Does the science matter in science fiction?
by robertjsawyer on Jul.07, 2009, under Robert J. Sawyer
Okay, I confess: tonight I’m off to see the new Star Trek movie for the fifth time. 
But the science in the movie is just plain whacko. A supernova that threatens the entire universe? Creating singularities out of red matter, whatever the heck that is? Being able to look at a planet in another star system with the naked eye (Spock looking up at Vulcan looming in the sky of Delta Vega)? Come on!
Yes, we can all play the game of trying to come up with rational explanations for any of these howlers (that is, we can all try to do the work now that the scriptwriters should have done but didn’t). But let’s not do that here; there are plenty of other online places for that particular exercise.
Instead, let’s ask: Does the science actually matter in science fiction? As a novelist, I work enormously hard to try to get things right in my books. I found it funny that for the Star Trek, precisely one science consultant was listed for this hundred-million-dollar movie, whereas my latest novel, WWW: Wake, created, I assure you, on a much more modest budget ;), has more than a dozen science consultants listed in the acknowledgments.
But, if in the end, the only thing that matters — witness Star Trek or Star Wars — is whether we laughed or cried, cheered or booed, in the right places, does it really matter if the science is accurate in SF?
Certainly the general media thinks our science is all made up, anyway — “crazy science fiction,” “the stuff of sci-fi,” “not science fiction, but real science” are terms we’ve all cringed at often enough.
(I will say, in my consultations with David Goyer, who is heading up the adaptation of my novel FlashForward for ABC this fall, I’ve been enormously impressed by how scientifically literate, and how curious about science, he is. But, that said, he also is, in my experience with film and TV makers, very much in the minority.)
So, yeah, it’s called SF, but if the F is good, we demonstrably give a free ride on the S when it comes to movies. What about books? Do we hold them to a higher standard, and, if so, why?
Rob
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July 7th, 2009 on 11:48 am
The lack of real science in SF movies is just awful. The high point was Kubrick/Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. But I think the rot really set in with Star Wars (1977) when fantasy became more important than the science. But real SF movies are still made - check out “Moon” that was on relatively limited release, but which, despite obvious plot flaws, was real SF. We need much more of this, rather than teh costume dramas that purport to be SF.
As regards books, well we have the different genres. I much prefer hard SF. I suspect mainly because I was trained as a scientist and have a deep love of science. I’m interested in how possible extrapolations of known science (even with a slight bending) could impact our lives. While nano-tech just becomes magic pixie dust in most stories, there is real science here that has yet to be written into good stories.
Hard SF, by being plausible has a role to play in stimulating ideas and technology in the real world. Didn’t many Nasa rocket engineers go into the field because of SF stories about possible interplanetary flight? Hal 9000 was always a touchstone for the AI people, even though it never came to pass (see previous blog thread). Today, synthetic biology, distributed intelligence and real nano-technology are just exploding with possible story ideas, and we are rushing to meet that future with nary a signpost from the SF author community.
So in one sense, yes, I hold books to a higher standard. But that is because books can cover a much broader range of standards so that I can pick the level at which I choose to read (like choosing the Times rather than The Enquirer as a newspaper).
July 7th, 2009 on 11:59 am
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July 7th, 2009 on 12:44 pm
Excellent points, Alex — and pretty much my own thinking, too. I give most SF movies a miss (another good one, though, besides 2001, was GATTACA — haven’t caught MOON yet, but plan to), in part because they are fantasy in SF guise. Certainly, the SF authors I grew up reading — Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, Frederik Pohl — all took their science seriously, and I try to follow in their footsteps in that regard.
And it’s been interesting to watch writers like Robert Charles Wilson slip in and out of the hard-SF mode over the years; SPIN, BIOS, DARWINIA, and others are very much hard SF; his current JULIAN COMSTOCK, not so much (but still excellent).
July 7th, 2009 on 1:14 pm
Rob, I don’t think there’s much room for real science in science fiction any more–especially not in the movies. Once you have granted Star Trek warp drive, transporter beams, and a galaxy full of humanoid races seeded by ancient forerunners, why cavil at black hole time travel, red matter, or planet-busting mining drills on a chain that goes all the way up to orbit? As long as it looks good on the screen, that’s all that matters for commercial success. Oh well, I’m a fantasy writer anyway.
July 7th, 2009 on 1:31 pm
I think all fiction novels require us to suspend belief in one way or another; whether it’s for SF, Fantasy or regular fiction, the author is creating a different reality. While I admit I’m not as interested in reading hard SF as Fantasy, the stories I like best are the ones that work at having a realistic take on science. I enjoyed Tad Williams’ Otherland series because I could see someone taking that next step with computer networking and trying to create a VR world (and I would totally play the VR game Orlando enjoys - the name of which escapes me right now). Michael Crichton - isn’t that a bit of sci-fi as well? Exploring science beyond what it is now; taking it in a different direction - that I can get into. When we start veering off into ‘how the heck is that conceivably possible?!’ - I’m probably not going to finish the book.
