Why SciFi?

My wife doesn't read Science Fiction. So, she asked me why I do. And why I write it.

If anyone gives you one answer and says it is the only reason, they're wrong. So, this is a non-exhaustive treatment.

The reasons for reading or writing Science Fiction include all the ones for other fiction: It's a pleasant way to pass a gray, rainy day. It provides distraction and amusement while going through unhappy circumstances. Reading is cheap entertainment. If you have straightened means, you can freely check out books from a library, or just let me know and I'll give you a copy of what I've published.

Science Fiction can be very mainstream or very genre. The lines get blurred. Action thrillers can easily include a SF gizmo with which the super-villain holds the moon for ransom. Romances may develop between dashing Civil War cavalrymen and time-travelling maidens.

I've explored elsewhere the relationship between Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as two broad themes of Science Fiction. And all that applies to this discussion of why one reads and writes SF.

Science Fiction prophesies about the Future

Ours is a technological society and the fruits of science and technology surround us. Science Fiction can cushion us against future shock. If I were to describe a typical workday to my teen-aged self of the 1970s, he would say it sounds like science fiction--because it does. I have an iPod, an iPad, an Android phone and a MacBook Air. Maybe I'll get an iPhone for my birthday. These devices are marvels of technology and I love living in the 21st Century.

But SF is a false-prophet. We haven't been back to the moon since 1973. We don't have jet packs. We don't have flying cars. Nuclear fusion power is still 30 years away. (Meanwhile I've gotten a half-dozen robo-calls today from various skeezy outfits. What fool does business with these companies? How do they stay in business?)

Despite the unexpected course of development with less progress in aeronautical or nuclear engineering, and more progress in telecommunication and electronics, we get glimpses into what the future will be like and get to play what-if with ideas like cloned replacement body parts.

Science Fiction lets us play what-if -- with things

Science Fiction is fiction because it often describes inventions that don't exist. There are no artillery pieces that will hurl a projectile from the Earth to the Moon. But if there were, what would it be like to use one? Or suppose I had a device that would transport me from anyplace to anyplace instantly?

Everybody loves unwrapping a new toy on Christmas morning and then seeing what it will do. Geeks and Engineers may also take things apart to see how they work.

Frankly, that's what I like about SF. I like inventing stuff that doesn't exist. I like coming up with a plausible-sounding explanation for why you want to fly into the sun and why the hyperspace drive works better there.

Doing real science is hard and so is making things work. But it's a lot easier when it just has to sound plausible. This may explain why Science Fiction doesn't predict the future perfectly. Flying cars are plausible, but iPods weren't plausible even when Steve Jobs announced them.

Science Fiction lets us play what-if -- with people

Are you scandalized when the old dude shows up with a trophy wife who's half his age? But what will happen when the dude is 900 years old and  the trophy wife is 450? And a girl young enough to be his daughter would be 875 years old!

Or how about the starship pilot who's been in stasis for 80 years and he's thawed out by his great-grandson who has the same apparent age? How does that family dynamic work out?

Let's suppose you can clone replacement body parts. Sure, there are people who need heart transplants, but look at how much more money is spent each year for boob jobs? There's probably a lot more money to be made in upgrades of a cosmetic nature. And there's not as much liability if the replacement breasts fail. 

Or let's suppose someone invents a device that tells when a politician is lying, and also when he won't keep a campaign promise. We might be surprised by politicians' creative responses to this challenge.

How would wars be fought if we only let robots do the fighting? Would we have more wars or fewer?

Science Fiction lets us grind axes

Star Trek was infamous for doing this. They ran into some alien whose skin coloration was ebony and ivory. And this alien was possessed of a murderous hatred toward the other alien whose skin coloration was ivory and ebony. Oh, i wonder if there was a message about racism in this episode?

Strangely, they never beamed down to the Planet of the Over-promising Santa Clauses, or Planet We-just-ran-out-of-other-people's-money. Do you think we should go on the Gold Standard? You can have enterprising spacemen from there show up to End The Fed.

But Wait! There's More

The reasons for reading and writing Science Fiction encompass more than what I've said so far. Ferinstance, I didn't say anything about giving you a good scare. So, tell me, why do you read or write Science Fiction?

Two Styles of Science Fiction

When I was a tender young lad my favorite authors were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

These guys represent two different approaches toward science fiction. Verne took a more technological approach. He looked at technological trends and wrote about cool scientific inventions that would in turn serve a central role in the story: submarines, space guns, and airships for example.

Conversely, Wells took a more sociological approach. He looked at historical trends and wrote about the cultures likely to arise from them. The "Upstairs/Downstairs" class stratification of Victorian society would likely drive human evolution to elf-like Eloi and troll-like Morlocks.

If you look at any science fiction story, you can gauge how much Verne and how much Wells is in the story. When I speak of the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction, it's a lot easier to start with a Verne-style story and prove it is not Fantasy than to do so with a Wells-style story.

