Scott, a frequent commenter to my blog posts, stated in one of his comments, the following:  “It almost seems like you have to be a scientist or almost one to write good SF today!”  At the risk of taking him out of context, this is the theme of today’s post.  To paraphrase Scott, how do we reconcile a scientist’s no-nonsense focused pursuit of good data and elegant theories with the creativity and imagination of a master storyteller?  Is there cause and effect here?  Or, do we just have the synergistic nexus of two different personality traits.

First, let’s clear up something.  Scott and I agree on many things, but things I say here are my own opinions, not his (he can agree or disagree in comments, as can anyone who reads this blog).  Second, I have a tiny nit to pick with the words “…to write good SF today!”  Three greats from the era long ago when sci-fi magazines started—Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein—were all scientists.  Asimov started professional life as a biochemist and Heinlein as an astronomer.  Clarke was either a smart engineer or applied physicist, depending on how you like to define your pigeon holes—he even had a patent for com satellites long before they became feasible and ubiquitous commercially, for example.  Yet these three became the early titans of good sci-fi, providing a high bar to jump over for any would-be sci-f author.

Conclusion:  Scott’s word “today” should be eliminated (to be fair, he probably already knew this).  We were discussing James Hogan, author of the Giants’ Trilogy and other hard sci-fi novels.  Hogan, like Vernor Vinge, was a computer scientist.  Computer science to me is more algorithm-oriented and practical (in many schools, it’s in the engineering faculty, not mathematics or A&S), so I view it as a practical branch of applied mathematics.  For the sake of this discussion, let’s include computer scientists (who might not be scientists) and mathematicians (who might not be practical) in the class of scientists and continue.  (Hogan mostly gets the science right—his description of particle theory in The Genesis Machine almost sounds like a real theory and his tale of alternate history, The Proteus Operation, uses the theory of the many worlds of quantum mechanics.  Vinge mostly gets the science wrong—his description of the speed of light varying with the distance to the center of the galaxy in A Fire upon the Deep is absurd, but the book won a Hugo.)

But I stray from my topic, i.e., answering those questions I posed at the beginning.  Here’s my thesis:  practicing scientists require creativity and imagination.  Writing sci-fi for a scientist is like adding to his long list of what-ifs, going beyond those he can answer with his current scientific savvy to those that have no scientific answer.  Science probes the unknown with today’s tools but knowing where to probe requires the what-if question.  Sci-fi probes the unknown with prose—the what-if questions are often more difficult, or impossible.  In both cases, creativity and imagination are needed to generate the what-ifs.

In physics, it’s often the theoretical physicist who generates more what-ifs and explores them theoretically with old paradigms, or generates new ones, as needed.  These actions are often a response to seeing new data.  The theoretician pauses and says something like, “Gee, that’s peculiar.  What if….”  In the round-robin world of the scientific method, the experimentalist then turns around and says, “Let me test Professor So-and-So’s new theoretical idea with another experiment.”  (The experimentalist can create what-ifs too, of course.)  This to-and-fro of scientific research is not present in sci-fi.  We only get past the what-ifs when the writer invents future research and its consequences in his fiction.

Other areas of scientific endeavor are not so obviously bifurcated into theory and experiment.  Nevertheless, they all practice the scientific method.  The creation of the scientific method’s what-ifs requires imagination.  Sometimes the latter are called intuitive leaps or eureka moments, but I call it imagination.  I claim you can’t do science without creativity and imagination.  Sometimes, like the big three sci-fi writers I named above, you discover that doing science is too limiting.  You stop doing science and you start writing sci-fi.  Or, you do them at the same time.

However, very few people achieve fame as both a scientist and sci-fi writer.  Fred Hoyle probably came the closest with just one book, The Black Cloud.  I like to think that scientists who turn to writing sci-fi recognize that science limits their imagination while sci-fi is limitless.  In this sense, there is a definite synergism between science and sci-fi, but science leads to sci-fi in the person that has practiced both if you’re looking to solve that chicken-and-the-egg problem.

Nevertheless, is Scott right?  Do you have to be a scientist, practicing or retired, to write sci-fi?  I claim that today enough of a science and technical background can be had with the internet and science books written for laypeople that, to be a sci-fi writer, you only need an interest in science and technology plus the ability to write a good story.  For the former, read those popular science books and magazines like Science News.  For the latter—well, I won’t get into the nurture versus nature controversy here, but I will say that MFA and journalism programs believe that good writing can be taught, and some of them are even online.  (I’m certain that the big three named above didn’t enroll in any of these, though.)

In sci-fi, the story—plot, setting, and characters—is key.  (Vinge can get away with bad science with most readers because he tells a good story—excellent stories, in fact.)  The sci-fi author must place his characters in a futuristic setting and make them seem real and interesting—the reader must feel a connection, even if the setting is weird or totally alien (if you don’t connect with the spidery hero of Vinge’s Deepness in the Sky, for example, something is dreadfully wrong!).  These requirements are no different than for any other fiction writing.  Anyone who is creative and imaginative can do it.

However, here’s a warning: your sci-fi reading audience contains some tough customers.  Even die-hard trekkies complain about Picard ordering Geordie to kill the engines and then seeing the Enterprise come to a full stop, in violation of Newton’s First Law.  (Similar flaws occur in cartoon-land—for example, when Wylie Coyote keeps going straight off a cliff, looks down, yells, and then plummets straight down.  While cartoons might be warping young minds for science, they are not sci-fi.)  Sci-fi cannot—I repeat, cannot—violate known physics.  We can talk about telepathy and time travel (they neither agree nor disagree with known physics), but we can’t talk about violating Newton’s First Law (or the constancy of the speed of light).

So, would-be sci-fi writers out there, be careful.  There might be hungry mobs of sci-fi purists ready to hang you in effigy if they feel insulted.  Your creativity and imagination might not be enough.  But sci-fi and all its subgenres are great fun, for both readers and writers.  They analyze the human condition, our moral victories, heartaches and foibles, mostly on neutral ground.  They entertain and inform you.  They can even make you laugh…or cry.  Try a sci-fi novel—you might be glad you did.

In libris libertas…

***

 Notes:

(1)  My apologies to Scott.  I truly enjoy his comments.  Taking one out of context is a bit unfair to him.  I hope he is the forgiving sort!

(2) This seems like an appropriate point in space-time to announce the forthcoming release of Sing a Samba Galactica.  Most everything left dangling in Survivors of the Chaos and earlier books in my main story tree (The Midas Bomb, Full Medical, Soldiers of God, plus Survivors) is explained in Samba.  It is an epic sci-fi thriller.  Creative and imaginative?  You will have to decide.  It will be priced at $5.99 on Amazon’s KDP Select.  Coming soon.  Look for it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under Classic Sci-Fi, Science, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.