July 7th, 2009 on 1:55 pm
Oddly enough, “red mass” can be accepted, in a mcguffin kind of way, or because it tells of something so advanced that current language actually can’t describe it. Not very different of warp engines, or in a sense, 2001’s Monolith.
It doesn’t justify, though, “supernovas threatening the galaxy/universe/whatever”, and astronomy concepts that can be found in Saint-Exupery’s ‘The Little Prince’ — a lovely infantile fable.
The thing is, hard facts seem to be a token minority person in a tv show or party: the wanning sound scene at the USS Kevin, in the beginning, when crewmembers are sucked out of the ship through a hull breach. Oh, see? No sound is possible in space! Because of the vacuum! See? Scientific. And done with the quota.
I think if doesn’t matter if there is no scientific coherence as much as a movie can or should envolve us; it shouldn’t matter if there *is* scientific coherence. Sometimes, it can be what differs from Fantasy: All Our Incoherences can be calculated.
Of course, starships still break the light bareer, and their energetic beams can be seen and “heard” - I am all for that! Especially if this is what I want to watch.
But I think it’s not ugly adding science to science-fiction.
http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/
July 7th, 2009 on 5:06 pm
So, I’ve been thinking since I posted my comment above earlier today. Present company excluded :), who is actually writing what we’d call hard science fiction today? That is (as an operational definition, purely for the sake of this particular discussion), science fiction in which the science, not the characters, is the star. Who are the heirs-apparent to Asimov, Clarke, Clement, and Niven? What are the books published this century that are hard-SF (not space opera)?
I’ve read (and am included in) Hartwell and Cramer’s THE HARD SF RENAISSANCE, but, of course, that’s short fiction, not novels, and a lot of the people we used to think of as hard-SF writers have veered off into other directions or simply aren’t producing much anymore. So, recommendations, folks?
July 7th, 2009 on 7:13 pm
Maybe, this is the point: hard-science fiction shouldn’t get science as main star. It should be used to get sense of wonder, but also, be used as part of any world-building as the next, with its own set of rules.
Remember the sequence, again in 2001, when Bowman explodes the pod hatchett so he can dive into the Discovery: it is scientifically correct, and it’s full of tension and drama — he just can’t miss that jump, or he is gone, for good.
But, of course… this kind of fiction requires some studying. Or, at least, some good advising.
July 7th, 2009 on 8:02 pm
“Star Dragon” by Mike Brotherton has a certain Ringworld quality - it starts with the discovery of a distant intriguing science mystery and a trip to investigate it. Steeped in hard science.
Greg Egan? Vernor Vinge? Gregory Benford? Joe Haldeman?
July 7th, 2009 on 9:27 pm
I’ll buy Brotherton, yes. And Vinge, too. Egan; yes. Gregory Benford — when he’s writing! Joe … hmm. Not so sure. Maybe. Accidental Time Machine didn’t strike me as a hard-SF treatment of the subject.
July 7th, 2009 on 9:42 pm
Confessions of an SF writer, Chapter 1: I don’t read as much SF as I should, and what I do read tends to be by my friends. That said, I think Robert Charles Wilson’s BLIND LAKE is one of the best hard-SF novels of recent years; Peter Watts’s BLINDSIGHT is also a work of hard SF well worth your attention. (Best hard-SF novel ever? GATEWAY by Frederik Pohl, followed by RINGWORLD by Larry Niven.)
July 8th, 2009 on 10:29 am
I’d have to second Gregory Benford. His works are always packed with science.
July 8th, 2009 on 12:38 pm
I kind of resist the stereotypical description of hard SF as being long on science and short on characterization… it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Sure, in the examples you provided (Asimov, Clark, Clement, and Niven), Clement was definitely wanting in this area, and Asimov, love him though I do… well, let’s just say the only memorable “human” characters he ever wrote were, in fact, robots. Clarke did a little better, but Niven does just fine, in my opinion - I have no trouble distinguishing Bey Shaeffer from Louis Wu from Sigmund Ausfeller, for example.
But I think the fact is, the field has matured to the point that there are simply more good writers out there today than there were in the 50s and 60s, so the stereotype doesn’t really hold anymore. You can have your Hard SF cake and eat it too.
The “Hard” in SF is sometimes a bit tough to pin down, though - must the science be possible, or at least plausible? To go back to Niven as an example, he always packed a ton of science into his stories (astrophysics, mostly, with a goodly amount of attention spent on life sciences as well) but he also committed FTL, teleportation, time travel, psionics, gravity control and a whole host of other “indistinguishable from magic” stuff that is *probably* physically impossible. So is it still Hard SF? I think so, as long as it remains consistent, and there’s lots of real science in there as well, but lots of people would disagree with me. What’s your take on this?
