Science In My Fiction

The crime rate may be down, but there are still plenty of villains to catch. Fortunately, science is on the case. That’s true in real life, where physicists devise more accurate ways to interpret blood spatter, and mathematicians analyze the patterns in gang violence to help solve old crimes and suppress future criminal activity. And it’s true on television, where forensic science has developed a vast and squeeing fandom.

Predictably, that fandom overlaps speculative fiction fandom quite a bit, but sadly, television science appears to have eclipsed science in sci-fi altogether. While it’s wonderful that scientists and Hollywood are forging new alliances for the sake of conjuring realism and as a canny method of reminding the masses that science is relevant to their interests, it’s disheartening to watch literature surrender that influence one sparkly vampire at a time.

No, it’s worse than disheartening. It’s uninteresting. And it’s unhealthy for speculative fiction to eschew – even disdain – science. Reading science-less sci-fi is like eating a junk food diet. How can the genre with science in its name be taken seriously if it’s about as intellectually nutritive as a Twinkie? Was it inevitable that television would eventually surpass literature as inspiration as well as entertainment?

Wonder of wonders, TV viewers like a little science in their fiction! Given the overlap between television audiences and people who read books, it’s probably safe to assume that readers also like a little science in their fiction. We should get back on that bandwagon.

WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!

You know, eventually. That’s the natural order of things. Most of us will survive 2012, though, in spite of everything the latest doomsday prophets claim. There are seven billion humans on Earth, after all. Writers, have you ever tried to kill off that many people in one story? It’s quite a lot of work, even in fiction, and much harder in real life. It’s not impossible, but according to the latest doomsday scientists, there’s no quantifiable indication that our end times are impending.

Let’s break it down for a little perspective:

• The end of the world? Earth itself won’t be destroyed until the sun expands in a few billion years. One way or another, we’ll all be long gone by then.
• The end of life on Earth? Including microscopic life, that’s also not due to occur for billions of years. Not worth losing sleep over.
• The end of life as we know it? Well, that happens every human generation, or so. Welcome change, really.
• The end of humanity? Psh! The extinction of a single species is hardly the end of the world. Remember the dodos, the Great Auk, and the dinosaurs?

Of all the different avenues along which people enjoy speculating about the apocalypse, most are at least tangentially political in nature. The nuclear holocaust is so overdone that it’s been rendered cliché. Pandemics are also in jeopardy of losing their social impact through overuse in media and other fiction. We’ll probably say the same about anthropogenic climate change in a few decades, even as we adapt to its environmental and economic ravages.

None of those political plot devices is likely to annihilate our species in 2012, but any of them is far more likely bring about our ignominious end than the equally tired religious mechanisms for the demise of human civilization. The second coming and the rapture? Ragnarok? The end of the Maya long count?

Actually, that last is the most absurd. You know what happens when we reach the end of the Maya long count? The same thing that happens when we reach the end of every other calendar invented since humans started measuring time in large units: We throw a big party, and we get a new calendar. Woo-hoo!

There are still a few arguably non-political tropes abused in doomsday prophesies. Polar shift, for example, which would certainly cause mass-extinctions if it was possible. However, in order to experience a polar shift in 2012, Earth would have to be on a collision course with an object so large that we’d be able to observe it with the naked eye by now. Our planet hasn’t had an experience like that since it acquired the moon a few billion years ago. Anyway, the term ‘polar shift’ is actually a red herring for a far more common event properly known as geomagnetic reversal. And that’s about as menacing as a slow-motion Y2K.

What about supervolcanoes? There’ve been an awful lot of earthquakes and eruptions lately, right? Eh, no. Earth is actually pretty quiet right now, on the scale of geologic time. Specifically, there is no indication that a supervolcano will erupt in our lifetimes, never mind in 2012. Specifically, there’s nothing about the Yellowstone caldera – the current favorite of geologic apocalypse-mongers – that suggests it’s going to do anything out of the ordinary any time soon. Even if it did, a supervolcanic eruption probably would not bring about human extinction, and it certainly couldn’t end the world.

