle is Arte/Scienza, or “Development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination, ‘whole-brain’ thinking.”

ArteScienzaIn the book, Gelb demonstrates how Leonardo embodied the kind of balanced thinking intended by the term Arte/Scienza. His artistic paintings contain precise mathematical shapes and geological features. His scientific and engineering drawings are, themselves, works of art. Da Vinci didn’t distinguish between the two.

Sure, you’re saying, that’s all very well for ol’ Leo, born way back in 1452. But a lot has happened since then, particularly on the science side. There’s too much to learn to be an expert in both art and science. The two are way too different these days.

Artists are all about brushes and canvas, lighting and shadow, color and imagery. They’re out to discover beauty, or deliver a message, or say something significant about human nature.

On the other hand, scientists groove on equations and numbers, test tubes and Bunsen burners, experiments and technical papers. They’re out to discover truth, and to solve the mysteries of how the universe works.

In our modern world, we’re used to a high wall between Arte and Scienza. The two are so specialized, require such different talents, and their practitioners use such different jargon that it’s difficult to imagine one person combining the two in equal measure. Even books discussing Leonardo da Vinci separate the chapters for his artwork from those of his scientific endeavors.

Today we speak of being left-brained or right-brained, as if each of us is putting only half our brain to work and leaving the other half idle.

Michael Gelb discusses how you can use the philosophy of Arte/Scienza in your everyday life, and promotes the use of mind maps, which I also advocate.

My purpose is to discuss how Arte/Scienza applies to fiction writing. Most fiction writers identify more with artists than with scientists. They consider fiction writing a kind of art, and believe their creative temperament matches that of painters more than that of researchers. (The exception would be science fiction writers, who must use science in their writing.)

Here are some ways that even an author of magical fantasy, a writer who disdains all things scientific, can benefit from applying the Arte/Scienza principle:

  • Use mind-maps to aid in the writing process. These combine the logical orderliness of outlines with the free-form, colorful, image-laden right-brain preferences. Mind-maps can help you solve plotting problems, create characters, even plan book promotions.
  • Apply the experimental method to the development of your craft. The heart of science is the experimental method, used to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. You’re trying to become a better writer, so experiment!
  • Add a scientifically minded character to your story, even if he or she is the antagonist, a person of pure evil. Pour all your negative feelings about science into that character. You may just find, as you develop this antagonist, that he or she becomes one of your more engaging and interesting creations.
  • Embrace the overlap between art and science. If art searches for beauty, and science seeks truth, are those really that different? In the end, you’d like your book to say something new about the human condition, to expand reader’s knowledge about the theme you’re exploring. While working your art, haven’t you just committed an act of science?

Listen to your inner artist and your inner scientist. The more you do, the more you’ll find them getting along well together, and your writing might improve, too. So far, it’s working for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 27, 2015Permalink