Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi for High-Schoolers?

Raul654 asks: "A member of my immediate family is a biology teacher at an all-girls high school. For some years, she's been giving her students the option to earn extra credit by reading a science-related book. What scientifically accurate science fiction books would you recommend for high school readers?"

Comments

You already have them ...

[MrCoke]

Get your schoolbooks and party like it's 1899 !!!

Or, you can read "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Pournelle.

Re:You already have them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reading "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle right now, and it seems pretty scientifically-accurate so far...

Re:You already have them ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because douible-trunked space elephants totallu exist like for real.

Re:You already have them ...

[Robot Randy]

I'd have modded you up if you hadn't posted as an AC. Footfall is truly a great book with believable action and science. The idea that the invaders came to earth on slower than light ships and used orbital bombardment instead of twinkly light beams and our response with a pulsed gamma laser and an Orion drive based ship keeps everything in the realm of the possible.

Of course the thing was written to be a mini-series I think, so you have to ignore that every character seems to know everyone else and that when a woman and her kid are stranded at the side of the road hundreds of miles from home they are rescued by a close friend on a motorcycle that just happens to be driving by...

Re:You already have them ...

[lone bear]

I'd also recommend Fallen Angels.

Re:You already have them ...

[techno-vampire]

Of course the thing was written to be a mini-series I think...

Not that I know of, and I know both of the authors personally. When they first came up with the idea and told their publisher about how aliens would throw an asteroid at the Earth, his reply was, "Forget the aliens, write about the asteroid." They changed the asteroid to a comet and wrote Lucifer's Hammer, then came back to the alien invasion story. This got them two best sellers for the price of one idea.

Re:You already have them ...

[Robot Randy]

Well I haven't spoken with Larry in at least 20 years, and at least that for Jerry. I hope they are both doing well. (I last saw Larry at a "Crawford Con" in the LA area if that means anything to you.)

I'll have to check my copy of the book at home and other sources. I'm pretty sure I heard it was either written for a mini series, or possibly a movie. If you could check with one of the guys as well that'd help clear that up.

Re:You already have them ...

[techno-vampire]

The story as I gave it I heard directly from Jerry one night at LASFS. And yes, thank you, they're both doing fine.

That's easy...

[GFree]

Make them Star Wars comics. Extra credit in an exam for explaining the internal mechanics of a lightsaber.

A full scholarship for anyone who builds a working lightsaber.

Science.... fiction

[IceCreamGuy]

Doesn't the fact that it's science fiction mean that it's not going to be scientifically accurate? Maybe you should look in another category like biological thriller; The Hot Zone is widely regarded to be very accurate.

Re:Science.... fiction

[bluephone]

No, Hard-SF takes very few liberties with respect to science, then examines the ramifications of it. It's as close to real science as possible while still allowing a couple semi-scientific ideas for the fiction element. But even then the SF elements aren't magical constructs, like neutronium armor or antimatter fountains or a human-AI sprouting up on a 486. IT can be very realistic and scientifically grounded.

Re:Science.... fiction

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Maybe you should look in another category like biological thriller; The Hot Zone is widely regarded to be very accurate.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

While the hot zone is reasonably accurate (its wikipedia page says it's regarded as dramatised non fiction), the particular category "bio thriller" is not.

I offer you Jurassic Park as a counter example of the bio thriller genre (and frankly, bio thriller is a subgenre of scifi).

Re:Science.... fiction

[Cicero382]

Oh, I don't know. For me the best ones are those that assume some fictional aspect of science, but don't mess with the rest.

A good example is "Neutron Star" by Larry Niven. It assumes hyperdrive technology and a (supposedly, that's the point of the story) invulnerable spaceship hull. After that the physics is spot on - and quite educational.

I would also suggest "The Mote in God's Eye" as a good example. I would go as far as to say that this is the best of the genre - ever.

BTW. Some have referred to the sequel as being "Gripping Hand"; when I bought it in hardback in England it was titled "The Moat Around Murchenson's Eye". Just so you know...

Re:Science.... fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the fact that it's science fiction mean that it's not going to be scientifically accurate?

No. Is historical fiction historically inaccurate?

Re:Science.... fiction

[GundamFan]

O.K. two things...

First you are a troll.

Second... Please read some hard science fiction before you pan it, like any fiction genre "sci-fi" has many different sub categories (more than most actually) and most if not all of them serve a purpose.

Re:Science.... fiction

[quixote9]

Hot Zone? Scientifically accurate? In what universe? I'm not saying it's a bad story, but, speaking as a boring biologist here, the whole premise is just plain silly.

Think of diseases as very small parasites. Parasites need hosts. No host, no parasite. Any disease which is as violently and quickly lethal as depicted in The Hot Zone couldn't actually spread. It would kill off its hosts so effectively, it would kill off itself. This is why the really vicious diseases are new introductions (like Marburg virus, AIDS). Eventually diseases co-evolve with their hosts so that the host can carry on somehow, and go on spreading the disease (like colds).

Tangentially, this is also one of the biggest problems with biological warfare. If a biowarfare agent is effective enough to kill enemies fast enough to do any good, it kills too fast to spread. If it works better biologically, then the enemy lives long enough to become nothing-left-to-lose soldiers, and there's no way to control the ultimate spread.

