There are many who believe that science fiction is more than just a source of entertainment: it can actually change the world. If you’ve ever wondered just how inspirational science fiction has been and continues to be to the real life perceptions and practices of science in our society, then I suspect you will be interested in ‘The Science in Science Fiction,’ an event I’ll be chairing at London’s Royal Institution on 7 April.
Taking place in the historic Faraday Lecture Threatre, the event features speakers Mark Brake and Neil Hook of the University of Glamorgan in Wales. Brake, a prolific writer and broadcaster, founded a degree program on the historical interplay between space, science and culture (which sounds a lot more fun than the undergraduate coursework I took!) and holds a Chair in science communication at the university. He’s also a founding member of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute Communication Group, and is on record as saying that we’ll only settle the life on Mars debate by visiting the surface with a shovel.
His colleague Neil Hook is Associate Lecturer in Science Fiction and an Anglican priest in the Welsh mountains. His research focuses on 17th and 18th century science fiction, which he writes and lectures on internationally. He has said that he spends his academic life reminding people that science fiction is fun and shouldn’t be taken seriously and his parish work reminding people that God is fun and should be taken seriously.
The pair have also recently published a book together on this topic: FutureWorld: Where Science Fiction Becomes Science.
So do join us on 7 April: the discussion promises to be thought-provoking as well as fun, and I’m sure there will be time for a few drinks afterwards!
‘The Science in Science Fiction’
The Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BS
Tuesday 7 April 2009
7.00pm-8.30 pm
Tickets cost £8, £6 concessions, £4 Ri members
(I still haven’t worked out how to display a url that contains ampersands on NN, so here’s the raw code for the event: http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=3025)
Woohoo!
Count me in!
Bring your best examples – audience participation is the main point.
There’s a science fiction course in the program I work for now. I’m going to try and video a bit of their bookclub-like classes for a montage of different courses, but their next class coincides with a time I need to race to the airport, so I don’t know if I can manage.
(Apologies to Cath for using “video” as a verb. “Record” could have meant anything, and “film” isn’t right if it’s not on film.)
And I just realized that video is a verb. In Latin.
Um, I know there’s been some enormous debate about what is or isn’t science fiction… and I’m also off-topic.. but I thought you might like to know that you’re famous in Canada.
“Not yet available” – gah. I shall drum my fingers impatiently.
@Eva – well done. As one who actually took Latin in high school, I applaud you.
It’d be really cool if some of the things in sci fi novels were possible. I remember the genre being included in the syllabi of so many high school and university lit courses, it was great. Some stuff was apocalyptic though, like the Chrysalids.
btw, you’re also famous in Australia!
I guess I could bring along my iPhone: that would have seemed pretty SF not long ago.
My books, of course, being in a container on the way to Tilbury docks.
I am intrigued with the thesis that SF keeps science honest by constantly extrapolating things that might go wrong. It’s sort of like the Opposition Party for science, lurking around in the back benches muttering derisively. But of course SF also has the opposite effect, by celebrating all the things that could go right.
I’ve spoken at an event with that duo, and they’re excellent value for money. You’ll find a review of their more academic book on the subject, Different Engines here
However (and I say this as a huge SF fan), I do doubt the value of SF as an arbiter of progress as your title suggests, Jenny. It’s a great entertainment, and can really make you think – which can’t be bad – but if you look at the absolute classic SF technologies:
… the only one with any great connection to reality+ is the wired world, and that one was written when it was already on the cards. SF in many ways isn’t about the future, it’s more about imagination.
+ Yes, yes, I know, we’ve got AI and quantum teleportation. But the gulf between the reality and the SF applications is as great as the gulf between an airliner and FTL travel.
According to the marketing materials I’ve been given, the ‘arbiter of progress’ idea will be one of their main theses on the night (the phraseology wasn’t my own concoction), so I look forward to hearing their side of the story. I am tempted to point out that these ideas are happening in four dimensions, so it’s not completely clear that the things in your list won’t one day come true. Also, if you look at these concepts less literally and more metaphorically, it strikes me that lot of the tech can stand in for things that really have happened. For example, you mention airliners — we don’t have spaceflight every day, but at the time those stories were written, I’m not sure they could have imagined people hopping on an Easyjet flight for a day trip to Europe either.