Last and least, whenever anyone hears the term ‘Planet X,’ they should dissolve into peals of laughter on the spot. Really. In its proper context, Planet X is something out of a Daffy Duck cartoon, and that’s always worth a chuckle. Outside of its proper context, Planet X doesn’t exist. Anyone otherwise convinced is a fool easily parted from their money.

None of the catastrophes mentioned above are going to occur in 2012, but you can safely bet they and other variations on the apocalyptic theme will happen repeatedly in literature. Alas, not even that will end in 2012. The good news is that when it comes to making the most of flimsy premises and tired dread, fiction bests reality much of the time. After all, dystopia is practically its own genre, nowadays.

If interstellar travel is in our future, then it’s only a matter of time before we have to think seriously about what it will be like to grow up off-Earth. It’s not clear whether we can reproduce without gravity, but even after we’ve developed a reliable work-around for that bio-logistics problem, we’re still left with no frame of reference for childhood and parenting anywhere but here.

Particularly for the sake of writing thoughtful science fiction set on long-generation ships, it’s worth considering how young bodies and minds will develop in low- and variable-gravity. The health of future generations of starfarers is key to the survival of the species, after all. However, there’s a lot more to growing up than just surviving. After we’ve figured out how to feed and wash and educate our far future progeny, there remains one very important question: How will they play?

Kids need to play, that’s all there is to it. No amount of time or distance from Earth is going to change that. So if and when we get around to raising families in space and colonizing other worlds, we’re going to need to ensure that our interstellar whipper-snappers get enough playtime.

Not all the toys developed and used here will function properly in space unless they’re played with under gravity that is uniform and comparable to Earth’s. Toys and games with a lot of little pieces (unlike the solid Lego minifigures mounted on Juno) are going to experience inevitable losses over time, which makes them less attractive. However, future kids can’t spend all their free time playing video games any more than they can on Earth. If nothing else, that sort of play would consume a lot of electricity for a leisure activity.

My favorite suggestion for coping with the space constraints on a starship along with the problem of energy-consuming recreation? Piezoelectric moon bounces. I came up with the idea earlier this year while writing a short story that included a few child characters. It was never central to the plot, so I left it out of the final draft, but I spent a lot of time daydreaming about a large space station module lined with springy energy-generating materials for the kids to jump around inside. I imagined that they would take advantage of the weird physics in space during wild three-dimensional games of tag played in zero-G. Then I tried to imagine what weightless sports they would invent, and I found myself tempted to write a series of young adult science fiction stories devoted to that topic.

Maybe I’ll get around to that someday. In the mean time, what do you think it will be like for kids who grow up in space?

If you dislike insects, then long term space travel is probably not for you. Contrary to the space operas you may have read or watched, wise humans will always surround themselves with creepy critters who love to do our dirty work. For that matter, can we even survive happily or well without our companion animals? Can we remain humans as we know ourselves in the absence of other Earthling species? I suspect not.

Since the start of 2011′s Science in My Fiction Contest, I’ve been tweeting and blogging links to science news items that may prove useful to potential contestants. First, I touched on some interesting technological ideas for use in science-inspired fiction. Then I reminded writers that ecology-based worldbuilding doesn’t end when humans leave Earth behind. This week, I recommend maggots, parrots and molecular ‘traffic lights’ as likely candidates for your far future fiction:

In space stories, there are a couple everyday events that are usually ignored or glossed over as much as possible. Death and poop. These are naturally messy processes and products, and we will need systems in place to turn our losses into something beneficial. We could do as we do now and send low-status humans to clean up and process the ‘waste,’ or we could invent robots to do the work, but I think we can do better than that. Why not save ourselves a lot of inconvenience and bring nature’s cleaning crew with us on our long space journeys? Yes, I’m suggesting we recycle the dead and the digested with the help of fly larvae. Think of it as our descendants’ way of ‘returning to the earth’ without having to make a U-turn in space.