Re:Science.... fiction

[geoffspear]

I'm sure all of the people who have died of Ebola will be happy to hear that some idiot on Slashdot thinks the disease that killed them is absolutely impossible.

Re:Science.... fiction

[germansausage]

It is not the disease thats impossible, it is the rapid and global spread. Otherwise we would all be dead from ebola by now. Read quixote9's post again. Ebola may be a horrible way to die, but as killer diseases go it is not very successful. Being hit by golf balls probably kills more people each year than Ebola.

A successful disease doesn't kill in 2 days, it lurks. It waits as long as it can infecting many, many hosts before the symptoms appear. AIDS is a good example of this "tactic". Consider that AIDS was virtually unknown 25 years ago, but has now killed 25 million people and infected at least another 40 million.

Re:Science.... fiction

[Captain Splendid]

LOL, you just made GP's point for him: Ebola kills quickly, and therefore doesn't get much of a chance to spread. You may have noticed that only handfuls of people have died of it, as opposed to thousands or millions.

Re:Science.... fiction

[ravenshrike]

Your comment is true, except for airborne pathogens. And if I remember correctly the hot zone was about an airborn variant of ebola based off of the Reston case. Given modern transportation an airborne variant would have more than enough time to spread if it ever got to a relatively major populated area.

Re:Science.... fiction

[geoffspear]

Well, GP and you must have read a different edition of The Hot Zone than I did, if in the one you guys read Ebola spread throughout the world and killed millions of people.

Next you'll be complaining that On The Origin Of Species is bad scifi because it says that my grandfather was a lemur.

Re:Science.... fiction

[geoffspear]

You do not remember correctly.

Re:Science.... fiction

[smellsofbikes]

The science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem said (throughout his life) that if humans suddenly woke up with no literature or memory of what had passed before, the first thing we would start writing would be speculations on what the future holds, which is, in essence, science fiction. Good science fiction should be about what tomorrow will be like, if what's going on today keeps going on in some direction. Some of the most interesting feminist fiction -- Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" or Marge Piercy's "He, She, It" or Sheri Tepper's "Grass" -- is science fiction. They call it 'speculative fiction' to avoid being accused of genre writing.

What the article is requesting is a different type of science fiction, in my opinion: fiction that is about science itself. I loved reading George Smith's "Venus Equilateral" (as an example) because it was a technical exploration of a future in which we were living the same way humans currently live: competing, cooperating or fighting, inventing, only in space stations, using an entirely tube-based technology. It was a vision of the future that would make an engineer smile, as people put together increasingly technical workarounds to fix problems they needed to overcome (which always produced new and unforseen problems, that the next set of stories would deal with) all based on vacuum-tube technology. To Smith, and to other writers at the time, particularly Heinlein and Asimov, the future looked like it was all based on increasingly sophisticated vacuum tubes. (Tube-based learning systems show up in Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer", as I recall.)

Actually, while I'm on about it: Asimov cheated, as regards hard science, by waving his hands and making up 'positronics' that drove his robots' brains, but his work wasn't essentially about robotics, it was about how humans dealt with what they had created. Smith and early Heinlein was very much about the extension of then-cutting-edge technology far into the future, and how that affected people.

Anyway. Good fiction should be about what could happen and how that would change people, whether focusing on individuals or the whole race. Science fiction fits into that.

Re:Science.... fiction

[garysears]

Larry Niven's Ringworld or Ringworld Engineers has an appendix that describes the physics of a ringworld. Very eye-opening.

Re:Science.... fiction

[ozbon]

"The Third Pandemic" by Pierre Ouellette ( Amazon link ) actually covered this, with a blend of psittacosis and chlamydia.

From a biologist's viewpoint it's probably still bollocks, but IMOSHO it's a good read that seems fairly well-based.

Re:Science.... fiction

[teflaime]

Specualtive Fiction was a term coined in the 1960s (usually attributed to Robert Anson Heinlein) in response to the constraints of the genre classification Science Fiction, not to avoid being accused of writing genre material. The term speculative fiction is usually now used (by authors and others) when they feel the fiction would have a hard time being marketed as science fiction, or as a broad umbrella term to refer to science fiction, science fantasy (aka space opera), and horror (pure fantasy is generally excluded). All three of the feminist sci fi novels you mentioned are considered and marketed as science fiction. While the marketing designations are not important, I find it annoying when people parrot to the late 60s attitude that cause speculative fiction to be used in an attempt to case disdain on the term science fiction.

Re:Science.... fiction

[alienmole]

You should re-read quixote9's comment carefully; it is accurate, and your reaction makes little sense. While the Hot Zone describes real events, it goes to some lengths to exaggerate the risk to the world at large, in the interests of an exciting story. That's understandable in such a book, but it can't be regarded as "scientifically accurate" in that sense.

Re:Science.... fiction

[smellsofbikes]

The impression I got in my comp and writing classes was that 'science fiction' already HAD plenty of disdain pointed at it by comp and writing teachers. (I had a creative writing seminar that started with the teacher saying "I will not accept or grade any genre fiction" which he later specifically defined as 'romance, science fiction, or fantasy'.) Speculative fiction is, at least in the classes I've taken, what teachers recommend people use to describe their work if they're trying to be taken seriously rather than shelved under 'genre'.

I didn't know that Heinlein came up with the term. That's interesting (especially since these days I can't stand almost anything of his, so I have to give him some credit.)

