Why Scientists Should Read Science Fiction
by Hannah Waters | 12:40 pm, July 21st, 2010
I write this post going into science fiction as a fan, but also unaware of how most scientists think about it. I can imagine two central viewpoints: (1) scientists who enjoy it (like myself), simultaneously as entertainment and a bit of critical thinking and (2) scientists who dislike it due to its tendency to portray “evil scientists” and/or science and technology gone awry, destroying the world.
I didn’t really grow up reading science fiction. Sure, I was (and am) completely obsessed with some fantasy novels (e.g. Lord of the Rings) but never made the leap to becoming a true sci-fi nerd. It wasn’t until I started studying science more fully that I developed an interest in speculative science fiction. Many of the stories do deal with technology taking over civilization – but embedded within this framework is a great deal of excitement, along with some deserved anxiety.
The best way for me to explain these conflicting emotions is with an example of something that happened to me in the past few weeks. We are slowly inching closer to developing lab-produced organs, which would be incredibly beneficial for a lot of obvious reasons. Just this month there have been developments toward mass-produced red blood cells, as well as bioartificial lungs. Eerily, I read about these discoveries as I was tearing my way through Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, a speculative fiction novel about a bio-engineered future, including “pigoons” (pig/balloon) that have grown to massive sizes in order to grow 6 kidneys at a time for organ harvest, and “ChickieNobs,” a fast food product made from transgenic chickens that have no brains or beaks and grow 8 chicken breasts at once. While reading, I simultaneously was in wonderment about how we could be reaching the ability to actually engineer these creatures, but obviously nervous about the implications described in the novel. (No spoilers here!)
Some scientists might write this kind of anxious thinking off as trash. “We’re trying to develop organs to save lives – we don’t need a bunch of crazies trying to stop us in order to avoid a hypothetical bioengineering apocalypse!” But scientists are born and raised to be skeptical – and that’s all that much of this writing is. Being skeptical about the pure goodness of scientific advance.
But more importantly, science fiction is one of the ways that non-scientists absorb science. Oryx and Crake is a national bestseller, suggesting that millions of people have read Atwood’s tale of bioengineering gone wrong. While we should assume that the public knows that this is fiction and doesn’t take it entirely seriously, these stories do raise questions about the potential misuses of science that might not be as prevalent otherwise. I believe that scientists have a duty to communicate with the public. (Not all scientists agree with me on this.) By knowing where non-scientists are coming from, scientists can better address some of the potential issues that might be raised by their achievements.
EC Comics’ “Weird Science” #6 (1951)
Sci-fi also provides a venue for discerning how our ways of thinking about science have developed historically. One of my favorite time periods for sci-fi is the 1950s: It was a time when just enough was known to speculate wildly, but not enough to fully disregard these speculations. After all, Watson and Crick did not discover the DNA structure until 1953! Thus you have the birth of many of our superheroes, variously mutated by “cosmic rays” or radiation, altering their molecular structures and giving them superpowers. We had just enough pieces to wonder, but not enough to know the full picture.
And sometimes, the stories told as fiction end up being today’s truths. Reading stories that feature the scientific dreams of these writers, and knowing that they’ve come true, can be heart-wrenching. In one of my favorite short stories, “The End of the Beginning” in R is for Rocket, Ray Bradbury describes a couple gripping their seats with excitement and nervousness as their son boards a shuttle – the first shuttle to land on the moon. This collection was written in 1965, 4 years before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Bradbury’s description is incredible:
All I know is it’s really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age; from now on we’ll lump all those together under one big name for when we walked on Earth… Millions of years we fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out of the sea without gravity crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to stand upright without gravity breaking our new invention, the spine, tried to walk without stumbling, run without falling. A billion years Gravity kept us home… That’s what’s so really big about tonight … it’s the end of old man Gravity and the age we’ll remember him by, once and for all.
Gives you shivers, eh? Of course, this day has come and gone in real time. We are still constrained by gravity, we haven’t set foot on a planet beyond the moon. But these science fiction stories can bring us back to that time of wonderment, help us to experience a feeling we missed: the great excitement of space potentially conquered. And although it didn’t happen quite the way Bradbury described it, we can pretend for at least a little while.