Personally, I’m more interested in the opposite idea I mentioned above – how extrapolating the perils of science and technology might be holding science in check in real life. I’m no expert, but I could imagine that cautionary tales might very well infiltrate into the minds of those that decide how much leeway scientific research should be given.
SF certainly gets timescales wildly wrong – take a look at the movie 2001 for some hilarious bad suggestions, including Pan Am (who?) operating commercial space shuttles and Bell Telephones (who?) operating video phones with human-size video images. (Not to mention a self-aware computer and a manned mission to to outer planets.) But no mobile phones.
However, don’t overlook the first bit of my comment, in praise of the talks of Messrs Brake and Hook (sounds like Victorian railway technology) – they’re well worth hearing, even if you don’t agree with them.
A relevant comic on the internet today
Ha! That’s hilarious, Eva. Brian, I think Messrs Brake and Hook sounds more like a New Bond Street tailor.
Unfortunately, in the absence of reliable matter transmission, teleportation, or even a fast and affordable train service, I will not be at the RI for what will be a very interesting discussion. SF is a very unreliable predictor, and often in hindsight hilariously wrong. However, its role is to entertain, question, hypothesize and not to predict.
However, here are a few examples of (intentional or unintentional) predictions:
The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester) predicts texting shortcuts.
Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick) predicting a Drunkard as President of Russia (OK Soviet Union).
Rossum’s Universal Robots (Carel Kapek) does not predict what we would call robots (read it).
The Shape of Things to Come (H.G. Wells) is pretty much wrong everywhere.
It’s been a long time since I read it, but I’m pretty sure that Heinlein described something almost indistinguishable from the Internet/Google in his novel FRIDAY. At least, I recall the heroine sitting down at a computer and spending all day searching around and getting answers in an increasingly complex network of questions. It was so evocative that when I finally got to touch my first computer – this was probably around 1983 – I was bitterly disappointed that you couldn’t ‘go’ anywhere with it, or learn anything that wasn’t already programmed in to it.
Not sure how else to quote/reference something from Facebook, so here’s a screenshot (especially the bottom item)
Karl is all about realism in SF, and last I heard he was writing something with an optimistic (non-dystopian) future, to counter all the doom and gloom SF novels. That being said, I’ve never actually read any of his books. I’m not that drawn to Science Fiction on paper, but I’ll watch it on screen. I don’t know why.
Eva, what book is he referring to in that screenshot? It’s not clear.
This one
I am so loving this phrase from the Publisher’s Weekly synopsis:
“Due to a childhood tragedy, Livia enjoys different consensual realities.”
(no, context doesn’t help.)
Yay, I’m finally able to comment (did anyone else get locked out of their account just now?)
Eva, I heard myself saying to my husband last night that I would “tape” his show for him. This despite the fact that I was recording onto the DVD player’s hard drive, no tape involved. Some habits die hard!
That’s ok Cath, I recently “filmed” my daughter’s gymnastics class, using no film.
Peripherally related to the topic, I recall hearing that NASA astronauts at one point requested that the backgrounds in a simulator they were using be changed to the yellow-grid-on-black used in the Enterprise’s Holodeck (on Star Trek: TNG for those non-geeks out there) because they liked the look and feel of it.
Now I have to go and find some backup for this statement, which I remember from a fine daily science newsmagazine show called “@Discovery.ca” (now known as “Daily Planet”).
That’s a great story, Richard. I hope it’s true.
Back to science fiction: what about books where the author didn’t get it quite right? John Christopher, one of the many authors who wrote disaster scenarios, is a good example. In “A Wrinkle in the Skin” he seems to believe in a catastrophist view of geology. However, in “Death of Grass” the scenario is more believable in the light of UG99 Stem Rust. While we are on Disaster Novels, why are they so popular with British authors? Are we determined to write about our stiff upper lip in the face of unimaginable adversity?
Brits are the ultimate pessimists. That’s why the rest of the world likes to poke fun at you.
But seriously — it’s far easier to write a plot about something negative. There is no tension in happiness. Only Americans think Hollywood endings are good.
Even Hollywood endings (I like a happy ending & I’m not American) require conflict/tension beforehand to be resolved.
I saw A life less ordinary on the plane over. That’s a happy ending, it’s an American film, but it’s certainly not Hollywood.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that happy = Hollywood. It is possible to have a happy ending that doesn’t involve Andie MacDowell.