Even after we’re well-settled in space, we may never discover alien life that we can recognize or communicate with. That doesn’t mean humans will ever be alone in the universe. We may dominate the Earth, but we’re hardly the only clever beasts around. We’re not even the only tool-users! In the future, spacefarers may need to choose their shipboard plant and animal communities with even greater care than their human crew, and with that in mind, I would like to recommend brainy birds. It might be tricky to engineer space environments favorable to delicate species, but it might be worth it for the sake of biodiversity. And you never know when a speech-mimicking, tool-using, air-travelling seed disperser might come in handy on a starship.

In the far future, there will literally be sickness like we’ve never known. Along with many of the things we’re familiar with on Earth. There really should be no doubt that various methods of genetic engineering will come in to play – if not before liftoff, then certainly while we’re between-worlds – but not every genetic problem humans (or the species we bring to space with us) have now or develop later will require us to replace ‘bad’ genes with ‘good’ genes. Sometimes the problem isn’t the DNA itself, but the little under-appreciated messengers employed by the genes. Per DNA instructions, mRNA tell cells what proteins to make in order to function, but sometimes the little messengers stop short and deliver only part of the blueprint. The results can be deadly, so it’s a good thing for our fiction (and our futures) that we’re working out how to bring more subtlety to our interactions with genomes.

Now, go! Write! Win! And if you come across a scientific development you’re interested in sharing, leave a comment or ping me on Twitter @sandykidd.

Last week, I suggested a few likely inspirations for Science in My Fiction Contest entries:

• Far-future fabrics that block radiation, clean the air and water, and deflect meteors.
• Replacing personal items on spaceships with virtual possessions.
• And the inevitability of man-made mischief during long journeys through space.

Here are a few more fun scientific sparks for all you Science in My Fiction contestants:

I don’t know about everyone else, but I like to get out of the city once in a while. The same will certainly be true about at least some of our space-faring descendants, and we will need systems in place to accommodate that impulse. Specifically, ecosystems. In fact, there is nothing to indicate that humans can survive in the absence of earthly ecosystems. Sure, we may travel in tin cans to the moon, asteroids, and maybe even Mars, but it’s bad for our physical and mental health. Extrapolate that over the course of generations, and the absence of natural cycles bodes ill for our chances of surviving past the edges of our original solar system, let alone reaching new stars.

Because the boundaries between different ecosystems are blurry and interdependent, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to just select one living system to pack up and take with us. Hopefully we’ll be able to fill in the natural gaps technologically by that time, and while we’re at it, we should take care to remember that all terrestrial environments possess a soundtrack. Different species move through a given territories at different times of day and year; they have mating calls and warning cries, and those sounds have an effect on their environments. The absence of a natural soundtrack has an adverse impact on an ecosystem, including its humans, so we’d better not omit it from our packing list when the time comes to prepare for lift-off.

In spite of how often writers portray spaceships and space stations as austere, hyper-sanitary environments, they’re not. Real astronauts must take their cleaning duties very seriously, or else everyone might get sick and their instruments could fail. Part of the problem is the absence of the sort of biological checks and balances that exist on earth. It’s a bit harder for microbes and other species to run rampant on Earth because everything on the planet undergoes population control, mainly in the form of predation (with the notable exception of humans, and we’ve spread so far we’re trying to swarm new planets). Which means that as part of the ecosystems we’ll need in order to survive long space missions, we will need to bring some predators with us. Spiders are likely candidates because they have already adapted to live everywhere humans do – and many places we don’t – and depending on the species of arachnid aboard, they can prey upon pests ranging in size from gnats to sparrows.

There will be more suggestions like these as we approach the contest deadline. In the mean time, what are some of your ideas for good-but-overlooked ideas for humans making their way in the far future?

The second annual Science in My Fiction Contest is on and bedeviling writers! This year, in addition to asking writers to base their short story submissions on recent scientific developments, all contest entries must also be stories set off-Earth.

At a stretch, nearly any scientific advance made on Earth could be applied to the far-future, and authors of speculative fiction should ideally always practice that kind of literary yoga. But while some technological leaps are more obviously applicable than others, many things are taken for granted on Earth to the extent that we need to be reminded that they require re-thinking for all other settings. 