As for who has been writing top-notch Hard SF since 2000 (present company excluded!) well, in no particular order, there’s Charles Stross (whose output is all over the map stylistically, but it’s all good and there’s a lot of pure Hard SF in there), Peter Watts (”Blindsight” was amazing, but don’t do what I did and read it during the same month as Scott Bakker’s “Neuropath” - reading those books together messed me up, big time), Greg Egan (who has been turning out quality Hard SF since the 90s, and his recent “Incandescence” was crazy, but good), Stephen Baxter (although he was harder in the 90s), likewise Nancy Kress (lots of Hard SF short fiction since 2000, fewer novels). Jack McDevitt is consistently good in this area, and Karl Schroeder has turned out amazing Hard SF since his debut - even his Virga books, which appear to be merely fun swashbuckling adventures, are firmly grounded in (and loaded with) real science. Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in the Capital” trilogy is all climate science (and horribly realistic bureaucracy). Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem” is about as hard as they come - it’s pretty much all math and theoretical physics - a bit of a tough slog, but if you make it through the first 200 pages, the rest of it (approximately ten thousand more pages) just shoots along, really. Last, but certainly not least, Alastair Reynolds has to be the reigning king of space-based Hard SF right now - he has a PhD in Astronomy, worked at the European Space Agency, and it shows. A good way to get into Reynolds is his “Galactic North” collection of short stories.
July 8th, 2009 on 3:24 pm
Gee Rob, this century? Any thing I read that I would consider hard science is all you! But if you’ll allow me to creep into the late 20th century, I’d like to bring up Kim Stanley Robinson (especially the Mars series) or Stephen Baxter. I do enjoy several authors that stray into “softer” science though, authors who use more or less rigorously extrapolated “technology” in their work to tell the human side of the story - like David Weber (FTL travel, artificial gravity) and John Scalzi (instantaneous travel, green clones). I give them a pass on their “science” because I’m more interested in their take on politics and society.
Back to the original point though - do I give movies a pass on softer science more often than novels, simply because the art forms and economics are different. Hubby and I were discussing your blog post, and he brought up several movies in recent years which could be called Hard SF, none of which did big in the box office. In the battle of the Asteroid Movies many years back, the more scientifically-accurate Deep Impact didn’t have nearly the impact (pardon the pun - impossible to resist) in the popular culture or box office as it’s action-packed rival Armageddon.
In terms of the art - I read books for different reasons than I watch movies. I’m looking for a different type of entertainment when it comes to movies - I want explosions, lots of them, and talking robots and cool ships. I want fun, and if they give me something to think about, bonus!
When I read books, the facts and back story are much more evident. I’m more in the mood to think and consider. Personally though, if the F is good, and the science is soft rather than outright bad, I’m happy to consume!
July 8th, 2009 on 4:34 pm
Thanks, Judy in SATX!
I think there definitely WAS a hard-SF renaissance in the 1980s and it slopped over into the 1990s: the major works of the Killer Bs (Bear, Benford, and Brin). But I do think that particular subgenre is in decline, despite some very excellent counterexamples given her.
Stephen Baxter: yes, well worth reading! I’m a Wells fan, so that may be coloring my judgment, but I’d say Steve’s standout is still THE TIME SHIPS.
July 8th, 2009 on 4:36 pm
Fergus Heywood wrote, “I kind of resist the stereotypical description of hard SF as being long on science and short on characterization… it doesn’t have to be that way at all.”
I, of course, totally agree, Fergus!
The best hard SF today is very strong in characterization.
July 29th, 2009 on 6:07 pm
I think what matters is not so much real science as the presence of some rules for the universe created. Even if a story isn’t based on real science, it can be gripping as long as there are some constraints (the author can be free to choose the constraints, but shouldn’t keep changing the constraints).
The biggest problem with the Star Trek movie (and the Next Generation series, and even many sci-fi novels) is that the writers (and characters) seem to have complete freedom to create a new concept on-the-spot to get themselves out of a sticky situation. When facing a seemingly insurmountable problem, Data or someone will do something like this: drop “neon matter” into the “sub-quark plasmatron” releasing a “quantum phaser wave” that induces a change in “Gurchekov phase space” which immediately takes the Enterprise home! I made all that up, but there is essentially no difference between this and Data uttering “abracadabra” to solve the problem.
Of course this only matters in stories whose main plot element is a problem. And it’s easier in non-science-fictiony situations where the rules are already known. In sci-fi, the temptation to introduce such “abracadabra” plot elements is much stronger.