Using Science in Your Science Fiction
Mia has written an insightful essay about treating science with respect over at the Read or Die blog. If I remember correctly, Mia has substantial academic background in physics, and it’s refreshing to hear someone who is both a scientist and a talented artist talking about how to present scientific concepts to laymen, with the intention of helping them become more interested in science as a whole.
How one presents science in one’s writing is especially interesting to me, because science fiction is quite possibly my favorite literary genre. In case I haven’t mentioned it on this blog yet, science fiction has a special place in my heart, mainly because it translates hard-to-understand concepts into stories, familiar things that evoke all of emotion, curiosity and imagination.
I’m not saying I am good at writing science fiction or that I aspire to become an authority in it, but I especially admire people who are able to achieve that delicate balance between pedagogy and lyricism.
Just to be clear, I’m not fussy about my science fiction. I appreciate both “hard” (e.g. Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Carl Sagan) science fiction and “soft” science fiction (e.g. Ursula le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Herbert), and I never find it easy to compare one arm of SF to the other.
(Incidentally! I learned just recently that my definitions of “hard scifi” and “soft scifi” may differ from everyone else’s - I grew up thinking “hard SF” is fiction that deals with cool hard technical stuff, such as medicine, astrophysics or robotics, while “soft SF” is fiction that deals with the “soft” sciences, such as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and the like. I realized this when I was listening to Alex Osias define “hard scifi” and “soft scifi” at the LitCritters panel discussion during this year’s Manila Book Fair, but I didn’t have the confidence to try and discuss it with him at the time…)
Whatever the definition, I’ve long decided that “hard” and “soft” scifi fascinate me in different ways. There really is no comparison. However, “literariness” is a constant criterion. You may have a character recite complicated formulae that read like a phone book - but if the story wrapped around this character, the way this character speaks, the drama that unfolds, are all engaging, then as far as I’m concerned, you’ve assured yourself an audience. I shall read your phone book, and I shall enjoy it!
On the other hand, you may have a more-fantastic-than-anything futuristic setting, with highly technical notions like genetics and interspecies cell grafting haphazardly tossed about, but if I am fascinated with your central character and the world he/she/it operates in, it’s not likely that I’ll nitpick.
I don’t really see the difference between scientific academics spouting jargon about the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background, and literary academics arguing the nature and function of postmodernism to death. Both types scare away poor timid layfolk (like myself) from liking something enough to indulge in it. Along this vein, I don’t see the difference between science fiction writers who go on and on about the scientific concepts they have adopted, and non-science fiction writers who go on and on about the metaphysical value of their work, the characters’ motivations, the irrelevant and extremely detailed histories of the dramatis personae, within the text! Sometimes they get away with it, but for the most part they irritate me equally.
Of course, I’m not holding the academics at fault - if they are able to make the best of their education, and if they have the skill to present their ideas in an organized, scholarly fashion, I think that’s admirable too. It’s just - it takes talent to weave the didactism into a good story, and most times it’s not even necessary.
I myself am frequently tempted to go on and on about speculative concepts I find especially fascinating… but if I’m going to sound like a pompous self-important ass while doing it, rest assured I’ll make a serious effort to weed out the ego from my fiction and reserve it for my blog. Unless, of course, the character I’m using as a vessel for the elaboration demands the extra infusion of ego.
As Mia had said: if you’ve got your heart set on involving science in your text, you have to respect it. On the other hand, you also have to respect your reader. Don’t treat the reader like an idiot, and don’t treat your story like a soapbox. There’s a time and place for all of that, if you really must do it, but it is usually NOT the text.
I can understand if it’s hard to strike a balance. “Hard” scifi buffs may criticize a certain story for not exploring the scientific concepts enough, while “soft” scifi buffs may criticize this same story for having a single awkward paragraph dedicated to explaining the new world’s operative logic systems. But those who can find where that elusive middle ground is, I worship - because those are the writers who get me interested not only in the possibilities that they paint, but also in the many different processes by which those possibilities can be achieved.