Because of the contest’s secondary requirement, I’ve been tweeting daily links to recent space travel and far future-relevant scientific developments. Not everyone follows me on Twitter, however, so I’ve decided to bring a few examples of SiMF Contest-ready science to the blog for helpful discussion and speculation. 

Wherever else in the galaxy humans are ever able to settle, we will first need to travel there. Everything we take with us may become lighter than feathers once outside Earth’s gravity, but before then, it must be launched. Every ounce of weight correlates to the amount of fuel required for lift-off. Once weightless, all cargo still has volume and mass, so we must also account for how much room is required to store it when it’s not in use, without cramming in the crew like so much ballast. These issues are tricky for short missions and incredibly problematic for long missions, but some far future dilemmas may have answers rooted in ancient arts. I give you Textiles in Space! 

Essential items like food, water, tools, and people are not the only things we send to space. On short journeys, of course we include materials for science experiments, and satellites to be put in orbit, but we also allow astronauts a few small personal items. For example, several flutes recently circled the Earth. On short missions, these little things are of arguable worth in space, but on long missions they could become hugely important – psychologically, if in no other way. But again, every item aboard ship takes up valuable ‘real estate,’ and so the size of allowable personal items must be carefully reconsidered for long-term space travel. Fortunately, we humans are capable of placing remarkably high significance on our virtual possessions. Talk about space-savers. 

Astronauts are scheduled to within an inch of their sanity. Every moment is carefully planned to ensure that the science gets done, all maintenance is performed, and everyone sleeps and exercises enough to protect their health. Even their so-called ‘free time’ is scheduled in advance. But people are people, no matter how far off-Earth we may travel. Even if we take great pains to send no trouble-makers into space, it’s only a matter of time before somebody starts some shenanigans. Why? Well, rules are all well and good, but rule-breaking is powerful stuff. Eventually, every long space mission will have to deal with man-made mischief. Perhaps if we designate time for it on ships’ calendars we can mitigate the damage… 

Those are just three examples of obvious or easily ignored science that could be useful for writers speculating on the future. I’ll bring up more like these as the contest progresses, but in the mean time, what are your off-Earth science suggestions for SiMF contestants?

 More people on Earth are overweight than underweight. Yet the trajectory of human body size in science fiction and fantasy could be graphed with a line sloping sharply in the opposite direction. Where’s the fat? 

Authors, we’re not doing anyone favors by dodging the facts of life. Fiction’s greatest purpose is to address reality in a way that frees readers to relate to it without suffering it directly. We certainly don’t make our writing any better by preempting the fat (or dark skin, or women, or children). If anything, we sabotage our stories by depriving our characters of experiences that matter to real people living in the real world. 

Of course this problem has complex origins. Western fat bias is going global, and escapism will always have wide appeal, after all. However, I suspect part of the problem stems from a generally poor understanding of what fat is, how it works, and why it’s important. 

Here’s the skinny on fat: Every cell in our body requires cholesterol to function. We need fat to live, so there’s no point demonizing it or pretending it has no place in speculative fiction. Furthermore, fat cells – collectively, adipose tissue – do so much more than store excess calories. Fat behaves like the other organs of the body; it actively participates in metabolism, yes, but it also influences our neurochemistry and immune system. 

There is more to talk about than weight loss when it comes to fat. Isn’t it curious that different types of fat deposits predict different long term health outcomes? Isn’t it more interesting that one’s sense of satiety, of ‘fullness’, depends more on the brain’s ability to receive certain chemical signals from the gut than it does on how much is eaten? Isn’t it downright fantastic that, once upon a time, being fat was socially advantageous? 

When I browse a bookstore, I see vast expanses of neglected frontier. Even the science fiction and fantasy sections are narrow and homogenous. If our art imitated life, I’d see two covers with ample main characters for every one featuring an athletic lead. It makes me want to write in the gaps. To fill the void in our fiction with fact. And fat. 

Five minutes of speculation later, and I already have more ideas than I have time to develop: 

- Aliens make first contact and assume that the widest person on Earth is our leader. 

- A zombie epidemic starts with an appetite suppressant, and only the obese outlast the horde. 

- Santa Claus trims up and loses his powers, and is nightmarishly replaced by Rumpelstiltskin. 