Science is about that excitement. About that drive to discovery, about idealism and hope. It’s easy to forget that, working away at my lab bench, pipetting DNA into tubes. Now we know a little more about science – enough that we no longer dream of mutated superheroes. But we still dream about the day when we’ll make our big discovery, solve our own scientific problem.
Science fiction can remind us of this wonderment and hope. But it also sends us a warning – to think about the potential implications of our findings, beyond our idealistic dreams. While those implications might not be as exciting as a science fiction novel, they exist, and scientists should be aware of them.
With that, I’ll leave you this quote from David Brin from Nature‘s series of interviews with science writers this past winter.
Science fiction is badly named — it should have been called speculative history… Whether you are in a parallel reality or exploring the future, it is all about the implications of change on human lives. The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers — it’s that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.
Hannah Waters is a scientist and aspiring science writer from Philadelphia. She blogs here and tweets here. This post originally appeared on her blog Culturing Science.
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As a scientist, I dislike most science fiction but I don’t really give a crap about how scientists are displayed. I avoid science fiction due to the blatant ignorance the author almost always displays (and proudly) towards established science.
Let me explain [and I ask you to read slowly and carefully not as a personal insult but because I've tried to explain this to people attempting to get me to read their favorite sci-fi book/ watch their fav. sci-fi show and they invariably don't pay attention, bringing up points I've already argued at length as though I hadn't said anything on the topic - ah the blind fervor of a fan(atic)].
Sci-fi writers rarely seem to research what they’re writing about, which is unacceptable to me. It is generally unacceptable in most media (if I were to write a history book on George Washington and described him being the 51st President of the U.S. with a pearly white natural smile you can bet it wouldn’t be published – most people would be able to spot the errors in a heartbeat) but the acceptance of these errors in sci-fi speaks more to the general public’s ignorance of scientific discoveries – they annoy the hell out of people who know what’s what. People who don’t know about science tend to dismiss any of these issues – “it’s FICTION! It’s supposed to be made up!” I get that it’s fiction – I’m a well-rounded scientist who studied writing and theater – but the biggest issue you need to deal with as a writer is suspension of disbelief. If you cannot get your readers to suspend their disbelief that this couldn’t actually happen – especially in science fiction.
This involves creating and alternate universe or altering the current universe, but in all cases you must establish rules for what’s different and follow those rules. For any unestablished rule it’s assumed the rules are the same as the current ones. I read a science fiction story the mentioned the heart producing blood. It was just an aside and not part of the main story but I was able to contact the author. Were the characters not typical humans? No – they were just like us. But, their hearts produced their blood. Of course – just like us!
The author had clearly not researched anything on science before writing a “science” fiction story. I rarely miss something like this in a science-fiction story and it’s infuriating. Don’t get me wrong – there are people who do it correctly (Hiromu Arakawa’s prosthetic limbs in Fullmetal Alchemist look eerily similar to the new prosthetic developed last year for war amputees), but for every one that does it correctly tons do it incorrectly. Instead of slogging through all those awful volumes for the one gem I’ll concentrate on the science that’s in front of me and go elsewhere for entertainment. My lawyer friends can’t watch most law-shows because of the inaccuracies present in them – for me it’s the same way with science-fiction. It’s the inaccuracy. If something has been discovered and published prior to the story’s creation (and is pertinent to the story) it should be researched by the writer and included.
And this is the thing my friends always miss – yeah, an author is free to make up shit that hasn’t been discovered (I’m not going to fault a sci-fi writer in the 1920’s – a few decades before R. Franklin’s discovery of its helix shape – for mentioning in their story that DNA was a single pleated sheet) or something that completely doesn’t exist (I’m not going to rag on the T.A.R.D.I.S. because it’s highly improbable it exists). But if something is known to exist, and the author is writing about it, they should know what’s established.