Re:Science.... fiction

[Gulthek]

The GP is saying that a virus that kills that quickly can't spread globally. For example: ebola kills that quickly so it can't spread globally. Hence, Hot Zone's premise is easily dismissed.

Re:Science.... fiction

[geoffspear]

Have you read The Hot Zone? The book by Richard Preston? It has no such premise. I'm wondering if all of you people saw the movie Outbreak and imagined that while watching it you were reading a book.

Re:Science.... fiction

[teflaime]

The university is not a good place to gain a firm understanding of genre, as, especially now adays, most writers in the university environment seem to be focused on one of three genres: magic realism (which has nothing to do with magic, but is rather a term first used to define the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is highly immitated, where the plot is shrouded in confusing perceptive realities belonging to highly questionable narrators), historical fiction (which, while there is a place for it, tends to be either boring or boring and pendantic, as the academic writers of this genre are usually using it to express dull political opinions that they think should be taken as truisms...and should not be mistaken for alternate history which is a scifi subgenre), and postmodern fiction, which is just silly attempts to subvert story telling and plot to random verbage barages on limited topics and really only servers to cover up the fact that these writers just can't tell stories. In the publishing industry (outside of academic houses, which are often run by university professors), there is no such genre as "speculative fiction". Publishing houses don't like overly broad statements like that because they tend to want to focus their marketing to specific groups and maximize the advertising dollar. The only true industry places that I see the term used regularly are Locus, which is a trade magazine and covers all of the publishing under the whole broad spectrum (though they refer to individual published works with their marketing genre) and the odd anthology that is often published at a University press, and thus carries the phrase "An anthology of Speculative Fiction" because no one wants to lose their "university professor snob" card;). Considering that there are still three profitable publishing houses (yeah, they are owned by mega houses, but they are still run as seperate publishers), in this day of people who can't or won't read, that specialize in science fiction, fantasy, and horror (Tor, Baen, Ace), and that the 3 largest gatherings about books are the World Science Fiction Convention, the British Fantasy convention, and the World Horror Fiction convention, I think it is safe to say that the only people who really sneer at science fiction any more are the professors who hypocritally will accept it if you call it speculative fiction.

Re:Science.... fiction

[himself]

Look for some older Niven books, too, like "The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton" which is a sort of police procedural but set in a future society: good science, tight crime story, and I seem to recall that it's three stories in one book. (They also bring in mature elements like addiction, murder, etc., so read them yourself first to see whether they fit your audience.)

Plenty of his short stories are ideal: they are a limited length, they're built around explicating one principle, and they're still just good stories. "Neutron Star" is one such collection.

I like the older novels a lot, but "Lucifer's Hammer" and "Footfall" (a meteor hits earth and aliens invade, respectively) are two of my favorites ever.

- Will

Re:Science.... fiction

[BranMan]

Baen books has this one their website, The Mote in Gods Eye, the sequel, and a bunch of pre-quels as well (9 in all) as a package deal. Quite a good read (although the earlier books jump around a bit) altogether.

Re:Science.... fiction

[smellsofbikes]

That makes sense. I took three years' english comp/writing in college, and was thoroughly immersed in this at one point, but it was pretty much from the vantage you describe.
MR is fundamentally fantasy: positing something that doesn't/can't happen and exploring how people deal with that. Postmodern is more like performance art: writing to play with the medium and make statements using style. Both are innately limited in what part of the human condition they can address.
There are a lot of people writing what I call New Yorker fiction, though: short stories about people dealing with life. John Irving, TC Boyle, John Barth, Jane Smiley, that kind of stuff: good, solid material that was sometimes creepy but usually worth reading. The two excellent writing teachers I had both primarily focussed on that sort of material, and wrote that way themselves.

Re:Science.... fiction

[teflaime]

I'm probably a bit more jaded because I came out of an MFA program whose preofessors were almost solely concentrated on post modernism. David Foster Wallace, Curtis White, Ricardo Cruz...Only White was really open to the possibilities of science fiction/fantasy. The one class I took from Wallace, he seemed to want his students to all try to recreate the reading experience of "The Girl With Curious Hair" which is not what I consider great fun. But could you imagine a creative writing department run by Gene Wolfe, Nancy Kress, David Brin, Greg Bear, and Steven Brust? Or a similarly accomplished group of science fiction writers? I could, but I can't see it happening any time soon:(

Re:Science.... fiction

[Anonymous Coward]

> could you imagine a creative writing department run by Gene Wolfe, Nancy Kress, David Brin, Greg Bear, and Steven Brust

I imagine that would soon be known as the Steven Brust Creative Writing Institute at Steven Brust University.

Or at least Steve would prefer it that way!

Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward

[PrinceOfStorms]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg is pretty good in terms of science, and also interesting from a social/evolutionary perspective.

Re:Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward

[i_should_be_working]

Yes, or anything else by Robert Forward. I learned something from every book I've read by him. Also good are Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. A lot of work went into those to make much of the science accurate.

Re:Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward

[dargaud]

I second your recommendations of KSR and Forward's books, in particular Rocheworld about the first interstellar mission with today's (or almost) technologies.

