Modern Sci-Fi - the enslavement of scientific reality to religious delusion

The original article didn't or hasn't yet propagated to s.s.policy where
I'm seeing this...

In sci.space.policy, on 11 Sep 2006 15:32:46 -0700, sez:

` Uncle Clover wrote:

` It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
` "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even
` that which is not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often
` contains overabundant use of the supernatural, for what reason I
` really can't say.

I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.

As a minor digression, that year also happened to be the year I spent
a lot of time at the SF club at UBC, picking through their paperback
library as I had time. I would often take my lunch breaks there. This
resulted in me spending three months hanging out with Philip K. Dick,
who had been brought in by the club for the Vancouver SF convention,
and who stayed behind afterward and also frequently visited the club.
I knew little of PKD at the time, the only novel of his I had read was
Ubik, which I read specifically in anticipation of his visit, so I could
say I was at least somewhat familiar with his work. In truth, I don't
remember a lot about our conversations, just that he was a gruff old
guy with a greying beard who looked like he had had a pretty rough life.
Other than that he was affable, not particularly arrogant nor cranky,
and quite happy to talk generally about life the universe and everything
as we sat around and I chewed through a couple of sandwiches, in a room
the size of a medium one-occupant prof's office, usually with about three
other people occupying the chairs ranged around the bookshelves along one
wall.

` It seems that one can't even escape the trappings of religious
` delusion in a genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific
` speculation. There is nothing even remotely scientific about psychic
` abilities or empathic connections between dragons and riders. It's
` all just watered down witch-doctoring pitifully disguised in the
` languistic garb of rationality.

I don't think any of that is particularly "religious", unless you
also think fairy tales about elves and goblins are also a religious
theme. I don't. Fantasy is fantasy, and people don't generally confuse
it with a valid world model, though they relentlessly pollute SF
with it.

`
` Just about any science fiction story you pick up from your average
` bookseller will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying
` supernatural reality - religious hogwash, in other words. It's
` really quite annoying when one is interested in -realistic- scientific
` speculation.
`
` No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even
` the remotest level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis -
` NONE of it.

Personally, I think a little bit of dabbling in various themes
of telepathy can make for some fairly good SF, within reason.
A. E. Van Vogt, Alfred Bester, etc come to mind...

` Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
` intelligence or extraterrestrial life.

` If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
` about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.

Well, that's a bit extreme. There are a _lot_ of things which can
be done with existing technology, they would just require an
extraordinary expenditure of time and energy; improbable for our
current society, but not impossible. And nothing in this limitation
prevents the appearance of hypothetical ETs in a story who use
known physics for their technology but with a different set of
social limitations which allow the sort of heroic scale project
efforts required for physically legal star travel.


` So why
` does such crap keep showing up in "science" fiction?

` Because people like to read it?

No, although that is true to an extent, people are generally not
particularly paragons of taste, they'll mostly buy into anything
that's offered - witness american commercial television; the real
reason is that writing proper "hard" SF requires a good physics
and technology education in addition to creative impulse and good
writing skills. The authors of crappy "science" fantasy are simply
lazy and scientifically uneducated, they want to tell a story,
make some money, and can't be bothered to do the necessary work
to do it properly. The generation of hard SF writers who worked
in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic. Of course you could
argue that to some extent the advances of science had closed off
some plot options since then, but I don't think that is a point
of major significance.



--
================================================== ========================
Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.

pete wrote:

I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.

Increasing? Have you read much golden age science fiction?

The generation of hard SF writers who worked
in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic.

Eh? What the heck are you talking about?

Robert Carnegie wrote:

Well, you were wrong about "everyone knows" in 1987. I think that they
did check details like this, didn't they?

I very much doubt it. I suppose someone may have asked if it had been
proven yet. However, they don't fact-check the science, so why the math?

In article ,
(pete) wrote:

I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.

You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel). You might also
enjoy The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. This is a very complex
series, with no punches pulled on reasonable extrapolations of
technology -- but no fantasy physics, either. It's one of the most
believable views of the future (on the scale of a millenium or so from
now) I've seen anywhere.

Best,
- Joe

Gene Ward Smith wrote:
pete wrote:


I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.


Increasing? Have you read much golden age science fiction?

Probably he has... and has the lovely "WHEN I WAS YOUNG" meme going.



The generation of hard SF writers who worked
in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic.


Eh? What the heck are you talking about?


Probably the change in *flavor* for SF. It really doesn't have much
to do with whether the science content is greater, but on whether it
FELT like science fiction.

Science fiction fell to pieces in the 1980s when the fantasists took
over from the hard scifi writers and started catering to the duller
classes out there. It's typified by Star Wars where instead of using
your BRAIN and technology to fight, escape, etc, you use "The Force."
It reminds me of a line from a movie that went, "Art doesn't belong to
the people, it belongs to the people who can truly appreciate it."

: Joe Strout
: I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
: in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
: coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel).

Two words. "pi meter".


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

RichA wrote:
Science fiction fell to pieces in the 1980s when the fantasists took
over from the hard scifi writers and started catering to the duller
classes out there.

Yeah, yeah. And they stopped making good movies in the 50s, consarn
it, and you can't get good ice cream any more.

The fact is that there's just A LOT MORE STUFF published these days
than there used to be, and finding the small amount -- which was
always very small -- of the stuff which is hard SF is harder to do
because you can no longer be reasonably sure of actually SEEING
everything that's published. In the 1940s and 50s, one person probably
COULD read most, or all, of the SF published each year. They could
certainly skim for the stuff they really liked and be reliably sure of
finding all or most of it. You can't do that now.

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:48:38 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article ,
(pete) wrote:

I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.

You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel). You might also
enjoy The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. This is a very complex
series, with no punches pulled on reasonable extrapolations of
technology -- but no fantasy physics, either. It's one of the most
believable views of the future (on the scale of a millenium or so from
now) I've seen anywhere.

Not to mention Scalzi and Stross.

Joe Strout wrote:

You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel).

The big stinker there is the device they have which measures the values
of physical constants that could be changed by the anomaly ... including
pi, which isn't a physical constant at all. (In fact, trying to suggest
that it does make sense as a circumference-to-diameter ratio measurement
indicates a deep misunderstanding of how space curvature works, because
that value would be a function of the size of the circle!)

--
Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
But in matters fundamental / We are patterned on an old design
-- Oleta Adams