Jo Walton ([info]papersky) wrote,
@ 2008-06-26 09:52:00
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Interview with me about science in SF.

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[info]carandol
2008-06-26 03:11 pm UTC (link)
A small point... It was only the Americans that didn't have airlocks. The Russians had them from the first spacewalk in 1965.

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[info]randwolf
2008-06-26 03:59 pm UTC (link)
I hadn't fully grasped how the tracking system of education used in most of the world makes it difficult to acquire deeper knowledge in fields of interest. If this hasn't already been suggested, you might want to take a look at James Blish's essay, "The Science in Science Fiction" (it's in The Tale That Wags The God); in it he suggest out that one of the values of sf science is its impossibilities. Science, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, is always a work in progress; this doesn't mean that everything is possible, but what we "know" is possible and impossible changes over time.

You could also do worse than to read Asimov's science essays; they are somewhat dated, but still very good. Also, how are you on maths?

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[info]papersky
2008-06-26 05:57 pm UTC (link)
I am crap on maths.

I have read Asimov's science essays, many of them several times, and his Guides to Science.

I think SF (not any individual work of SF, but the habit of SF) also teaches that science is a work in progress. That's certainly where I know it from.

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[info]randwolf
2008-06-26 06:50 pm UTC (link)
It's one of the underpinnings of SF, for sure. I don't think you can tell SF stories at all without changes in the ideas of what is known and what can be known; changes in the state of knowledge are what make it possible for the past to be another country.

The mathematics required by most physical science has been made inaccessible to most students (and rather more women than men, for some reason) for what seem to mathematicians like good reasons. And yet you cannot teach real physics without mathematics. I wish I could recommend the introductory physics version of Shaping Structures, which manages to teach a substantial amount of real structural engineering in a very accessible way, but it may be another generation before that book is written, if ever. Actually, if you're interested in find out how arches stand up (and learning a bit of the nitty-gritty of Newtonian mechanics), you could do worse than to take a look at that book.

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[info]livredor
2008-06-26 04:42 pm UTC (link)
I am the last person to put off someone who wants to learn more about science. But I don't think that taking a "Physics for poets" course would really help your situation. I mean, you would likely learn stuff that you'd find interesting, and that would be very good. But you'd still be in a position where you knew enough science to know what couldn't possibly work, but not enough to make stuff up convincingly. Partly because the amount of science needed to write watertight "hard" SF is really a very advanced level of science. Mainly though, because the writing process you described in the original post involved knowledge about all kinds of different fields, so you would always keep running into things you needed to know that fell outside the areas you'd chosen to study.

[info]darcydodo has a friend, who is an SF writer and also an academic, and who changed fields from ancient history to astronomy. Since he prefers to keep quiet about his identity and published work online, I will not introduce you directly, but instead suggest that you ask Darcy to introduce him.

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