Re:Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward

[spun]

Thirded. KSR and Bob Forward, the first two authors I thought of in regards to hard Sci-Fi. I mean sure, there's Asimov for the old-schoolers, and Bear, and Benford. But for really good science, nobody beats Bob Forward. And for good science plus non-cardboard-cutout characters (Sorry Bob!) Kim Stanley Robinson.

none really

[mikesd81]

I would say none really because authors take an artistic license to science when writing books. Sure some have a really good grasp of the theory they write about but sci-if is indeed science fiction. Now, I'm not saying you have to read text books only, but maybe a book that explains a certain topic easily and correctly would be good. After all I'm sure if it's for extra credit it should be good that you learn something in the process.

Re:none really

[cduffy]

I disagree -- some SF was written as science first and fiction later. Robert Forward has described one of his novels [sorry, not sure which] as a textbook on neutron star physics written with a story to make things more interesting -- and it manages to be a damned good yarn.

Re:none really

[KingSkippus]

What an incredibly stupid thing to say. What if I were to tell you, for example,...

Oh, wait, you don't believe in learning from things such as examples that aren't 100% true, so never mind.

Did it ever occur to you that the fiction part of science fiction may not be because the science is made up, but because the story in which it is used is not true? There are many examples of things that existed once in science fiction that are now science fact. There are also many examples of stuff that can be learned by reading a science fiction novel that tries to hold the science part of it true.

Have you ever read an historical fiction novel? You know, where some story is made up against a backdrop of real historical events? I guess that any knowledge gained about such real historical events is to be trivialized because the story part of it is fiction?

Pfff... "None" my ass...

And, of course, you're completely ignoring the fact that if you give a student a textbook and say, "Here, read this," most will strongly resist it. They'll study what they have to to pass the tests and get out of your class. But if you give a student an exciting story and say, "Here, read this, and if you're interested in the stuff that's in there, here's a textbook where you can learn more about it," you're a lot more likely to get them to actually learn something. And isn't that the idea?

Why Fiction?

[delirium of disorder]

In the field of biology, I always found reading Richard Dawkins or E.O. Wilson more entertaining than reading fiction. Science is stranger and more fascinating than anything we can imagine.

Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[bluephone]

Niven and Pournelle's "Mote in God's Eye" and it's sequel "The Gripping Hand" are very very good hard SF books, and the Moties are created by extrapolating what their biology would dictate their society be like, not just making talking plants or goldfish in spacesuits. Quite well done.

"Andromeda Strain". Classic. The original "Jurassic Park". Also very very good. Both quite good biology based books. Sure JP is a little loose with cloning and DNA recombination, but that's the SF part.

Off the top of my ehad, those are some great bio-related hard-SF books.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just about to recommend "Mote in God's Eye" myself.

Great story, and very very detailed in its science.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[AKAImBatman]

"Andromeda Strain". Classic.

Worst. Book. Ever.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Crichton hadn't managed to (single handedly, I might add) take Deus ex machina to a whole new level. It's so bad that if you look up Deus ex machina in the dictionary, it says "See: Andromeda Strain". (I'm only half joking. Look it up on Wikipedia.)

Crichton has written many other books that are of far more interest. Don't waste your time on AS.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Niven and Pournelle's "Mote in God's Eye" and it's sequel "The Gripping Hand" are very very good hard SF books, and the Moties are created by extrapolating what their biology would dictate their society be like

While this is true (don't get me wrong, the books are among my favourites) they do rely a bit on 'magic' like the Alderson drive & the Langston(?) shield. Pournelle's solo effort "Lucifer's Hammer", about the lead up to and aftermath of a comet impact, is well worth a read.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Conception]

It's really true for just about all his books. Sphere? JP? Congo? Everything ends so badly.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[ozbon]

But he's also written some seriously bad stuff as well.

Congo.
Jurassic Park

and worst of all

NeXt. Truly, truly horrible piece of writing.

Then again, Prey was kind of interesting.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried stumbling into Pournelle through his military SciFi, but found him a terrible writer. (The Prince, a Falkenburg omnibus)
  -> He changed POV from paragraph to paragraph
  -> He had a lot of "As you know, Jim" style expositions. Like, every
        dialogue exchange.

And his space travel science seemed to be pretty much handwaving over wormhole technologies, while leaving everything else at 1980's high tech.

Sure, the biology of the Moties were good, but the rest seemed to fall into the category of science warped for the fiction, and not the other way around.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Anonymous Coward]

Crichton has written many other books that are of far more interest.

No he hasn't.

Don't waste your time on AS.

I suggest that goes for any of his books.

Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF...

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking back, i came to realize the political overtones in MiGE... It used to be that SF writers were always writing about the dangerous military threat posed by Space Nazis.. Niven and Pournelle chose to write about the great immigration threat posed by Space Mexicans.
  No, seriously. O_O Learning that Pournelle is a.. umm... strongly conservative individual.. made it suddenly seem obvious.

Speaking of Biology

[mikesd81]

The movie Outbreak was a good movie and it's based on a book too. So a book like that may be good, after all that's science. And the way they found the cure and everything is pretty accurate...

It finally happened

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find the post, but slashdot is finally being asked to do a high schoolers homework. It's official now, slashdot has jumped the shark.

Re:It finally happened

[Fred Ferrigno]

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Raul654 might just be this Raul654. I don't think he's a student at an all-girls high school.

Re:It finally happened

[bluemonq]

And yet, he's asking for suggestions on "scientifically accurate science fiction books would you recommend for high school readers". So we *are* doing homework for high schoolers, not *him*.