- It turns out that the fatter one’s body, the greater one’s magic, but because using magic burns calories at a phenomenal rate, nearly all magic is applied to agriculture.

What’s your big speculation?

Hell of a way to lose, I thought, as I plowed my way through the detritus covering the parking lot.

I headed toward my office in Newton Hall, the center for Physics and Mathematics studies at Manley University. The trash was the day-old aftermath of the school’s final football game of the year. It consisted, in the main, of plastic beer cups, discarded game programs and empty half-pint bottles.

The students had been gifted with a good reason to get smashed. Once again, their team had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, ending their season with a record whose “wins” column consisted of an unblemished goose egg. What had made it all the more depressing was the way they had lost, on a last-second “Hail Mary” pass by the opposing offense. Heck, I thought. How had that scrawny Framingham Tech quarterback managed to throw the football so far, scrambling from deep in his own end zone? It must have traveled ninety yards in the air!

I plopped my heavy briefcase down on my desk and looked over at my office-mate, Harvey Atwood. Harvey was a full Professor, an aging don with dual doctorates in Physics and Chemistry. His unkempt, gray hair spilled across his shoulders, making his deep frown seem all that much more dour.

“Morning, Harvey. You look like you bet on the wrong team. How much did you manage to drop?”

Harvey snorted. “George, you know I try to stay clear of that sort of thing. Unless it’s a sure deal. No, there’s something else bugging me about that game–about that last play, that last pass.”

“Like, perhaps, the thought that it was impossible? That it violated the laws of physics and human physiology? Old friend, my lowly field of expertise may be in linguistic meta-geometry, but even I know that. It had to be a fix, a trick football. Filled with helium or something.”

“Not a credible hypothesis,” Harvey replied. “The volume-to-weight ratio is too small. You couldn’t pack enough helium in there to make a significant difference in the ball’s performance. But we saw it with our own eyes. It seemed impossible–but it’s obviously not. I’ve been tearing my hair out all night, trying to reason it out scientifically. And then, this morning I began to think about Dudley.”

Read the rest of this entry »

If you know me, then you know that I am always on the lookout. For what? Science, of course, and art. Interesting and beautiful things. The internet is a better resource for novelty than anything else, but watchful and patient people sometimes get lucky. This was not an especially lucky week, but I did come across something that fulfilled my search criteria on technicalities. It’s pretty and it got me thinking – if my thoughts about it aren’t particularly favorable, they are at least energetic.

Don’t get me wrong, the video embedded below is essentially a modeling reel. It serves its purpose, which is to show-off some animation students’ acquired skills, and it’s quite good in that context. I have no desire to criticize their proficiency in the medium, but the obvious inspiration for the piece is a hot topic on this blog, so of course I took a closer look at it than I might have otherwise, and of course I brought it here to share.

Watch ‘Gliese 851′ then read on to see if it got you thinking along the same lines as me:

The first thing I noticed was the title. Now, there are a lot of stars named Gliese-something-something, but one has been in the news quite a bit more often than the rest; Gliese 581. Specifically because of that star’s unconfirmed ‘goldilocks’ planet. I assume the filmmaker was more interested in capitalizing on the name than on exploring any of the science associated with locating exoplanets or seriously speculating about extraterrestrial life. A couple of clues in plain sight verify my suspicion: For one thing, there is no star named Gliese 851, but that name is a common typo in articles about Gliese 581. For another, there appeared to be only two lifeforms on the wasteland planet depicted in the animation; one large human and one large tentacle-monster. Probably, the writer struck a compromise between savviness and laziness. The concept perfectly satisfies mainstream (i.e. low) expectations of science fiction, and it is about as deep as the average attention span for scientific content in the media.

But even assuming that the filmmakers invented a new star system on purpose, I have some questions about the setting. It looks like an industrial wasteland or a vast crash site. Or I suppose it could be an abandoned colony. Even still, why is the only human survivor wandering around in the open? With skin exposed? The atmosphere and daylight must be very earthlike, indeed. And if so, then what killed or repelled the other humans? Tentacle-monsters? But if so, then what did they eat/kill before humans arrived? I ask because I saw no evidence of other life on the planet, and it seems impossible that a species as complex as that alien could have evolved in the absence of biodiversity. Maybe it was the last of its kind. I mean, that’s possible given humanity’s propensity for environmental disaster.

