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Is Science Fiction the Opiate of the Geek Masses?

Posted by Zonk on from the open-your-missives-to-the-book-of-heinlein-chapter-3 dept.

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."

4 of 747 comments (clear)

  1. No by DanthemaninVA1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If we "believe in Star Trek..."? Are you kidding me? Science fiction is ENTERTAINMENT, not religion. It's a genre of books, film, and television, not a protestant denomination or somesuch. If you "believe in Star Trek," I feel sorry for you.

  2. He is just a pessimist by tftp · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Einstein rules, and FTL space travel has about zero chance of ever existing.

    Yes, and Isaac Newton would just laugh if someone told him about weird quantum effects which we accept as obvious today.

    In fact, we know that we know almost nothing about the fundamental nature of this Universe, and it's just pointless to discuss what one can and can not do with it.

    1. Re:He is just a pessimist by Draconix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm moderately sure he does understand the problems. I do, yet I don't think FTL is impossible. The only thing I know to likely be impossible is to accellerate a mass to beyond the speed of light in normal spacetime. Any decent SF writer knows this, and will often note this in their work; any 'FTL' travel requires either the translation of mass to something without mass, or leaving normal spacetime in order to get from point A to point B faster than light. I've yet to have even read an SF novel in which a ship travels faster than light by accellerating a normal mass beyond the speed of light while keeping that mass within normal spacetime, and I've read hundreds of science fiction novels.

      As for science fiction being fantasy... well, duh. There really isn't much difference between the two, except that science fiction is _usually_ speculative, and has more of a basis in our own reality, while other fantasy is free to explore the more farfetched. A careful writer can actually make it very difficult to tell the difference between SF and fantasy. (Frank Herbert, China Mieville, and others.)

      As was kind of stated before in this topic, you can only make science fiction so 'realistic' before it's no longer science fiction, but simply realistic fiction.

      --
      By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
  3. FTL is the same as time travel by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)