They get me interested enough in highly technical concepts to read up on them. They get me rereading their stories and feeling like my heart is being wrenched out of my thoracic cavity every time. They get me wondering.
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You know, L’Engle’s and le Guin’s brand of sci fi (which treats science the way people treat lovers) is quite possibly my favorite kind. I remember wanting to cry when I re-read A Wrinkle in Time recently, because L’Engle made science (specifically, physics + math!) seem so wonderful and fascinating and new.
Academics scare me! Haha.
those two do have distinctly sensitive storytelling styles. i’ve loved some of le guin’s earlier work for a while now, but i regret not encountering l’engle when i was younger…
now that i think about it, i guess a big part of what i love about the stories of harder sf writers like joe haldeman and michael swanwick is the sensitivity, too. much care is taken not just with the technical details, but also with the way the words are put together.
i love academics! i just um, find it hard to keep up with them. definitely not their fault XD
I first read L’Engle when I was seven, I think, and her A Wrinkle in Time had a huge impact on me.
I really like it when writers are careful with the technical details; even if they slip up from time to time, at least the effort and (I guess) respect for both subject and medium are there. Though of course one has to realize that since this is writing it’s still fiction that’s paramount and you don’t want to bore your reader with details or put him/her off with scientific pompousness. (Yeah, Asimov, I’m looking at you.) There is a reason I prefer soft SF to hard SF. It’s much easier to mess up hard SF, for one thing.
It’s strange, I very narrowly missed becoming an academic-for-life myself. Good thing that didn’t work out? Haha.
P.S. Oh hey, I did some seminars/discussion-type things on the cosmic microwave background when I was a junior. Good stuff.
(Yeah, Asimov, I’m looking at you.)
hahah thank you. he was at the top of my list, too :D
what is the cosmic microwave background, even. you must tell me more about that! and it would be great if we could also plug free science seminars on our blogs, i think. i actually really wanted to attend a free seminar on time travel back when i was in UP, but it conflicted with a class and i decided not to go. i still regret that.
It’s sad mentioning Madeleine L’Engle these days because she just passed away.
I disagree with your take on Asimov. If anything he’s sparse, too sparse. His stuff isn’t bogged down by detail (at least not the way Herbert writes). He’s probably the most accessible.
How is his stuff “scientifically pompous?”
I never used the phrase “scientifically pompous” - it’s either you come across as pompous or you don’t. And I believe the pomposity is present not in the amount of scientific detail presented, but in the tone in which those details are presented.
I think that in Asimov’s case, it’s most evident in the way his characters interact. There’s often a smart guy and a fall guy who conduct a philosophical/scientific argument, during which fall guy ends up being soundly trounced by smart guy’s rhetoric. It’s almost like a recurring comedy skit. This could be easily written off as character development, if only it didn’t happen too many times, over different stories!
It’s been years since I read the Foundation series, but what I most clearly remember about it is that some of the major characters struck me as two-dimensional and insufferable. It made the books difficult for me to read through - although of course, your mileage may vary. But for me, in a scenario where it is only too obvious that the author likes to channel his know-how through overbearing smart guy characters, the reader can’t help but identify with the fall guy characters - belittled and offended.
@Charles: Yeah. I still feel sad whenever I think about her.
@missingpoints: Bhex said, “There’s often a smart guy and a fall guy who conduct a philosophical/scientific argument, during which fall guy ends up being soundly trounced by smart guy’s rhetoric.” –and I agree. I re-read Foundation a few months ago and my knee-jerk reaction to one of his characters was: “Oh dear, poor everyone else.” One of my major pet peeves in science fiction is the stereotypical high-IQ, low-EQ guy who’s horrible to anyone who can’t reach his intellectual level.
To be honest some other writers write pompous intellectuals/scientists too (C.S. Lewis, for instance, though he narrowly misses being annoying by poking fun at the intellectual) but Asimov was really the first person I thought of when I said stuff about scientific obnoxiousness.
