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The science in fiction How realistic is sci-fi? Berkeley scientists give mixed reviews Gibor Basri, professor of astronomy Since I first learned how to read, roaming through time and space has captured my imagination. Indeed, it led to my interest in astronomy. Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001, was a favorite of mine as a teenager. I was captivated by his and others’ detailed and plausible visions of the future. I saw them as particularly imaginative and interesting extrapolations of current social, political, technological, or philosophical issues. As computers came into their own, the robot fantasies of Asimov and other ruminations on sentient machines also caught my fancy, and for a while I thought about studying artificial intelligence instead of the stars. I found, however, that astrophysics had just reached a kind of technological golden age, when fascinating new discoveries were easy to achieve, and I never regretted sticking with the stars. Now I teach a course on “The Science in Science Fiction.” Not only do I get to read new sci-fi books, but I can also use it to communicate new scientific discoveries to nonscience students. I’ve used The Physics of Star Trek as a starting point a couple of times, or taken books with good treatments of black holes as a theme. The next time I do it, I’m thinking of taking on time travel, or perhaps multiple universes. Eugene Chiang, assistant professor of astronomy and earth and planetary sciences William Gibson’s prose is diamond-sharp and his imagery is riveting. Alfred Bester’s stories have social and moral undercurrents. Haruki Murakami is fun because he thinks outside of the box and his characters are endearing. I read science fiction not for the science but for the drama and the underlying themes of people discovering something deeper about themselves by being thrust into alien environments. Peter Brokstein, EST analyst, DOE Joint Genome Institute I prefer sci-fi that does not off end my scientific sensibilities. I love hard science fiction wherein a nice extrapolation from what is now known or plausible is used to spin a story with something that might inform current thinking—like warnings about certain technologies or justifications to aim for the stars. I am particularly interested in questions of machine intelligence and alien life. On the other hand, I have no problem with action in cyber space, where pretty much anything is plausible. My current favorite authors are Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Robert Forward, whom I use in my “Science in Science Fiction” seminar. Brin is a scientist. His Startide Rising is about a future where chimps and dolphins have been engineered (uplifted) to reach our level of intelligence and participate in our society. The native language of the dolphins is represented as haiku. Kiln People is Brin’s newest work. It’s set in a world where people make clay copies of themselves. These copies carry out the daily tasks of the original, and then return home at the end of the day so the original can unload the memories. The real universe is already so fantastic and awesome, why do we have to make things up that we know can’t be? Shows like the X-Files and Unsolved Mysteries can often make scientists like me gag. —Andrew Fraknoi Corie Ralston, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in the Physical Bioscience Division. She has also published science fiction in two collections. Many of my colleagues read science fiction as young adults and teen-agers (mostly the classic authors like Bradbury, Heinlein, and Asimov), but no longer read science fiction. And modern science fiction has branched out. There is still the Star Trek type of fiction around (lots of rocket ships and laser guns), but a lot of the new science fiction authors are writing more cross-genre stories. Charles de Lint, for example, writes novels that have a contemporary setting with one or two magical elements. Kelly Link writes short stories that are part myth, part fairy tale, and very surreal. Also, one of the best short story writers in sci-fi these days is Ted Chiang. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is a novel about the damage that results when two well-intentioned—but very different—cultures meet for the first time. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis takes place in the near future and the past (14th century). It depicts the medieval ages realistically (unlike those stories showing beautiful maidens in white dresses and noble knights who go around saving them), but also shows how some human characteristics are timeless. Christine M. Celata, accelerator physicist, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory During the last few years I’ve been captivated by two series: Ender’s Game and its sequels, by Orson Scott Card, which feature politics and has good characters, and the Otherland series by Tad Williams. I loved the latter because it is what I think of as cyber sci-fi —most of the action takes place in a virtual reality. David Goldberg, staff scientist emeritus at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Like many teenagers in the ’50s, I was a science fiction fan. I read a few of the novels—The Big Eye, by Max Ehrlich and some by Robert Heinlein and Frederic Brown—but mostly short stories. One name that stood above the rest was Ray Bradbury. There was the classic Fahrenheit 451, but the collections of short stories in The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man were the ones I remember most (I came across both volumes in a used book store a few years back and immediately snapped them up and reread them), particularly Usher II and Rocket Summer from the former volume, and Kaleidoscope from the latter. Andrew Fraknoi ’72, astronomy chairman at Foothill College and board member of SETI, which sponsors research in finding intelligent life elsewhere. I came to America at age 11 from Hungary not speaking any English. My mother, who spoke five languages, thought that reading comic books would be a good way to supplement the school reading I was doing and to learn English faster. I became fascinated with comic books that portrayed outer space and the possibility of exploring the realms of the stars. When my English got better, I started reading science fiction novels and stories and continued to be inspired by them. By about age 14, such science fiction reading and trips to the planetarium had worked their magic—I wanted to be an astronomer. I enjoy science fiction that takes the long view or the large view—of vast spans of time and space. My favorite authors are typically scientists, such as Gregory Benford, a physicist at UC Irvine, who writes some of the most literate and intelligent science fiction in our time. I dislike science fiction based on “pseudo-science” or fantasy: magic, unicorns, astrology, UFOs, etc. The real universe is already so fantastic and awesome, why do we have to make things up that we know can’t be? Shows like the X-Files and Unsolved Mysteries can often make scientists like me gag. In an interesting example of fiction influencing science, Sir Fred Hoyle told me years ago that one source of the steady-state theory (in which the universe has neither beginning nor end) was a 1945 horror film called Dead of Night, which also has no beginning or end. Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi saw the film as they were debating the nature of the universe, and got to thinking whether they could devise a model of the universe that resembled the structure of the movie. You can find the film on video and occasionally on cable channels, such as Turner Classic Movies or AMC. On the other hand, sociologists have speculated that if the SETI scientists really do find a radio message, the general population may not be all that surprised—having been prepared for the event by decades of science fiction. |
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