Is Science Fiction the Opiate of the Geek Masses?

jimharris writes "After reading Geoff Ryman's Mundane SF website, where he promotes a new form of science fiction based on real science, I got to wondering if traditional science fiction is just the opiate of the geek masses? Most science fiction is based on speculative fantasy rather than hard science - the common example being stories built around faster-than-light travel. Einstein rules, and FTL space travel has about zero chance of ever existing. SF writer Ian McDonald replied in his blog, Heads down, there's going to be incoming... and a rather wide-ranging discussion and elaboration of the idea is held over at mundane-sf.blogspot.com. Proponents of the Mundane Manifesto readily admit that traditional science fiction is just harmless fun, but I have to ask, how many people out there have a positive view on life because they believe in Star Trek in the same way that other faithful do."

Re:Hard-SCI Fi is NOT fantasy based

[veltyen]

You might want to read some Brin then.
http://www.davidbrin.com/ [davidbrin.com]

New Hard Sci-Fi

[FroBugg]

There's still plenty of good hard sci-fi being produced these days. The first one that comes to mind is Kim Stanley Robinson's series about the colonization and terraforming of Mars (Red Mars, Blue Mars, and Green Mars).

I'm willing to admit that I go in for lots of the more fantastical stuff myself, but I'm sure others here can make good reccomendations.

FTL is the same as time travel

[foreverdisillusioned]

As my understanding of relativity goes, there is no real need to go faster than light. We often hera the phrase "light from that star takes blah blah blah years to reach us," but what is so rarely mentioned is we're measuring time from our point of view. From the photon's point of view, no time has elapsed at all. TRUE LIGHTSPEED TRAVEL IS INSTANTANEOUS FROM THE SUBJECT'S POINT OF VIEW. Read that over and over until it sinks in.

Yes, it is impossible to reach the speed of light, but that's not really a problem. Using slower than light technology, it is perfectly (theoretically) possible to cross the Milky Way in five seconds. Five seconds to YOU that is--the rest of the universe would strongly disagree (probably on the order of many millions of years.)

The problem has never been traveling faster than light, because such a thing is clearly absurd (what's faster than instantaneous travel?)--the problem is cancelling out time dialation which is really just good old fashioned time travel. For those of us that are joining late, remember that as you move faster through space the universe around you seems to speed up AND space itself seems to contract--from your frame of reference distances are shorter, and you thus do not need to travel as far.

Anyway, last time I checked most physicists were not comfortable completely ruling out all possibilty of time travel (if not on the macroscopic scale, then at least on the microscopic scale.) If time travel may still be possible, then so is faster than light travel. The two are, in fact, one and the same.

Appologies for errors, but I'm coming down off of a pretty nasty buzz right now. (Heh... it's a pretty sad state of things when a high school dropout with a hangover has to explain 100 year old scientific concepts.)

An interesting paper on theoretical FTL travel

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Oh, I'll just give the Google link to the ton of search results: here [google.com]

Regardless, I was (once) a physics major and I couldn't easily find a flaw with it. Implementing it would require some funky spacetime/gravity manipulation, however. If you have not read it yet (it's been out a while), it will certainly fire up your imagination!

I find it interesting that all this sci-fi stuff seems intimately linked to gravity, which is not well-understood (yet).

Re:Hard-SCIENCE is SOMETIMES fantasy based

[roystgnr]

I seem to remember that one Arthur C. Clark has been officialy recognized as the "inventor" of the satelite concept...

Not quite. AFAIK Clarke was the first person to publish the idea of geosynchronous communications satellites, but the idea of artificial satellites in general is much older.

It's not surprising that this came out of a

[multiplexo]

Clarion workshop, from everything I've read they combine the masturbatory inclusiveness of a bad SF con with the masturbatory inclusiveness of an academic conference. I fail to see how any of the ideas they lay out for SF in the Mundane Manifesto are in any way new or interesting. Poul Anderson wrote Tau Zero and The Stars are Only Fire, which didn't use any magical FTL physics. Larry Niven wrote A World Out of Time which didn't use any magical FTL physics. A lot of P.K. Dick's stuff is, quite frankly, crap (Clans of the Alphane Moon anyone?) and Neuromancer is as dated as disco and cyberpunk fanboyz are every bit as annoying and disconnected from reality as Star Wars fanboys or Star Trek fanboys.