@Bhex: I’d plug if I uh knew about them, but I’ve been hiding from my advisor for months now because I haven’t done any work (whine). So I haven’t been going to the NIP. Dr. Muriel will be in the country soon, though, and that always means seminars… will check.
“One of my major pet peeves in science fiction is the stereotypical high-IQ, low-EQ guy who’s horrible to anyone who can’t reach his intellectual level.”
Like House and Bones and Grissom and Sherlock Holmes? Or Malcolm in Jurassic Park? In Asimov’s case the characters are two-dimensional but they’re only “insufferable” the way House is. Can’t blame them for thinking others are dumb because others ARE dumb.
Asimov patterned a lot of his plots after detective stories, complete with parlor room revelations. If you want clunky, try unabridged Verne or Wells. Asimov was just sticking to the SF conventions of his time, with an intellectual hero being head and shoulders above everyone else. Plus he’s easy to read.
You also need to consider the fact that the people who read science fiction back then were anti-social intellectuals. He was just writing to his market.
Heck, I’m part of that market (which explains a lot) and it’s comforting for me to read about smart people being better than the normal hero who’s just gutsy and brave and strong. If I get some cool scientific concepts out of it, better. And while it may not be good characterization, that’s just not the point of science fiction.
The plots and ideas come first, characters are just the people the story happens to.
I was saying that I had difficulty reading him, which probably implies that he isn’t universally easy to read. And as I’ve said, your mileage may vary. It’s one thing to admire Asimov for his ideas, and another to admire him for his writing. The fact is, apart from The Gods Themselves, I don’t believe I really enjoyed any of his work.
From what I’ve heard, the majority of his work exhibits a remarkable lack not only of sympathetic characters, but also of strong female characters. This may have been the standard for pulp science fiction (i.e. comics, TV shows) at the time, but it’s not something that’s likely to influence many young women of today. It’s hard to forgive Asimov these things when his contemporaries, notably Clarke and Heinlein, were able to convey their big ideas without channeling the trademark egotism of male “anti social intellectuals,” as it were.
And just to get back on topic, the subject of my post is getting people interested in science through science fiction. I somehow doubt that “the point of science fiction” is to lay down complicated scientific concepts at the expense of alienating the non-academic reader. That’s what technical essays and scholastic papers are for.
I’ve thought of Holmes as an example of an “arrogant” character too, even if he isn’t in the science fiction genre. As a problem-solver, he was designed to be clever. So is Artemis Fowl. But what makes these characters more endearing, and their stories more popular? It’s the writing, I think. Also the fact that non-academic readers can quickly identify with murder mysteries and crime stories, but not with science fiction.
The best example of “real” science fiction I can come up with offhand is Orson Scott Card’s “Speaker for the Dead.” I tell people who can’t get through the chapter describing Lusitania’s ecology to read it because understanding the mechanics of the world is important for the resolution at the end. It’s the kind of story that can’t work without the speculative science.
If it’s something that can be transplanted onto a fantasy or real-world setting, then it’s not science fiction. I love space opera and military SF but it’s really just hero and war stories transplanted to space. Real SF is “Foundation” and “The Gods Themselves” with its “people as molecules” and trisexual societies concepts.
I’m a literature major, so I love me a good story (and I can handle all that postmodern BS). But my science fiction needs to have real science in it.
Anyway Asimov’s is as simple as it gets when it comes to writing. The story progresses from plot point A to B in a linear fashion, with minimal characterization.
Sorry for belaboring the point but you’re the first person I’ve met (on or offline) who finds Asimov difficult to read and I find it… weird. Asimov is what got me interested in science and SF, while in grade school. So I’m pretty sure he’s perfectly accessible to non-academics.
Plus, there’s nothing complicated about explaining a fictional statistical science that uses something like Boyle’s law to predict human behavior on a grand scale. Or people discussing how to double-cross a space tyrant.
Anyway, to address the topic, if you want to get people interested in science through science fiction, then SCIENCE should be at the forefront. Concepts and ideas, not characters. If the characters are well-developed, good. But the idea should be the focus.