As a friend recently pointed out to me, "Science Fiction gets bogged down in telling you how the watch works, Fantasy just tells you the time and moves on." I heartily agree when you're talking about a Verne-style story. Less so with a Wells-style story.

Granted, we never read detailed technical specifications for the power plant of the Nautilus, but Verne provided details like the electric guns being powered by Leiden jars (super-capacitors). In contrast, Well's time machine had a lever and an odometer that showed what year it was.

Could "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" be retold as a Fantasy story? I don't see how it could--you really need the submarine. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Conversely, could "The Time Machine" be told as Fantasy? Maybe. The gist of the story is that the time traveler goes to someplace different where the Morlocks (who keep everything working) terrorize the Eloi (who do lunch).

I think I could write a story where a magic-user casts a spell and lands in Middle Earth with dwarfish Morlocks and elvish Eloi doing everything the same as in The Time Machine. The biggest thing lost in such a translation would be Wells' sermonizing about how evil and destructive war is. We really don't need the sermonizing as long as there are pictures of Hiroshima available.

I've elsewhere suggested that there's good reason to classify the stories of Finding Time under fantasy, since the science of chaos theory causes a lot of trouble for ANY time travel scenario. And quantum mechanics implies that you cannot even OBSERVE quantum systems.

Nevertheless, I love science and technology too much to not give inventions a prominent role in my stories. I feel an unstoppable need to tell the reader how the watch works. Consider my story, "Sealed Was The Tomb" wherein Sid is testing a time machine. I show a spaceship going to Epsilon Eridani and the story turns on the need to maintain an UNOBSERVED quantum system. (Is there sociology in the Spacer/Lubber conflict? Yes, but that's another story.)

This makes Finding Time Science Fiction.

Steampunk Within The Boundaries Of Reason Alone

The title of this post derives from a 1793 book by Immanual Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone. Kant was one of the framers of the Age of Reason.

I recently saw a Kickstarter project called Steam Patriots that looks really cool. This project is seeking $100k to develop a series of steampunk novellas wherein George Washington and Benjamin Franklin fight the American Revolutionary War with airships and lightning-bolt rifles. The pictures create stunning visual impressions. I love it.

BUT since I am working on a steampunk project myself, it got me thinking about the constraints I've put upon my own writing.

My work-in-progress, Steamship to Kashmir, is set in the Victorian era. Mycroft Holmes is pursuing a murderer around the world in a nuclear-powered-steam airship. A fission reactor can be used for heat to flash water into steam and one can build a lighter-than-air craft that uses steam instead of hot-air, helium or hydrogen as a lifting gas.

Though Holmes' era had Jules Vern's SF, with a presumably nuclear submarine 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, small details like Madam Curie's discovery of radium had not yet occurred. Nor had X-rays, neutrons, alpha-, beta-, and gamma-radiation been discovered. How can I plausibly depict the girl shown on the right controlling a critical fission reaction? I suppose by the same rationale we use to suppose Captain Nemo powering the Nautilus with nuclear power.

Another problem for me is that the German fellow named Zeppelin who did so much work in rigid-framed airships. He is not yet accomplished or famous by the time my story takes place. Hard to tell the reader that the steamship to Kashmir is a Zeppelin when the term hasn't been invented in Mycroft Holmes's time.

And I have a problem with computers. Mycroft Holmes as a mathematician would have intimate knowledge of Charles Babbage's proposed Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. He can reasonably be expected to exploit such machines to the fullest. Yet the capabilities of these machines are dramatically constrained when compared with our own computers or even those of Alan Turing's time in WW2. Babbage machines could do things like ballistic trajectories, or compute math tables. These are not particularly glamorous applications to put into a story.

So, I'm carrying around all these constraints on what technology that I can deploy in Steamship to Kashmir and then I see the Steam Patriots project.

Really? Can you call 18th century American Revolution steampunk? Isn't that 100 years early? Can you get away with that?

Push 50 years after the Victorian era and you're in World War 2. Stories wherein advanced technology deployed in the 1940s is termed Dieselpunk to distinguish its look and feel from the earlier era of Queen Victoria.

Shouldn't the pre-steam American Revolution be termed something besides Steampunk? Something evocative of Kant or Voltaire? The age of steam was decades away. They were barely 100 years after Isaac Newton got hit by an apple and reinvented Calculus. The zeitgeist of 1776 was pre-steam, but I can't think of a suitable replacement term for steampunk.

Or maybe not. James Watt's patent on the steam engine was 1769 so it might work. Barely.

In the meantime, I'm totally jazzed by the George Washington and Benjamin Franklin images I've embedded in this post. The Steam Patriots project looks to be a lot of fun. I wish I had an extra $500 jingling around to spend on getting a fancy print of that Benjamin Franklin lightning bolt picture. (I'm a sucker for that style of pictures.)

You should check out Steam Patriots for yourself.