Re:It finally happened

[dragonsomnolent]

Except that he says a member of his immediate family is a teacher at an all girls school. He does not make the claim that he is a student at the same school.

Assuming this is an American high school...

[QCompson]

Maybe the King James Version?

Re:Assuming this is an American high school...

[jamesh]

Fantasy != SciFi

Just point out the flaws...

[gunny01]

Any decent sci-fi should have at least a basing in science (the sci-): and then 'jazz it up' a bit to appeal to the non-PhD holding reader. For example, I recall using a sci-fi film as an introduction to Genetics and the issue of ethics in science. Our teacher made it clear that it was a work of fiction, but the point was to get us thinking about the topic. I think the tactic worked pretty well. Of course, there is also heaps of 'Popular Science' out there, which is as easy to read as sci-fi and more informative. Personally, I recommend Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, but if you want something more Biology, anything by Jarred Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, etc) is excellent.

SF is about people more than about science

[GroeFaZ]

You don't learn Science from an SF book, because you never know (if you're not already educated) what laws the author bent for the sake of the story. If you get hold of a good SF book, it is always about people and their interactions in what-if scenarios, even if the science may be bunk or too far off to be of any value today. The most an SF book can do for science and technology is to spark interest in it. That's not a bad thing at all, however, SF books should be considered an addendum to Ethics or sociology, not science. Considering that, I'd recommend "Never let me go" by Kazuo Isiguro, ISBN 0-571-22414-8

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you get hold of a good SF book, it is always about people and their interactions in what-if scenarios, even if the science may be bunk or too far off to be of any value today

Talk for yourself. I don't care about the social interactions - I'm interested in the scientific context. (I'm also interested in psychology & sociology etc as a science so at that level I'm interested in human interactions.)

I really liked the {Red, Blue,Green} Mars books for their high scientific content, although my dad hated them.

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[GroeFaZ]

I'm interested in the scientific context

So we basically agree that the science is context, or background. Context (Wiki: "The context of an event, word, paradigm, change or other reality includes the circumstances and conditions which surround it") cannot stand on its own; it always relates to something or it just doesn't make sense to speak of it. Science and technology in SF stories are the backdrop to human action and interaction; stories that focus exclusively on the science/tech side are techno-fetish. That can be fun too (see the stereotypical Hollywood action blockbuster as a related example), but it gets old pretty quickly.
As the real-world S&T matures, it obsoletes the SF science. That which remains after the novelty of the S&T has been stripped decides whether or not the story was a good one.

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[TapeCutter]

Well said, great sci-fi tells a story and hints at a pausible explaination. I was watching "I robot" the other day, they don't bother explaining the science it "just is". Many people in the audience won't understand the words when the robot asks "When does a difference engine become a search for truth?", but they don't have to because the context makes it's meaning apparent.

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[GuyWithLag]

I'd recommend for you 'Fast Times at Fairmont High' by Vernor Vinge (Noveletta(?)), Accelerando by Charles Stross (available online), and Diaspora by Greg Egan (Which is not that scientifically accurate, but the concepts are mind-blowing).

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[elrous0]

Greg Egan has done some truly fascinating science fiction work. I wouldn't necessarily call his stuff "hard" science fiction, but he makes wonderful use of possible scientific advancements to raise some great questions about what it means to be human and our ultimate role in the universe.

Personally, I would also recommend his Quarantine and Permutation City.

Re:SF is about people more than about science

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good, but I want to add the point that the "people" are not necessarily humans.

I've read some excellent science fiction books about "uploaded" humans running on computers, or their distant descendants (e.g. Greg Egan) or multi-species alien + AI societies that don't have any humans in at all - although the characters generally have motivations that could be human (Iain M Banks).

In fact, that's a tautology - something that doesn't act with understandable motivations isn't a character... this kicked off a whole chain of thought for me. I love SF, it makes me think.

Asimov, Dune

[SanityInAnarchy]

Asimov gets bonus points for having actually written nothing but nonfiction science books for a number of years.

Fantastic Voyage (2 especially) might be cool, too. Keep in mind, the movie sucked -- Asimov was hired to do the novelization and to be a scientific adviser, and he did advise them to change the deminaturization sequence, as miniturized humans should not be able to breathe unminaturized air.

Dune. Not particularly accurate with respect to our own universe, but wow, what a thoroughly done and rigorously consistent universe he created.

But there's lots of fun scifi stuff out there. Stay away from Star Wars, even most Star Trek (technobabble). Also, if you can't find anything perfect, take something close enough and play a game of spot-the-inconsistency. Also consider videogames, movies, TV. Play with comic book physics (think "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex"), and certainly everyday scenarios.

Get the kids interested enough that they bring you ideas, so you don't have to go to Slashdot for them.

David Brin - MSc Physics, PhD Phil., Hugo, Nebula

[Cordath]

David Brin is one of the very rare sci-fi authors out there who actually has the background to deal with hard science and the ability to write compelling characters and plots. He has several award winning books (Hugos, Nebulas, etc.) under his belt, but even his lesser works are good reads. While "Startide Rising" is a classic and an absolute no-brainer, a lesser work like "Glory Season" might hold special interest for an all-girl class. (The book is set on a isolated colony where humans tinkered with biology a little and created a female dominated society, but it's done a bit differently than most other attempts at the same sort of story.)