There are people like Heinlein and Gaiman who can cross over to the mainstream but for the most part SF/F writing is specialized, especially SF. Holding Asimov (or any other SF writer) to anything but the most basic standard of regular fiction is misguided.
I agree with you on the lack of female characters but that’s only because (he says) he writes what he knows and he didn’t know much about women when he was young. But unsympathetic? Hell no! Salvor Hardin is one of the coolest non-heroes I’ve ever read.
Asimov’s The Gods Themselves blew me away, but I’ll have to admit that the second chapter, the part with the Rationals, Emotionals and Parentals, made the most impact. There, it didn’t feel like the author was talking down to me (even if he probably was) but it got the message across without the intellectual posturing I learned to expect of him.
The whole chapter was largely a metaphor, I think, for how humans tend to be pigeonholed into specific social functions, and how the ones who break the mold are actually the most remarkable. Along the way, a world was built, innovative concepts about life and social structures that could exist on other planets were introduced. I appreciated having to understand his ideas through clever storytelling techniques, instead of being made to sit through another I-win-you-lose conversation.
I don’t think I made myself clear - by “hard to read,” I didn’t mean that his scientific explanations went over my head. I just meant his explanations were difficult for me to tolerate; I felt like I was being made fun of as a reader. I do remember that as a child growing up in a largely Tagalog-speaking and -reading province, I was the only one I knew who actually enjoyed science fiction. But hey - not having access to the latest scientific discoveries and academic discussions didn’t make me stupid.
To paraphrase a friend: the way Asimov presented his groundbreaking ideas through his protagonists felt like nothing less than intellectual bullying. You as the reader are pressured not only to keep up with him as a writer, but also to worship him for being smarter than you… and that just did not sit well with me.
I agree with you that science fiction is highly specialized. I also agree that a work of fiction should have an emphasis on science, in order to be classified as science fiction (in fact, I don’t recall saying otherwise). But I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on one thing: I don’t think good storytelling is not that important in the creation of a good science fiction story. In fact, it’s not just characterization that matters - I remember that Arthur Clarke’s award-winning story “The Star” made me cry, even if the personality of the protagonist isn’t clear. It’s the very concept of discovering that a living planet was blown up just to create the guiding light that led the gift-bearers to Bethlehem, that affected me so much.
It was an extremely technical story, “hard SF” in the strictest definition of the term. But I loved it anyway, WHY? Why, if I’m only after characterization and plot and whatever else?
I just think that using science fiction as a tool to prove yourself smarter than the rest of the human population (using it as a soapbox, as it were) is uncalled-for and quite self-defeating. Especially if you are not addressing a readership that majored in literature and/or a scientific discipline (which is what - 99% of the world’s population, give or take?). The job of a science fiction writer is to tell a story that just happens to be mostly composed of technical, scientific speculation or fact.
If a person’s job is to expound on details without bothering to dress it up so it can be easily digestible by a broad layman readership, then this person is a technician - not a storyteller.
But why is Asimov so popular?
That’s probably what I can’t understand re: your position. If he does “talk down” to his audience (and if such talking down is offensive/irritating), then why do so many people (myself included) read him and like him? Why did the last two installments of Foundation become bestsellers? Why is he part of the “holy trinity?”
Heck, he’s the best popularizer of science (in the US) apart from Carl Sagan. He IS digestible to a broad lay readership. He’s not Vernor Vinge.
“To paraphrase a friend: the way Asimov presented his groundbreaking ideas through his protagonists felt like nothing less than intellectual bullying. You as the reader are pressured not only to keep up with him as a writer, but also to worship him for being smarter than you… and that just did not sit well with me.”
Hmmm… that just isn’t true for me. I never felt the need to keep up with him (or felt that he intended me to try and fail). But consider also that that just might be *the exact reason why his fans like him.* I love the sparse storytelling. I love the plot twists that, in hindsight, were really predictable. I love the chapter-long expositions. After all, his style is a step up from Jules Verne, who listed down the scientific names of all the fish they encountered in “20000 leagues .”