Now, a side note which may be a little personal – I see you’re an aspiring scientist. I, too, spent hours of my time micropipetting DNA for PCRs and transformations (leading to Westerns….ug) but as tedious as the motions seem what you’re working on should be just as exciting to you as science fiction. If you are forgetting how wondrous and exciting science is when you’re actually doing it, well, i’m sorry to say this but you must be doing it wrong. If you need to go to science fiction for critical thinking you must not be reading enough primary literature. If you’re staying on top of your field you should have MORE than enough leads to keep your brain grinding. Now I’m not saying I don’t like to tease out how some of the “impossible” sci-fi inventions could theoretically work using our current technology, but it is a distraction which is in no way comparable to actual mental exercised.
Finally, if you believe scientists should look towards science-fiction for a guides on how to weigh the benefits and consequences of our actions I can only assume you are new enough in your studies that you haven’t taken the multiple ethics classes that are required by quality schools (my school required three separate ethics class) that require you to do just that or you slept through them. I hope it’s the first.
Ooops – I guess I misread it. You are already a scientist but an aspiring science writer. So I guess for the ethics thing it was the second?
Hey kylemac,
I think you’re hitting a really good point – one which has been coming up through much of my correspondence with this essay. What do we do about bad science in science fiction?
Firstly, I see this as simply another reason why scientists SHOULD read science fiction. If scientists regularly took it upon themselves to highlight bad science in fiction (such as at the SDCC panel led this past week by Phil Plait and Sean Carroll), there would be more pressure for authors to do their research first.
Secondly, I do agree with you that, if a story is constructed within a human universe and our biology is assumed to be the norm, there should be an explanation for deviance. But science fiction is primarily FICTION. The “science” part usually simply sets a stage – a new universe or set of options for its usually conscious creatures to consider.
And that’s the fun in it! How would I act if I were under these circumstances? While some great science fiction has been written under the laws our of universe as we know them, some other great stories have been written under other laws that don’t fit in our world. And I guess I don’t really see the problem with that. If you want to write a historical fiction book about the 51st president, that would be fine.
When people are reading sci-fi, they recognize it for what it is: FICTION. While, for scientists, it is always nice to read a story that fits in neatly with our own science, we shouldn’t assume that the rest of the world takes the science in science fiction seriously. I actually think it is condescending to think about people that way.
Speaking of condescension: I will not be responding to the rest of your post.
How Brechtian of you, kylemac!
I think you ask the wrong things of science fiction. Your praise of Arakawa’s uncanny prosthetic limbs is certainly merited but also speaks to what you find most valuable in science fiction, which is to say: scientific accuracy. As a “well-rounded scientist who studied writing and theater,” you should appreciate those who write about the potential, the undiscovered, and–gasp–the untrue. Sure, there are terrible science fiction writers whose texts are littered with egregious inaccuracies; perhaps they’ve never cracked a science text book in their lives. I understand your frustration! How dare they care to write about science without the facts! But there is also science fiction that’s smart, researched, compellingly critical of the real world. I find it appalling that you dismiss a genre in its entirety for fear of slogging through the worst in hopes of finding the best. Perhaps I should stop reading fiction in its entirety so that I might avoid the latest harlequin romance.
Instead of finding fault in science fiction, I encourage you to reevaluate what it means to be entertained while intellectually engaged. If entertainment–to you–means reading a wholly accurate, meticulously researched text that asks of its reader to suspend her disbelief but not so much as to forget whether the heard produces blood, then you must think little of the imagination.
And this is what Hannah encourages us to do: imagine! As she says–let these stories fill you with “wonderment and hope”! She is not simply asking that scientists “look towards science-fiction for a guides [sic] on how to weigh the benefits and consequences of our actions;” she’s asking us to reconsider reality (the real science, the real blood in our hearts) as transposed atop a world that toys with what we’re trying to understand as scientists and, moreover, as people. This IS (not just “comparable to”) “actual mental exercise,” as you say.
As for condescension: funny! I think you are committing the very foul that you accuse science fiction writers of committing; that is–you assume that this post’s author is undereducated in science ethics, a novice in her field, and under-read in primary scientific literature. The author’s post is intended to celebrate a sometimes under-celebrated genre from a smart and palatable perspective! It says nothing of her dozing in class! Please ask of yourself what you ask of science writers: do some research before spewing the fictive.