Have Space Suit, Will Travel by RA Heinlein

[26199]

I loved that book as a kid.

And it more or less has worked examples of one or two useful calculations you might want to do if you get captured by aliens. Heh.

Re:Have Space Suit, Will Travel by RA Heinlein

[MichaelSmith]

...and its set about now I think. Well... we could have had the moon base by now, if we had wanted to.

Re:Have Space Suit, Will Travel by RA Heinlein

[Anonymous Coward]

An almost sure fire way of getting the parents more involved would be choosing some of Heinlein's last books in the Lazurus Long series. Of course the teacher might ought to keep their spacesuit handy and rocket warmed up.

Re:Have Space Suit, Will Travel by RA Heinlein

[bcrowell]

Yeah, all Heinlein's juveniles are good, but a lot of them are a little dated. This one has really aged well. Another good one that doesn't feel too silly 60 years later is The Star Beast.

And Greg Egan

[Malfourmed]

As well as Brin, and I guess Bear, Benford and Forward (some of the better-known "hard SF" authors around), I recommend Australian writer Greg Egan. Heck he even supplies technical notes to his books on his home page.

Though my favourite Egan works tend to be more philosophical than scientific (eg the short story "Learning To Be Me").

Re:And Greg Egan

[Johnno74]

I second Greg Bear... Although Greg Egan is also good.

I ate up books like Eon, forge of god, eternity, moving mars while I was at high school.

Re:And Greg Egan

[david.given]

I recommend Australian writer Greg Egan.

Don't forget Hal Clement, who to a certain extent defined the 'hard science' SF genre. Mission of Gravity, Close to Critical, Still River... he's particularly well suited for assigned reading because his books tend to be structured as puzzles: here is a strange situation, what are the consequences of this?

Mission of Gravity is probably his most famous book; an exploration of the planet Mesklin, a superheavy Earth-like world that spins so fast that although the surface gravity at the poles is 665g, at the equator it's only 3g. It's a little dated by today's standards, such as being a bit light on characterisation and having no female characters whatsoever, but is still a good read. And the science is as accurate as he could make it.

Re:And Greg Egan

[mgblst]

I gave Mission of Gravity a read, because I heard great things about it, but it was so boring. I couldn't make my way through it. Do not read this book, it is abhorrid. I am used to books where nothing happens for the first half, but this guy was taking the piss.

Isn't science fiction more about

[bunbuntheminilop]

the reflection of science back onto ourselves? Solaris is a good discussion on the short comings of science when it reaches problems that cannot be solved. A main theme of Dune was the how science can become the undercurrent of a society, even with a large faith based layer on the top.

Science fiction is better suited for a 'philosophy of science' course. That's just my opinion.

Re:Isn't science fiction more about

[cduffy]

Valid for most sci-fi maybe, but depends on the subgenre; Dragon's Egg, for instance, is nothing like Dune -- and is focused around the science, rather than the society.

Hard Sci-Fi

[Threni]

You're after a genre called Hard Sci-Fi. Perhaps check out Stephen Baxter's stuff for starters?

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[Kosi]

Finally someone mentions Baxter! I'm surprised that I had to scroll down half of the page, I expected to see him mentioned much earlier and often.

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[Dan Hayes]

Ah good, someone's saved me the bother :)

Evolution is a fascinating read, and broken down nicely into chunks that can be read quickly and almost independently.

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[Threni]

> I expected to see him mentioned much earlier and often.

That only happens if a book is popularized in some awful American film, or if the books are bad enough to become "cult classics".

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[Anonymous Coward]

wow im supprised that i had to scroll this far to see someone mention Stephen Baxter, thought he'd be the frist post!

highly recoomend anything of his, just finished reading The light of other days for the 100th time :)

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[orkysoft]

I agree wholehartedly. He wrote Behemoth (actually three books in one volume), about a group of mammoths surviving to this day. Very good stories, and very readable. And he wrote Evolution (which might be a little controversial in the US ;-) ), which is a series of linked short stories about "a day in the life of" several (distant) ancestors of homo sapiens.

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[cdipierr]

Wish I could mod this up. Baxter's stuff blend real science with sci-fi so well it's amazing. Evolution is certainly fine, but the Manifold series is great as well. I was sold when there was even a discussion about why gold is actually gold in color (look it up sometime, it's fascinating).

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[bill_mcgonigle]

You're after a genre called Hard Sci-Fi.

It's sweet of you to point this out for a guy who didn't JFGI.

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[akadruid]

I'm not sure I would be brave enough to introduce Titan to high-schoolers. Has to be one of the least optimistic SF stories I've ever read.

Re:Hard Sci-Fi

[sconeu]

Because in every fscking novel, Baxter has to describe how people take a crap in free fall.

Red Mars

[Logic and Reason]

Red Mars is the first book of a trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson about the settlement and terraforming of Mars. There's some biology there, though I can't vouch for it (not having studied any biology beyond high school); but overall it's just gripping and completely plausible hard sci-fi. There's some stuff in the other two books that might not be appropriate for high-schoolers, depending on your attitude, but I don't recall anything too objectionable in the first one at least.

Check it out. Even if the class doesn't end up using it, if you're a sci-fi fan then it will be time well spent.

Re:Red Mars

[the_g_cat]

+1, though the writing style might be a little disorienting (the chapters are not only first-person views from different characters, but they also don't follow each other in time...).

