Archief - Science Fiction - 42

Sometimes people who read popular science about scientific theories like loop quantum gravity say “it’s like reading science fiction”. But no, it isn’t. Greg Egan’s Schild’s Ladder, with its characters, narrative logic, and dramatic tension, all in a setting where the science is crucial to the plot – that is what reading science fiction about loop quantum gravity is like. Yet it can occasionally be difficult to distinguish science fiction from reality. The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline by Isaac Asimov, about a compound that is so soluble it dissolves just before it enters water, is SF written in the style of a research paper. Minutes of the Labour Party Conference, 2016, a short story by Charles Stross, is written in the style of an official document of a meeting held under adverse circumstances. Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations, by Robert A Freitas, is not SF (although sceptics of the field of nanotechnology might argue differently). I wouldn’t want all my SF to be in this style, though.

Some authors can play with deep scientific ideas because they already have a solid technical background on which to base their work. Isaac Asimov had a PhD, in biochemistry (although gained after the Thiotimoline publication). So did EE “Doc” Smith, as you can probably guess. (In chemical engineering as applied to food production, though from reading his fiction you might think it was more in coruscating beams of power.)

Some authors are (or were until retirement) full-time scientists and academic researchers in their own right. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “Big Bang”, claimed to write his SF in order to publish ideas that would not fit into scientific journals. Back in the 1960s, Fred Pohl edited The Expert Dreamers and Groff Conklin edited Great Science Fiction by Scientists, with stories by George Gamow, JBS Haldane, Fred Hoyle, Julian Huxley, Norbert Weiner, and more. Some authors who were originally researchers have been successful enough to quit the day job in favour of fiction.

Of course, not all science fiction writers have science PhDs. Many of the Golden Age writers had little formal education. James White, for example, wanted to be a medical doctor, but couldn’t afford the training; that didn’t stop him writing the marvellous alien doctors in space series, Sector General. Many SF writers have arts and humanities backgrounds, yet manage to write good hard science-based SF.

SF authors do their research. They tend to read widely, to generate ideas, and then think deeply, to focus in on the details. In the age of the author blog, readers can observe (some of) the authorial process. A lot of research can go into a book, much of it hidden, or even discarded. Inferior authors will info-dump every little last detail they’ve discovered; better authors weave their research seamlessly into the story, discarding what doesn’t fit. Sometimes the raw research reappears in footnotes, appendices, or bibliographies, which can be interesting in their own right; for example, Peter Watts’s Blindsight includes a fascinating technical appendix.

If you watch the Star Wars trailer and then immediately afterwards watch Ursula K. Le Guin's speech at the National Book Awards, where she won a medal for Distinguished Contribution to Letters, you're likely to get ideological whiplash.

Over here is Le Guin, taking a stand for science fiction on the grounds that "we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope." And over here is Star Wars, showing you more pictures of the Millennium Falcon. So much for Le Guin’s call to elevate creators who know "the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art."

It's not just Star Wars either. Science fiction is everywhere in popular culture, and it seems like it's managed to be everywhere in the present by largely jettisoning the future. The massive, major franchises are all decades-old; the triumphal rhythmic successes of Star Wars and Star Trek and Dr. Who vie with sporadic reboots of Robocop or Planet of the Apes. Even newer stories, like The Hunger Games or Divergence feel less like fresh visions than like re-toolings of stagnant dystopias. Poor George Orwell wants his panopticon back.

It's no accident that the most ubiquitous, overwhelming sci-fi sub-genre around is the one that has the least to do with the future: superheroes. Tony Stark invents new magical energy sources three times before breakfast, but he uses them mostly to punch Thunder-Gods in the head, rather than, say, to completely transform the world's technology and economy.

The work of the most ambitious SF authors like Iain M Banks, Vernor Vinge and David Brin manages to capture the true scale of the universe in fiction. And even then SF can detail only the tiniest portion of a cosmos some 93bn light years wide (and expanding ever more quickly), shaped by the unifying force of gravity, where the elements of life are created in supernova explosions and destroyed in black holes. The scientific model of the universe begins to look eerily like that expressed by Hindu astronomers over 3,000 years ago, in which the cycles of the universe are measured in aeons 1.28tn years long, reality is maintained by the force of Vishnu, and all things are created by Brahma and destroyed by Shiva.