Those who have actually been reading SF, and not wanking at SF writing workshops, realize that there is more to SF than human looking aliens in latex prosthetics on badly written TV shows. It seems to me that the authors of the Mundane Manifesto have stopped their navel gazing long enough to set up a straw man and weakly thrash at it in the appearance of doing something cool.

There are plenty of authors out there writing SF that is thoroughly grounded in our understanding of physics and does not rely on any magic such as FTL, time travel, parallel universes, etc, etc, etc, and there have been for years. Of course these authors probably aren't hanging around Clarion East wanking away writing articles with titles such as Was Marx a Mundane.

Re:PURE FUD. FTL not quite impossible

[Morlark]

Yes, I was quite disappointed when I read that. I truly am surprised how little people understand about science in general, and relativity in particular. Then again, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised any more. What is it with people attributing blatantly false information to famous people. Is it human nature or something, to make themselves look knowledgeable? Doesn't really work, does it. Einstein was very open to the possibility that FTL speeds could be attained. As the parent said, it would be tricky since it requires using non-Einsteinian space, but it is still possible. Einstein said so, so there.

Re:Ya think?

[Martin Blank]

None of those countries 'recognized' it as a religion. They simply put it on the list of responses because the number of respondents was high enough. It was a fun joke while it lasted. We'll see what happens in ten years' time.

Re:He is just a pessimist

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone talks about the difference between science fiction and fantasy, I'm reminded of Anne Mccaffery's pern series. If you read most of the middle books in the series, its pretty much straight fantasy. Dragons flying around with people riding them, evil falling from the sky, and general adventuring. Staple fantasy. Then go back to the first book and read how this planet was colonized by a ship from earth and the dragons were geneticly engineered from one of the native species. Sounds like science fiction.

So... is the series fantasy, or science fiction? I think most would claim the middle books were fantasy if they never read the first book (or the last books when they rediscover some items), but once you know the start, would you change your classification on the middle books? How does the knowledge of one book affect how annother is catagorized? Thats why people tend to lump fantasy and science fiction together.

Re:Mundane SF = Modern Novel?

[bcrowell]

Quantum tunnelling is FTL, but nobody knows why/how yet.
No, quantum mechanical tunneling is not faster than light in any meaningful sense. In the time-dependent Schrodinger equation, no signal can be made to travel from one side of a barrier to the other and carry information across at a speed faster than light. The speed of the signal (or particle) while it's actually inside the barrier is not even a particularly well defined concept. In quantum mechanics, particles don't even have well defined trajectories. And a particle inside the barrier has a negative kinetic energy, which, if you want to be silly and try to interpret it non-quantum-mechanically, means that its velocity on the way through is an imaginary number.

Re:FTL is the same as time travel

[coaxial]

For those of us that are joining late, remember that as you move faster through space the universe around you seems to speed up AND space itself seems to contract--from your frame of reference distances are shorter, and you thus do not need to travel as far.

Space doesn't contract for the traveler. The traveler seems to contract when viewed by an outside observer, since the speed of light is constant in all reference frames. It's called Lorentz Contraction [wolfram.com].

Re:FTL is the same as time travel

[jschrod]

Some of the best plots take the light speed limit (and the associated time travel question) seriously.

Try Allistor Reynolds, for example. One of the best new hard SF authors, IMO.

Re:FTL is the same as time travel

[Anonymous Coward]

Alistair is a friend of mine so I wanted to correct the spelling mistake in his name. He's given up astronomy for full-time writing, by the way.

Regards,
John O'Leary.

Re:Who are these 'faithful'???

[GreyWolf3000]

All in all, I liked your post.

I suppose Christianity today in America really is so deeply rooted in traditionalism that myopia has set in. I think the nonsense about questioning carbon dating is a good example (if you need me to explain, I will).

Most Christians I've met could have stood to gain more than a bit of wisdom, but I think that goes for non-Christians as well.

Um, no--I have never defended Christianity in my life, nor am I likely to ever do so (except in the most broad of terms), but I have gotten negative mods nearly every time I've mentioned religion in any way.

My experience is exactly opposite; I think I'll be content with religion being a sufficiently polar topic that anyone talking about it will get burned. At any rate, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Christian is a minority in the geek community.