Re:Red Mars

[Phydeaux314]

Wonderful books, those. The first one is best if you're looking for books that pay attention to the science, as the second two tend to degenerate into politics more.

Re:Red Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Mars was a very satisfying, plausible book. I'd recommend Cosmos by Carl Sagan for more in-depth scientific knowledge. Contact was also really good.

Re:Red Mars

[cornjones]

This is exactly the set of books I was going to suggest. It is a 3 part series about terraforming mars. The first book is gaining a foot hold, second is large scale terraforming and the third is setting up a political system. These are some of the best 'hard sci fi' i have read. I was very impressed in his grasp of so many varying scientific areas of study that allowed him to 'logically' extend the field.

The parent makes some allusion to one of the groups in (i think) the third book that have a commune/free love kind of thing going on but that is by no means teh point of the book. Nor do I remember it being particularly graphic but I am not as easily offended as parents so I would recommend you read ahead. The first book is all sci fi and the best of the series.

Re:Red Mars

[Veinor]

There's some stuff in the other two books that might not be appropriate for high-schoolers, depending on your attitude...
You mean like evolution? We must protect the children!

Re:Red Mars

[himself]

Note that by the third book of the Mars trilogy, the plot slows waaaaay down compared to the rip-roarin' first book. But yes, very good books, with bonus pionts so many (and such well-developed (*not* in the usual sci-fi meaning)l) female characters.

Re:Red Mars

[Heian-794]

Himself, I think the plot picks up significantly in the third (Blue) book; many years fly by and we get to see humanity's expansion beyond Mars. This was mainly described in between-chapter interludes, but I found myself looking forward to those sections more than the main story.

The problem with the later books is that while the science in Red Mars is near enough in the future that it feels realistic, eventually the technology piles up(people living 200+ years, growing new limbs, massive terraforming projects) and it becomes difficult to relate to the characters. Red Mars is the epitome of hard, thought-provoking SF. It's more than a bit wordy, but you won't be sorry for having read it.

(Disclaimer: I am a huge Kim Stanley Robinson fan and would recommend almost anything of his. My favorite, "The Years of Rice and Salt", is often found in the sci-fi section in bookstores but is much more appropriate as an extra-credit assignment for history students, not science.)

Re:Red Mars

[himself]

Oh, I've ready them all twice, I was just warning others that a storyline that starts with deflating a domed city downshifts to talk (a lot of talk!) about lichens before it ends. :7)

But yeah, "Blue Mars" was very good, too.

Re:Red Mars

[Dmitri_Yuriescu]

As has been mentioned, it's speculative to try and learn science from science fiction. That's why Kim Stanley Robinson would be a good bet. His work really isn't science fiction as much as 'near future fiction' and 'alternative history'. I haven't read his Mars trilogy. But I've read his Vinland the Dream (short stories), Antarctica, The Years of Rice and Salt and his Forty Signs of Rain plus Fifty Degrees Below. The short stories could have most luck getting hold of a high school attention span. They and all the other books except the two latter are interesting because they are very much alternative history as much as science fiction. The Forty... and Fifty... books deals with climate change and the politics thereof. This gives them a huge plus for immediate relevance and a tiny minus for being speculative (no one can predict the changes accurate enough to have them frame a story - but it's a fair try). Slightly related are the works of Robert Charles Wilson. His books Darwinia and Bios are science fiction about gaia theory (the way I read it); the former alternative history set in post 1st world war Europe, the latter Alien-like on another planet.

Isaac Asimov

[Anonymous Coward]

Not accurate but unarguably one of the greatest Science Fiction writers of all time.

I love David Brin

[StarKruzr]

but Glory Season made me want to slap the people in it around.

I guess it's a sign of good writing that he managed to make me care about the characters so much.

Re:I love David Brin

[Anonymous Coward]

i do too, or i would if he'd finish Kil'n Time

Hard SF, or Pop Sci books

[SKorvus]

Some hard SF:

Greg Egan - Diaspora, Permutation City, Schild's Ladder, or his short story collections such as Axiomatic or Luminous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series
Here's a good source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction
Stephen Baxter & David Brin are also popular authors.

While Egan tends to cover a lot of speculative technology or concepts, novels generally will be more about plot & character rather than science. If this is for a science class, I'd recommend picking up a good pop-sci book. A few that come to mind:

Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable, River Out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Blind Watchmaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
Jared Diamond: Guns Germs & Steel - great book combining history, anthropology, biology to explain how humanity diverged into such technologically disparate cultures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and_ Steel

Greg Egan

[Stochastism]

You can't go past Greg Egan for sci-fi with science. More physics and info-science than otherwise. In fact, I sometimes feel I need a PhD to read his stuff.

Re:Greg Egan

[itsdapead]

You can't go past Greg Egan for sci-fi with science. More physics and info-science than otherwise.

...and lots of philosophy about the nature of consciosness, plus a certain amount of fairly subtle allegory/satire about how the scientific community works - plus the occasional joke (e.g. posthuman AIs scared of a coke can - which they see as a replecating viral meme).

