Editorial 07/28/2014- Science in Science Fiction
This is another part of the whole brainstorming process to boost me out of this creative lag. I'll be posting short essays on (almost) every Monday talking about topics related to what I like to post up here, such as scientific concepts, storytelling, or art in general. If it works, I might continue it for the foreseeable future.
This week, let's start with something I've been thinking a lot about, but haven't heard to much of anywhere else. Why is the science in modern science fiction so inaccurate?
First off, let's define science fiction in a way that separates it from other areas of fantasy. The general idea behind other areas of fantastic fiction is that they involve some supernatural element that can't really be explained by common knowledge. Science fiction takes that aspect and grounds it in something relateable to contemporary scientific breakthroughs. When it first came about in the late nineteenth century, it was a big deal, and changed the way we saw fiction. "John Carter of Mars" didn't take place in a mystical fairy land, it was on our next-door neighbor planet. The "War of the Worlds" aliens didn't use magic, it was focused beams of light. The monster in "Frankenstein" was brought to life using electricity, something everyone at the time had seen in spectacular travelling shows. Science took what originally could only be explained by magic or acts of God and made them understandable and communicable.
Lately, though, these types of stories have been pushing the limit. After the nineteen-fifties, the genre in general began taking some very strange turns. It might have been because they started straying into fields of science we don't truly understand yet, but the science started reading out as just plain wrong. "Godzilla" awakened a seventy-million-year-old dinosaur that somehow didn't break the square-cube law. "Star Wars" put sound in space. "Superman" reversed the rotation of the Earth and made that somehow turn back time. It's even worse that some of these fallacies have made it into mainstream knowledge. (The whole 10% of the brain concept is just the worst.) Nowadays, it seems that "Science Fiction" is taking a step back into "Fantasy with some made-up science put into it".
Although, while the faulty science does take away from their credibility, it doesn't affect the quality of the story too much. If anything, it made seeing it brought to life on screen or the idea of it in a book that much more spectacular. The science behind the Animus in "Assassin's Creed" may not make much sense, but it is exhilarating running parkour through the streets of medieval Jerusalem. The sound in "Star Wars" revolutionized the way we hear things in movies. "Princess of Mars" was originally written as a joke, but people were so invested in it that Edgar Burroughs decided to come out and write the rest of the universe. In all of those stories, the science is simply something to tweak to give the audience something wild and new.
But is that all that science should be? Just a means to an end? While we have a large group of people who use science as a way towards spectacle, there's also a fair-sized camp of people who use science AS the spectacle. If you've ever read Sir Isaac Clarke's "2001: a Space Odyssey", Carl Segan's "Contact", or Micheal Crichton's "Jurassic Park", you know what I'm talking about. They take the principles that they're based on let them write the whole story. They are used to tell complex themes about human nature, our place in the universe, and consequences for taking them for granted. All of which are very remarkable stories which I would recommend in a heartbeat, although they do have some share of their own issues. The science in them is also susceptible to fallacy after time, and one could even argue that the themes are not subtle enough. It isn't entirely a dead cause, though; it just needs some work.
So, I feel like the question needs to be re-worked. Perhaps, if science fiction can get along just fine without the science, the real question should be Does the Science in Science Fiction NEED to be accurate? Maybe not. As long as the end result is emotionally engaging and fulfilling enough to justify bad science the way many of the classics were, it's not too serious of an issue. Just throw all of the "Transformers" and "Armageddon"s out of the list, and media should be fine. However, we may need to even the playing field and erase the line between "Engaging Movies with Bad Science" and "Boring Movies with Good Science". We can always use new perspectives in these cases.
Thank you for reading.
This week, let's start with something I've been thinking a lot about, but haven't heard to much of anywhere else. Why is the science in modern science fiction so inaccurate?
First off, let's define science fiction in a way that separates it from other areas of fantasy. The general idea behind other areas of fantastic fiction is that they involve some supernatural element that can't really be explained by common knowledge. Science fiction takes that aspect and grounds it in something relateable to contemporary scientific breakthroughs. When it first came about in the late nineteenth century, it was a big deal, and changed the way we saw fiction. "John Carter of Mars" didn't take place in a mystical fairy land, it was on our next-door neighbor planet. The "War of the Worlds" aliens didn't use magic, it was focused beams of light. The monster in "Frankenstein" was brought to life using electricity, something everyone at the time had seen in spectacular travelling shows. Science took what originally could only be explained by magic or acts of God and made them understandable and communicable.
Lately, though, these types of stories have been pushing the limit. After the nineteen-fifties, the genre in general began taking some very strange turns. It might have been because they started straying into fields of science we don't truly understand yet, but the science started reading out as just plain wrong. "Godzilla" awakened a seventy-million-year-old dinosaur that somehow didn't break the square-cube law. "Star Wars" put sound in space. "Superman" reversed the rotation of the Earth and made that somehow turn back time. It's even worse that some of these fallacies have made it into mainstream knowledge. (The whole 10% of the brain concept is just the worst.) Nowadays, it seems that "Science Fiction" is taking a step back into "Fantasy with some made-up science put into it".
Although, while the faulty science does take away from their credibility, it doesn't affect the quality of the story too much. If anything, it made seeing it brought to life on screen or the idea of it in a book that much more spectacular. The science behind the Animus in "Assassin's Creed" may not make much sense, but it is exhilarating running parkour through the streets of medieval Jerusalem. The sound in "Star Wars" revolutionized the way we hear things in movies. "Princess of Mars" was originally written as a joke, but people were so invested in it that Edgar Burroughs decided to come out and write the rest of the universe. In all of those stories, the science is simply something to tweak to give the audience something wild and new.
But is that all that science should be? Just a means to an end? While we have a large group of people who use science as a way towards spectacle, there's also a fair-sized camp of people who use science AS the spectacle. If you've ever read Sir Isaac Clarke's "2001: a Space Odyssey", Carl Segan's "Contact", or Micheal Crichton's "Jurassic Park", you know what I'm talking about. They take the principles that they're based on let them write the whole story. They are used to tell complex themes about human nature, our place in the universe, and consequences for taking them for granted. All of which are very remarkable stories which I would recommend in a heartbeat, although they do have some share of their own issues. The science in them is also susceptible to fallacy after time, and one could even argue that the themes are not subtle enough. It isn't entirely a dead cause, though; it just needs some work.
So, I feel like the question needs to be re-worked. Perhaps, if science fiction can get along just fine without the science, the real question should be Does the Science in Science Fiction NEED to be accurate? Maybe not. As long as the end result is emotionally engaging and fulfilling enough to justify bad science the way many of the classics were, it's not too serious of an issue. Just throw all of the "Transformers" and "Armageddon"s out of the list, and media should be fine. However, we may need to even the playing field and erase the line between "Engaging Movies with Bad Science" and "Boring Movies with Good Science". We can always use new perspectives in these cases.
Thank you for reading.
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