Anyway, sorry to have derailed the topic. After Brian (D.) mentioned that British authors are more keen on disaster scenarios I was trying to work out if that was really true, statistically. I can think of lots of American SF authors full of doom and gloom (especially post-apocalyptic scenarios), but it would be interesting to see the percentages. It’s true that Americans in general seem more optimistic and aspirational, so perhaps this does bleed into their art.
Thank God for that.
A Life Less Ordinary is in my top 25 favourite movies of all time, and in the top 3 movies I always forget the title of. I’d tell you the other two, but I forgot their titles – that’s the whole point.
OK, I spy a new game here. We’ll try to guess the films—but you’ll have to give us a bit more to go on.
More fun if forgettable is the only quality.
Is one of them The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
No, I can remember that.
One is easy: it’s the one where Michelle Pfeiffer is a teacher in an at risj neighbourhood, Starts with and N or a D or an O.
The other one is a title with multiple words, and is about a woman who steals someone’s family. There is a green house and a windchime in there somewhere.
Oh yes, the first one, I know that!
The title has letters in it, I’m sure.
Spoiler: Dangerous Minds ?
Jenny - the holodeck story is true, I just can't find any documentation to support that statement. It was a news item on "discovery.ca" which has now diappeared, subsumed by the slicker, but less fun, Daily Planet.Instead, here’s a really technical paper about how to make it work.
What the heck happened there?
Oh, the @ signs. Sorry about that.
Ineptitude is the mother of invention – what did you do with the @ sign to make that lovely highlight box?
Apparently there are entire books written about how Star Trek science ‘works’. Not quite as geeky as the people who have taught themselves Klingonese, but getting there.
a box that is not about Star TrekHm. I guess I’d inadvertently surrounded things in @ signs. I had no idea. I’m tempted to go off and try every non-alphabetic character to see what else the markup language here at NN is capable of.
coolI was always hoping NN would provide a lot more information in it’s ‘how do you format stuff’ link – it’s only got the bare basics. Maybe one day…
The other movie title I always forget, I just remembered it: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.
And yes, Dangerous Minds! I keep thinking the title is only one word – maybe that’s where I go wrong.
The BBC has an article about Hollywood’s “happyendingification” today.
Aha!
You can apparently underline by surrounding things with plus signs (+).
And you can superscript and subscript with the thing above the “6” (which looks like what a jazz musician would call a “doit”, i.e. ^) and the tilde (~), respectively.
Text in angle brackets is ignored (as invalid html, presumably). Text surrounded by % signs is printed, but the signs themselves are dropped.
Things that do nothing, at least as text surrounders (although * and # are used for lists, obviously):
!exclamation points!
#hash marks#
$dollars$
&ersands&
?question marks?
`inverted comma thing below the tilde`
:colon:
;semicolon;
[square brackets]
{curly brackets}
|pipe|
\backslash\
/slash/
.period.
,comma,
=equals=
Wasting time? Moi?
All this will be moot once we get MT4.
Ah, the mythical MT4. It’s kind of like the Sasquatch, or the Loch Ness Monster – many claim it exists, many more would like to believe in it, but there’s no hard evidence.
Richard (W), thank you so much! I’ll try to use them all before the UFOs land.
This sounds great! I’m sorry to be missing it… but I’ll only be missing it by a day… I’m leaving for London tomorrow! I’ll be around from the 8th til the 18th. And I’d love to meet up with some Nature Network folks!
How ’bout it?
Isaac Asimov inspired many scientists with his ideas. Unfortunately some failed to implement the three laws of robotics.
South Korea has just implemented the Three Laws of Robotics, apparently, as they want “a robot in every home by 2020” — according to one of the speakers at the event last night (which was gloriously intellectual and Welsh). If I’m not mistaken, he also mentioned that Azimov wasn’t actually the first person to come up with the Laws, although I can’t recall who did.
Brian, I’m sure some drinks could be arranged.
Farooq, at the event last night (which was gloriously intellectual and Welsh) one of the speakers told us that South Korea has just impl
It was a brilliant evening, even if it was intellectual and Welsh, and I had a fun time. You pikers missed out.
God, you almost hate to moderate a spammer that puts so much effort into it, don’t you?
(not you, Richard – the 15 pages of links that I just moderated into oblivion.)
laugh
I am totally immoderate, as well you know.