Perhaps it’s these mythic resonances that have seen science fiction trend more and more towards religious zeal in recent years. The Singularity, a point in the near future when technology evolves so fast that it allows life to transcend all physical boundaries, is now a common idea in SF, explored by writers from Damien Broderick to Charlie Stross. Its believers style themselves as singulatarians and transhumanists, but their rhetoric of life after death in silicon virtual realities so deeply echoes fundamentalist Christianity that no one is joking when they call it the Rapture of the Nerds. (except me? )

We gather in our millions in the darkened cathedrals of multiplex cinemas to silently venerate our superhero gods. All religions have their holy stories, and the immense respect given to SF novels like 1984 and I Robot by their fans is very close to an act of faith. We’re only a few centuries and a small apocalyptic event away from isolated communities of huddled believers worshipping the gospels of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Le Guin. If a future society based on the eccentric thinking of sci-fi writers seems outrageous, it’s no stranger than a society founded on Genesis, Exodus and Revelations.

Let’s not think about L Ron Hubbard.

Is it a bad thing that SF has evolved into a religion for modern times? It’s often argued that science has killed God, and that scientific knowledge reduces the mystery of the universe. But looking at the trillion stars of Andromeda, photographed by an orbiting telescope that is a miracle by any measure, on a computer screen that connects me to billions of other sentient minds, I’m tempted to argue the opposite. Every time science opens up further depths of our universe, the mystery of it all only deepens. And the hunger for stories that speculate on answers to that mystery only grows.

>2015<
04/03 - Chappie (Neill Blomkamp)
18/03 - Insurgent
29/04 - The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon)
13/05 - Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
20/05 - Tomorrowland (Brad Bird)
27/05 - Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
10/06 - Jurassic World
24/06 - Inside Out (Pete Docter)
01/07 - Terminator 5 Genisys
22/07 - Ant-Man
29/07 - Pixels
31/07 - Self/less (Tarsem Singh)
05/08 - Fantastic Four (Josh Trank)
18/09 - Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
20/11 - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
25/11 - Midnight Special (Jeff Nichols)
25/11 - The Martian (Ridley Scott)
25/11 - The Good Dinosaur
18/12 - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams)
TBA - Into the Forest
TBA - High-Rise
TBA - Turbo Kid
TBA - The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)
TBA - Hardcore
TBA - Equals
TBA - Cell
TBA - Godzilla
TBA - Z for Zachariah
TBA - Absolutely Anything (Monty Python)

>2016<
29/01 - The 5th Wave
12/02 - Deadpool
23/03 - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder)
06/05 - Captain America: Civil War
27/05 - X-Men: Apocalypse
24/06 - Transformers 5
29/06 - Independence Day 2 (Roland Emmerich)
05/08 - Suicide Squad
07/10 - Gambit
04/11 - Doctor Strange
11/11 - The Sinister Six
16/12 - Untitled Star Wars Stand-Alone Project (Gareth Edwards)
TBA - Star Trek 3
TBA - Untitled Prometheus sequel (Ridley Scott)

>2017<
03/03 - Untitled Wolverine Sequel
10/03 - Kong: Skull Island
07/04 - Pacific Rim Sequel
05/05 - Guardians of the Galaxy Sequel
02/06 - The Fantastic Four Sequel
23/06 - Wonder Woman
28/07 - Untitled Spider-Man Reboot
03/11 - Thor: Ragnarok
17/11 - The Justice League Part One (Zack Snyder)
TBA - Avatar 2 (James Cameron)
TBA - Untitled Alien Project (Neill Blomkamp)
TBA - Untitled Planet of the Apes Sequel
TBA - Ghost in the Shell
TBA - Star Wars Episode VIII (Rian Johnson)

>2018<
23/03 - The Flash
04/05 - Avengers: Infinity War - Part I
08/06 - Godzilla Sequel
06/07 - Black Panther
27/07 - Aquaman
02/11 - Captain Marvel
TBA - Avatar 3 (James Cameron)
TBA - Untitled Star Wars Stand-Alone Project (Josh Trank)

>2019<
03/05 - Avengers: Infinity War - Part II
14/06 - Justice League Part Two (Zack Snyder)
12/07 - Inhumans
TBA - Star Wars Episode IX
TBA - Avatar 4 (James Cameron)

>2020<
03/04 - Cyborg
19/06 - Green Lantern

>????<
The Incal (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Akira
Predator
Colossus
Untitled Blade Runner project (Ridley Scott)
Battle Angel (James Cameron)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Sci-Fi'ish but not really
2015? - Voyage of Time (Terrence Malick)
2015? - The Salt of the Earth