Science Forums 2

[Pyrotex]

The Relation between Science and Science Fiction.

Part 1 -- What most people call 'science fiction' is actually just horror stories with aliens or adventure stories with rocket ships. This is a particularly Hollywood movie genre, and it is not relfected in actual written, published science fiction. So, about 97% of all 'science fiction' movies are NOT really science fiction and you can ignore them. In the remaining 3%, one might list "2001 A Space Odyssey", the recent "Serenity" and the movie "Contact" made from Sagan's book of the same name.

Part 2 -- What is Science Fiction [SF]? This is a particular genre that started, more or less, with the books of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. The basis of this genre was the exploration of how science and technology might affect humanity. Some SF stories skipped the science and simply related how future conditions might affect humanity. For example, if our atmosphere became unbreathable or we ran out of water or a virus wiped out grasses or our future society once again became oppressive to (say) women. In most, but not all, SF, science plays the role of either antogonist (source of problem) or protagonist (source of solution). So maybe one story starts out with genetic experiments killing all the grasses in the world, but another story just chalks it up to a big mystery. The core essence is: how would this affect humans? Their day to day lives? The way societies were organized? This is the essential core of good SF -- the affect of science or some possible future science on mankind.

Part 3 -- Fuzzy science in Science Fiction. Much very good SF uses real, known scientific laws and technologies in the story-telling. They are called "Hard SF". Many of Robert A. Heinlein's short stories and novels were Hard SF. Other writers take small liberties with science, producing "Soft SF". The number one way they do this is by speculating that there is some way to travel faster than the speed of light, FTL travel. This makes getting from planet to planet a lot easier. Or the author might make up some new metal or plastic with incredible properties, jokingly referred to as "balonium". The FTL or the balonium allow plots that would not be possible if science were strictly adhered to. The fictional works of Isaac Asimov often fall in this area. As you can see, this is a divergence from REAL science, which limits itself to what is known, or what can be safely conjectured.

Part 4 -- The Fringes of SF. When science is softened up to the point where it contradicts the known laws of nature, then the stories produced are often called 'Science Fantasy'. Stories where people can levitate, or become invisible, or teleport, or talk to the dead, or travel back in time, etc., are in this class. Some of these stories still keep to the core concept: what would be the affect on society, but many are just for entertainment.

part 5 -- Conclusions. The essential core of a Hard SF story is the invention or discovery of some plausible scientific fact or principal, and its affect on society. How would humans react? In my opinion, the finest of these stories would include Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall". A very human like species on another planet that has no 'nights' finally discover the Law of Gravity, and use it to calculate the path of their planet around and through the cluster of multiple stars they live among. They predict that once every 4,000 years, the entire planet will have essentially one full day of total darkness. The next darkness will be in just a few months.

Here we see the story explicitly tells about a non-human race. But the theme of the story uses those aliens to represent us, humans. The theme relates to the fact that we (humanity) often react in very unfortunate ways to new revelations, new facts, new events.

Science is about science. Science Fiction *uses* science as a means of exploring humanity, our place in the universe, and our possible futures.