This week I thought I’d take a stab at looking at how real is science fiction. TV and the big screen abound with shows and films, and you only have to visit a book store or go online to see how popular the genre is. And it seems on the face of it that it would be easy to write; but is it? The answer is yes and no. The further away from our current technology base you get, the easier it becomes to write about to a certain extent. You can make things up and ascribe it to ‘advanced technology’. In the words of Arthur C Clarke – “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And he hit the nail on the head. You only have to imagine what a laptop PC would look like to people from the 15th century. But the closer you get to our own tech base, it becomes harder, because people are able to use current knowledge and extrapolate forward to pick holes in a writers inventions.

Let’s take a look at a couple of classic science fiction items that now look dated in some respects. The first is from that great science fiction pioneer, Isaac Asimov. One of his creations was the great computer, Multivac. It ran a city and took up all the space in a large building, sometimes several large buildings depending on the story. It was a revolutionary concept at the time. Today, our computers for doing the same type of work fit into a couple of rooms and are getting smaller all of the time. The second item is from a more widely known and much beloved TV show; Star Trek. The communicators the crew of the Enterprise used were, again, revolutionary for their time. A small, hand-held device that can reach across a planet or into space. Hmmm ~looks at the mobile phone on the desk in front of me~. So it’s not easy to create things that wear well. It is impressive that the writers were able to visualize these things well before they came into being. Any writer that manages that deserves lots of kudos.

The second problem is to make sure that you know enough science not to put in anything patently stupid or ridiculous. My examples here are going to come from a couple of childhood favorites of mine. The first is Space 1999, a Gerry Anderson tv show from the mid ’70s. I loved the show back then and i still like watching it now. Back as a kid I watched it and never considered the physics behind it. Now I look at it and am forced to chuckle. For those who don’t know about it I’ll give a brief summary. In 1999 we have a base on the moon and use the moon as a nuclear waste dump. The dumps explode and blast the moon out of orbit and send it hurtling through the galaxy. The survivors on the moonbase encounter new planets and star systems every week in their efforts to find a new home. All very exciting but impossible as far as physics go. The nearest star to us is Alpha Centauri, a distance of about 4 light years away. That means that even if the moon was propelled at the speed of light, it would still take 4 years to reach the nearest star, and that’s not even considering the implications of the general theory of relativity in regards to what happens to an object as it approaches the speed of light. But putting that to one side, even supposing the moon was travelling fast enough to cross the interstellar void in a reasonable time span, when it reached a new star system it would zip through it in a matter of hours. Invariably the episodes gave the cast days to explore the passing worlds as the moon drifted through the alien systems. So as fun as I find the show, it fails on the subject of physics abysmally. Another interesting possible blooper comes from another great classic; Star Wars. Where, in the first film, Han Solo describes the Millennium Falcon as being fast because ‘it did the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs’. ~wince~ A parsec is a measure of distance and not speed. It would be like saying that my car is fast because it did the run from Tucson to Phoenix in less than 90 miles. Since then, there have been numerous explanations for this blooper, such as the standard route from Kessel went around a black hole cluster and was normally a distance of 18 parsecs. So the 12 parsec distance represented going much closer to this hazard and thus being faster. Hmmm…  smells fishy to me. However, despite some dubious physics or technical references, both of these pieces of work are still great entertainment.

In my writings I’ve tried to use my patchy knowledge of physics to try and create technologies that are at least somewhat feasible. Gravitational physics to bypass the speed of light restrictions, inertial dampers to allow massive acceleration/deceleration in my spaceships, replication technology, medical advances prolonging life spans and aiding healing, just to mention a few. But even being cautious I still find myself worried that my creations have violated some established law and it makes me uneasy. In the end I console myself that even if i have screwed up that my stories might be entertaining enough that my readers will forgive me. Just have pity on a humble Sci Fi writer trying to create new worlds for you to enjoy. It ain’t easy.