Re: “The Star.” As an atheist, it’s kinda hard to sympathize with a priest having a crisis of faith. It didn’t have as much an impact on me as “Childhood’s End” or “Rama” did.
Re: popularity — Who can say? Does his popularity have anything to do with the current argument? Does your (and other people’s) liking him have any bearing on whether I think he’s pompous or not? I don’t dispute that he has fans. J.K. Rowling has legions of them, and look at her writing. My concern here is whether reading him can “put [the reader] off with scientific pompousness.”
Granted, you may not necessarily notice the “talking-down” tone because you’re on his intellectual level. I’m the kind of person who looks for that tone in science fiction writing, though, perhaps because I’ve encountered it so many times in real life, have watched people learn to hate science because of it, and would really rather not see it in literature.
I hope you realize that the perspective from which I’m speaking here is that of someone who would like to get more people reading about science and science fiction. I definitely wouldn’t recommend Asimov to the kind of person who thinks science is for overly intellectual types and failed general science in grade school. I can see why you don’t understand what we’re saying, because you’re looking at it from the position of an intellectual who hasn’t had a problem with Asimov (and perhaps other sci fi writers) since grade school. I prefer to look at it from another point of view because I know that so many people would enjoy sci fi if only they got over their fear of it, and… well, Foundation for example is most probably just going to reinforce that fear.
Just to clarify — I don’t think Asimov is difficult to read; he just alienates me, and (in terms of trying to reach out to people) makes what I’m trying to do harder. I’ve had enough trouble convincing people to want to read science without his characters reinforcing all the stereotypes I’m trying to erase.
I don’t dispute that the environment in which he wrote those stories was vastly different from our current situation, but then again if you can’t show me that his characters were sympathetic to a non-intellectual reader then surely you won’t begrudge me the right to be repelled by their cold intellectualism.
And yes, like House and Holmes — though, arguably, in those other portrayals there were very human weaknesses and characteristics that, to me, mitigated the cold inhumanity of the characters. Holmes had Watson. House has… all those other people.
I suppose I lean very heavily towards making things easier for readers. Giving them characters they won’t hate, who won’t make them feel inferior or insecure; or at the very least, characters they can look up to and admire (as opposed to hate for being so much better than them). This is probably because of my experiences trying to teach physics to people who aren’t very interested in it in the first place. You try to come up with ways to make it accessible to them, give them ways to relate to the subject. I’m not sure whether your experience with Asimov would apply to other people. Not everyone approaches the subject from a perspective that’s naturally aligned with that of the guy who’s smarter than everyone else.
In Asimov’s case the characters are two-dimensional but they’re only “insufferable” the way House is. Can’t blame them for thinking others are dumb because others ARE dumb.
I’ve encountered several people who thought like that — and worse, who acted like that — during my stay at the NIP. I can’t say they really helped in furthering people’s education.
While the question of what one should prioritize in writing science fiction could take several essays to answer, I stand by the statement that if one is to get people interested in science fiction then said science fiction should not feature characters irritating enough to make the reader want to stop reading. I don’t mind complicated concepts explained well, but if the writer must at the same time belabor the fact that his protagonist is so much smarter and more superior than everyone else that he might as well be a walking, talking brain– The limits of credulity can be stretched only so far.
Anyway, to address the topic, if you want to get people interested in science through science fiction, then SCIENCE should be at the forefront.
I’m sorry, I’ll have to disagree. I’ve been involved in the planning of physics courses for non-physics majors and what I’ve noticed is that presenting science as it is — without relating it to what matters to people — tends to put students to sleep. Granted you can take the position that science is all around us anyway so whatever you do you’ll be presenting science… but no, you need to be looking at things from a scientific viewpoint to see the science in how they work. The way you present science is important. And one of the best ways to do it, when faced with an audience that doesn’t particularly like science, is by talking about easy, familiar, fun things first, because the way you get people interested in science is by making the connection between those fun things and the science behind them. You never ever ever give non-science buffs formulas or tangles of taxonomic trees in the first lecture because you’ll just reinforce whatever negative perceptions they have of the subject.
