Introduction
Ask ten science fiction writers for their definition of “science fiction,” and you’re likely to get nine different answers—and two agree only because one cited the other. Ask the same writers to weigh in on the most important benefit of science fiction, and you’ll get fifteen replies, because several could not limit themselves to a single response. Science fiction can say things and do things and take us on journeys that no other genre can.
Science fiction takes us on flights of inspiration: it inspires the birth of new technologies, and it inspires people to choose careers in science and engineering. It’s well-known that first flip phone, the Motorola StarTac, was inspired by television’s Star Trek. Although that technology is obsolete well in advance of the 23rd Century, scientists and engineers labor today to develop and perfect practical tricorders and biobeds. Science fiction has inspired the creation or development of space exploration technologies, robots, the Internet, virtual reality, even the waterbed. The list is lengthy.
Walk through the corridors, or between the cubicles, at any NASA center, any government laboratory, any aerospace firm, and you will find a staggering amount of science-fiction-themed posters, action figures, games, and toys displayed prominently on the walls and on the shelves. These are tributes, altars in some cases, to the influences that motivated people into choosing careers in science and engineering. They are those for whom the future, and the lure of alien worlds, promised in works of science fiction can’t come soon enough, so they have dedicated their lives to making it arrive more quickly.
Science fiction takes us on journeys into the imagination. Remember when the motto for the Sci-Fi Channel (pre-SyFy) was “What if?” The “What if …” thought experiment has spawned many, perhaps even most, works of science fiction. How many inventions, technologies, and social trends have been predicted by science fiction? “What if we could go to the Moon?” “What if satellites could enable instantaneous worldwide communications?” “What if government surveillance was constant and ubiquitous?”
It is a simple outcome of statistics that the sheer amount of material produced yearly means that some science fiction projections will ring true. Still, good science fiction writers can perform these kinds of projections well and repeatedly, and because they’ve mentally explored scenarios that few outside of think tanks like The RAND Corporation have ever considered, most people are unaware that science fiction novelists are routinely consulted by corporations and governments regarding issues ranging from technology trends, to bioterror, to technological ethics. According to science fiction novelist David Brin, “Science fiction is strongly associated with creativity, and a willingness to explore both good and bad outcomes of change. I believe that a culture’s strength and resilience is measured, in some degree, of the health and vigor and enthusiasm of its science fiction.”
Science fiction takes us on flights into darkness. Although Michael Crichton’s works have earned him the monikers of “anti-science” and “anti-scientist” those critiques are somewhat vapid and superficial when, in fact, his works merely continued the tradition of telling cautionary stories that result when reasonable conclusions from the “What if” scenario turn dark. Works like 1984 and Brave New World were motivated by fears, and cautioned of the risks, of totalitarianism. On the Beach addressed the outcomes of nuclear war. Even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a warning about rapid technological advancement and scientific hubris. Science fiction has a long history of stories in the “What if this trend continues unchecked?” variety.
Science fiction takes us on journeys of self-examination. The debate over who is the “Father of Science Fiction” is an ongoing one. Is it Jules Verne? Is Mary Shelley, in fact, the “Mother of Science Fiction?” While that debate will not be settled soon (or ever), the clear “Father of Science Fiction as Social Commentary” is H.G. Wells. His concerns about British imperialism gave us The War of the Worlds; his observations about social class division gave us The Time Machine. Wells’ work paved the way for modern morality plays like Star Trek, and works of social introspection like the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Science fiction author and historian Brian W. Aldiss believes, “I prefer to see SF as a mirror to the present. Set up that mirror 50 years into the future and today’s confusions become clearer.”
Science fiction takes us on educational expeditions. From the fundamental tenets of scientific disciplines to the fine-scale technical details, a good work of science fiction leaves the consumer more informed. From my own history, the first science fiction novel I read as a lad, and one of the few I’ve read more than once, was Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. In order to understand the details of that book, I had to look up terms like Doppler shift and coriolis force. To be honest, I still didn’t understand what the coriolis force was after looking it up in the dictionary, but I made sure I asked for clarification in my first high school physics class. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the intervening years where my first exposure to a scientific term or concept was due to a work of science fiction.
Science fiction can do all of these things, take us on all these journeys, but it does none of them if it isn’t read.
As with any work of fiction the reader needs to be hooked, and remain engaged and along for the ride. A storyteller may have the most interesting concept, the most novel take on an idea, the most insightful projection of current social or tech trends, but if these are not interwoven with an interesting, compelling narrative, the consumer of that fiction is lost, and onto the next story. When science enters the fiction, the bar is set still higher. Science fiction may have the power to address topics, or address topics in ways, that other genres cannot, but that power brings added scrutiny. Put simply, the kind of people who read science fiction are put off by bad science. A creator of science fiction must worship at both the altars of Story and Science.
When an author wants to explore a topic, and when story comes into conflict with science, story wins every time. In fact many a story is born when the result of the “What if” scenario is a modification to known physical laws (traversable wormholes, for instance), or a case when technology is stretched beyond reasonable extremes (faster than light travel). There is a sort of unwritten contract between the creators of science fiction and the consumers. The writer says, “Go with me on this journey, buy into this premise, and I’ll keep the number of times I stretch science as small as I possibly can.” This is just as true for Hollywood productions as it is for novels and short stories, but the number of “gimmes” in literary science fiction has always been far smaller than for television or film. In fact, many readers are lost if there is more than one “gimme,” where a television show can easily have four or five.
If there is an outlandish or easily preventable mistake in the science, that number goes instantly to zero. An unnecessary or easily avoided technical gaffe will forcibly eject some consumers out of the story and into the real world, transforming them from being immersed in the writer’s creative vision, to sitting in a room in the 21st century feeling cheated.
The authors of the stories within this anthology all have a dedication to keeping their science as accurate as possible that goes well above and beyond. All were either attendees or instructors at the Launch Pad Workshop. Every summer established writers from all over the United States, in fact all over the world, come to beautiful Laramie—to the University of Wyoming—to attend Launch Pad. Between classroom lectures and telescope observations, Launch Pad gives attendees a “crash course” in physics and astronomy. Attendees have ranged from novelists, to editors, to television writers, even a science comedian. Launch Pad exists to ensure that, no matter how far into the Universe the attendees’ stories take us, they are always grounded in real science.
Each year a scientist comes aboard as a guest instructor, and I had the honor of being the Launch Pad guest instructor in 2011. I found that the writers in attendance were far beyond science fans—these people were science groupies! In the time-honored tradition of science fiction, after formal instruction ended, conversations and debates continued well into the wee hours of the morning. The attendees and instructors stay in contact, still sharing web links to fascinating new research, and still continuing those debates.
I hope you enjoy this anthology, filled with voyages of the imagination where science doesn’t take a back seat to the story: it’s in the pilot’s seat, taking the story on its flight, and the “scientific ejection seat” has been disabled.
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