What are your observations and speculations?

ZaZa can't wake from dreams of being splashed.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Apparently not, according to researchers at the Interdisciplinary Technology Institute in Boston. “Most of ZaZa’s dreams are about getting splashed.” Whether that’s the result of oversight or foresight, ZaZa’s vulnerability to liquids has been a boon to the scientists at ITI from the beginning of this uncanny project.

As part of their research into the relationship between dreaming and memory formation, ZaZa was created to be a learning robot. Scientists expose her to new stimuli and information every day and then assess her recollection over time. According to one researcher, ZaZa came in contact with an uncovered cup of coffee during the first week of the study, and immediately afterward, her dreams became less like randomized input logs and more recognizably dream-like. “After the incident, we instructed her to avoid all moisture in the future. We expected to see the event reflected in her dreams but we’re still surprised by the extent of its impact.”

Because organic brains are still far more complex than even the most advanced computers, scientists at ITI had to overcome major hurdles while designing the project. In order to construct a useful model of a human mind, they had to give ZaZa several ‘brains.’ In addition to the central unit in her chest, she has a computer to regulate and monitor each of her six sensor-types, another to coordinate the senses and simulate short term memory and recall, and a ninth computer dedicated to communication and dreaming. One would expect a robot brain composed of so many computers to be cumbersome and awkward, but ZaZa is surprisingly small; about the size of a kindergartner. Because ITI’s dream research requires that ZaZa be able to move around and interact with scientists, they took advantage of existing, inexpensive broadband mobile technology rather than reinventing the wheel for the project. As a result, little ZaZa is completely wireless and has a remote brain.

Wifi is only one of the technological advances that researchers at ITI have incorporated into the design of their dream-bot.  To give ZaZa the ability to learn like a human, they applied developments in self-organizing computer networks, simulated cognition and artificial intelligence, and even language acquisition and physical creativity. “The ZaZa Project is really a collaborative effort between ITI and dozens of other institutions. The individual advances made in their labs are brought together in ours.”

Considerable effort went into ZaZa’s outward design, as well. In order to inspire more ‘life-like’ dreams, they’ve equipped her with the social skills necessary to recognize human emotions and respond appropriately. For day-to-day interactions between ZaZa and researchers to be as normal as possible, they’ve even given her human mannerisms and appearance. One scientist said, “When all her systems are functioning optimally, you could almost forget she isn’t someone’s little girl.”

Of course, any system as complex as ZaZa’s is bound to malfunction at times. Because most of her brains are located outside her body, she slips into standby mode whenever the local wifi signal drops and must be woken manually. If even one of her computers crashes, scientists must shut her down completely and repeat the day’s research from the beginning. Simple physical problems, like replacing worn sensors, can be dealt with more easily because ZaZa doesn’t technically feel pain. However, every time she gets wet – a month after the coffee incident, poor ventilation in another lab at ITI triggered the fire sprinklers – ZaZa’s body suffers catastrophic failure and must be rebuilt.

When everything goes according to plan, ZaZa is still only awake for eight hours a day, five days a week. “ZaZa can’t be left unattended while she’s awake, so she has to dream while we’re all home on nights and weekends,” explained the project’s lead scientist. That’s perfect for their research because it means that during periods without major malfunctions, they still acquire enough dream logs to make up for the time they spend rebuilding and repairing her systems.

Scientists are naturally reluctant to offer much speculation about the results of this study so early in the project, but many researchers are already planning future studies involving ZaZa and conceiving new robots based upon her design. One such project has already been green-lighted by ITI, but the only details scientists would divulge about it were that the next generation of ‘dream-bot’ will be adult-sized to accommodate internal, self-contained computer brains. Also, unlike ZaZa, who spends most hours lying under a tarp unable to wake from dreams about getting splashed, their next prototype will be able to swim if necessary, and may rest, but never sleep.