Of course, once you’ve hooked them you can teach them whatever science you want (it had better be good and solid). But there has to be a hook, because beautiful as science is there are precious few people who will fall in love with it at first sight the way it’s presented in textbooks and (haha) a lot of hard sci fi.
This comment is getting unforgivably long, so just to (I guess) elaborate on what I said earlier — I’m not saying anything about Asimov’s merits as a writer, just that his writing tone (or at least his protagonists’ attitudes) is off-putting and comes across as intellectually pompous. I personally haven’t been “talked down” to while reading his fiction — as I still do physics and I have to deal with horribly technical sentences every time I review the current literature, I don’t usually have trouble parsing hard science fiction — but I am aware that he does it, and I am aware that it can have a definite negative effect on the reader: not only on his/her enjoyment of the work but on his/her view of science and science fiction in general.
As for Boyle’s law, I really don’t think you could model human behavior well with that. Human behavior is notoriously difficult to describe using equations of state.
OMFG I’m an Asimov character. (I should get that shirt.) If not in the actual scientific smarts, then at least in the attitude.
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“…if you can’t show me that his characters were sympathetic to a non-intellectual reader…”
Which is why I think the fact that he’s popular is relevant. A good enough number of people enjoy his stories enough to put him on the bestseller lists.
Anyhoo, I’m digging up my Asimovs and rereading them with a critical eye.
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Which authors do you recommend to uninterested students? Just wondering. It was the other way around for me, I liked science thus gravitated naturally to science fiction. Can anyone really get interested in science because they read a good SF story?
(sorry for the late reply. it’s been a busy week, punctuated by long periods of netlessness…)
Can anyone really get interested in science because they read a good SF story?
Research turns up the names Gregory Benford and Stephen Baxter, among others. I don’t think being inspired by science fiction is something that you openly profess, actually - perhaps your colleages in the field will consider that uncool on so many levels? :P
Also, there could be something subliminal in it; you may have been encouraged to pursue science as a career because you were a fan of the Transformers and other mecha anime, for example, and you wouldn’t even think about crediting mecha anime when you’re already a successful robotics engineer.
And it’s true that you can develop an interest in science without having been exposed to science fiction. But I believe the most important thing is: fostering an interest in science fiction would at least help a child not be frightened of or averse to academic science, regardless of whether or not this child chooses to pursue a science-related career. Mia herself says in an earlier comment that Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time made a huge impact on her as a child.
I also remember having a special interest in astrophysics during my growing-up years, but I was never able to actively study it. If I didn’t grow up reading old science fiction anthologies and magazines - which made a special effort to popularize science for their readers, even including essays that allowed the authors to elaborate on the concepts they used in their stories - I doubt I would even have been interested. The lack of application of notions like space and time travel in my everyday life would have made it doubly hard for me to appreciate them.
That’s probably what I can’t understand re: your position. If he does “talk down” to his audience (and if such talking down is offensive/irritating), then why do so many people (myself included) read him and like him?
I really don’t think this sort of thing is quantifiable. I can quote the passages I found offensive, or even a series of such passages, but I don’t think that would make it any easier for me to show you WHY they were offensive. As Mia had said, you and other Asimov fans may not be able to see it because you are on his intellectual level.
I do think that Asimov is the kind of writer you just stop reading, if you dislike his writing style. So perhaps some people just didn’t read his work long enough to know why he didn’t “click” with them. Therefore, few readers can actually testify to having encountered that sense of arrogance from his text. That doesn’t discredit the fact that some of the people who read his work felt that disquieting lack of connection with the prose.
I guess an important factor, too, is the age when you read them. Asimov and the golden age people were part of my formative years, L’Engle wasn’t. I read “A Wrinkle in Time” as an adult so it did nothing for me, I was already used to heavier science in my fiction.