The real science of science fiction

The best SF draws on genuinely scholarly research, and the scholars are themselves
inspired by the creative writers’ speculation, writes Susan Stepney

Susan Stepney

Wed 21 Jan 2015 12.29 GMT Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 13.09 GMT






Shares
4,081

Comments

69

PhD in science fiction … Isaac Asimov, SF's most celebrated biochemist. Photograph:
Claudio Edinger/Getty Images

There is a co-dependency between science and science fiction. Many scientists and
engineers acknowledge that science fiction helped to spark their imagination of what was
possible in science (immersion in the genre from a young age might help explain why I
now research unconventional computers). And science fiction authors are inspired by future
science possibilities. But how do novel scientific ideas get into SF authors’ heads in the
first place?

Sometimes, authors just make things up, but untutored imaginings tend not to make the best
science fiction. As JBS Haldane put it: “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose,
but queerer than we can suppose”. We need scientific input to sustain a rich science
fictional imagination.

Sign up for Bookmarks: discover new books in our

weekly email
Read more

Science writing isn’t the same as fiction writing. 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.

SF authors can ease their research burden by consulting the scientists. Jack Cohen, a
reproductive biologist, has helped James White design his four-letter classification for alien
species (we humans are DBDG), retconned Anne MacCaffrey’s dragons for her, and
designed the life cycle of the grendels in Niven, Pournelle and Barnes’s series The Legacy
of Heorot.

Writing, be it fiction or non-fiction, is usually a solitary task, but scientists often write in
teams, each member bringing their own skill set to the collaboration. At one extreme we
have Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with
the ATLAS detector at the LHC by The ATLAS Collaboration, which boasts more than
3,000 authors, listed over eight pages; the text has an average of fewer than six words per
named author. Most research papers are written by significantly fewer co-authors than that,
but collaborative writing is the norm in science. There are also SF writing teams: brothers,
spouses, or just colleagues. Some teams consist of a more established author providing
some of the ideas, or even just the background world, and a younger up-and-coming author
who does most of the writing work – not too dissimilar to a PhD supervisor and student,
really.

Team writing can also help the infusion of science ideas into SF. Pair an SF author and a
scientist, and see what results. One great example of this approach is the quartet of Science
of Discworld books by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen. In each book,
Pratchett writes a short Discworld novel that exhibits some scientific properties of interest;
in alternating chapters, Stewart and Cohen then explain the underlying science.

Ra Page at Comma Press has a different style. He commissions anthologies of short stories,
each pairing an SF author with a scientist. This results in two chapters per story: the author
writes their story based on an idea provided by the scientist, and then the scientist explains
the science behind the story: where it is right, where it has been changed to fit the needs of
the story, and where it is still speculation. Bio-Punk, published in 2012, was based on
biomedical research; Beta-Life, in 2014, was based on unconventional computing and
artificial life. I had the pleasure of being the “tame scientist” for one of the entries in Beta-
Life, about “growing a skyscraper”. The idea here is to design “seeds” that then grow to
form the walls, windows, plumbing, wiring, and so on, with the generic growing structure
“gardened” into specific shapes, like topiary on a grand scale. Author Adam Marek took
this idea, and wove a story out of it, adding the idea of a poor community stealing
“cuttings” and growing their own, out-of–control homes.

Although the technical ideas underpinning the growing of large artefacts comes from
science, the specific application came to me via science fiction, here the novel Oath of
Fealty. If you know the story you will realise that means I’m actually interested in growing
spaceships. However, we are applying for funding to further develop the science, and so are
sticking to the less outrageous, and technically more feasible, skyscraper application.

It is important to get science ideas out to the public for many reasons. But one important
reason, for me at least, is so that SF authors have a range of new material to use to write
great SF stories. I’ve found that working directly with an author kills two birds with one
stone: it produces a new story for me to read, and provides some science background that
might help inspire other authors, too.

• Susan Stepney is Professor of Computer Science at the University of York

•Beta-Life is published by Comma Press and is available from the Guardian Bookshop