The opening of "Diaspora" - an in-depth description of an artificial intelligence being "born" within a virtual digital space - is superficially info science but its very symbolic of the way an embryo develops, and what self-awareness actually means. There's also a theme about scientific dogma - a fact that proves to be critical was unexplored because N-dimensional models were unfashionable (probably a referenc to string theory) - and the schism between theoretical and applied science (the faction that goes out and explores the universe is a minority - the mainstream prefers to stay at home, play with virtual universes while trying to prove Goedel by exhaustion). The latter is rather important, because one of the other themes is that, if you are truly immortal, you might start worrying about what that means when the system that you inhabit only has a finite number of states, so anything that offers a promise of inexhaustible variations will be rather attractive.

So, while I rather rate "Disapora" and Egan's other books as the best hard SF I've ever read, they might be a bit deep (but certainly not irrelevant) for high school biology students.

Even people with some scientific higher ed. need to look beyond whether his theories are correct. (He actually stresses in the end-notes that they are fictitious - before citing enough references to suggest that he is very comfortably ahead of the game!)

Plus - please, SF is entertainment - by all means include it in scientific discussions where relevant, but

please don't make it HOMEWORK (unless the alternative is Jane Austin [shudder]).

Let's see now.

[Rakishi]

Do you want scientifically accurate or biology heavy/accurate? Sci-fi even when accuracy was a large point for the author simply does not age well, we learn so many new things and a lot of realistic sci-fi uses 'cutting edge science' (or parts of it) that it simply isn't accurate anymore (or in some cases stopped being accurate between getting sent to the publisher and getting published).

Mainly a lot of biology in sci-fi has not aged well at all as bio is a quickly expanding field. A few that deal more with the more general chemistry part of things/life (Hal Clement for example) I think have aged better as that doesn't change as much. This holds for physics as well in some cases but a lot of the problems aren't usually as massive (ie: mercury having parts that never get sunlight, etc.) or bad as with biology.

More physics based would be Tau Zero but it does fuck physics a bit and very much so at the end (might be an interesting book to ask students 'what is wrong with it'). Clarke has a few, Rendezvous with Rama for example. A World Out of Time and Integral Trees by Nevin is likewise decent but the bio in them hasn't aged well.

Most things by Hal Clement are heavy on science (biology and chemistry quite often actually) but as a result everything else in his stories/books suffers.

There was also a short story about a murder which had a black hole get dropped into Mars (now with invalid science by Hawking's radiation btw), anyone remember the name of it?

For an all girls school...

[simm1701]

I would certainly recommend Heinlein, especially some of his later work.

I will fear no evil and stranger in a strange land are definitely worth a read

But thats more about adjusting the moral compass of todays youth to a more enlightened philosophy than it is about the science.

Most science fiction tends to ignore science - insofar as changing it goes - they may extrapolate something into the future, or even define their own entire universe - but once thats done they tend to ignore it and concentrate on the people. If you took out the futuristic settings most sci fi would simply be classed as drama, occssionally romance, or for the likes of Heinlein, porn.

Re:For an all girls school...

[apathy maybe]

Incest, strange political systems, and so on? (OK, the moralistic issues raised are good, but see below)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein

While I enjoy reading some of his work, it is hardly that good. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, are both better writers in my opinion. Their work is more consistently good and they do not go all over the place (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Who_Walks_Thr ough_Walls for a story that ends up plain weird).

Some of his non-fiction is worth a read, but Clarke's is better (see the famous prediction of the satellite or the first essay in 1984, Spring: a Choice of Futures where he talks of something like the OLPC).

Talking about the genre of SF, it is one of the great things about it. Being able to have any other genre of fiction, but place it in a different universe is one of the great attractions. It also shows how good many SF authors are. Anyone can write a story where they don't have to explain the background or history of the location where the story is set. SF writers have to explain this, in text! Without disrupting the flow of the story.
Basically, I would say, unless you like weird writing that goes all over the place (drifting into fantasy for a lot of the later work), you wouldn't go with Heinlein.

Re:For an all girls school...

[simm1701]

Actually the morals I was advocating was the anarchisticand self responsibility view of politics and the rather open and polygamous view of sexuality

As I said good reading for a girls school, given them a sound basis for when they hit their 20's

Re:For an all girls school...

[alphamugwump]

As I recall, stranger in a strange land had absolutely nothing to do with science. Actually, most of the science fiction I've read has had nothing to science, and more to do with humanist philosophy, and the singularity, and all that crap. I think you'd have to read a hell of a lot of science fiction before you learned anything at all about biology, and so it would be a lot easier just to read a biology text. Of course, maybe I've been reading all the wrong stuff...

While you're at it, though, you might as well give them credit for watching science fiction too. You know, stuff like: "watch all of star trek for an extra letter grade" or "watch all of Gundam for an extra letter grade". But it shouldn't count if it takes longer than a month. Make 'em WORK for that A.

Re:For an all girls school...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the morals I was advocating was the anarchisticand self responsibility view of politics and the rather open and polygamous view of sexuality

As I said good reading for a girls school, given them a sound basis for when they hit their 20's

Yeah, whatever. Why don't you start them on the Chronicles of Gor while you're at it?

Re:For an all girls school...

[simm1701]

Lets wait until they are at least 18 for reading strictly adult material shall we?

Besides Gor is a rather rediculous portrayal of a purely male dominated society - whats even worse are those that follow it litterally in real life, and I do know a few that fall into that category.

Long before advocating ANYONE read any Gor novels I'd be suggesting The Story of O and probably the works of the Marquis de Sade - its better to see some middle ground on a topic before going right to the extreme end.

Re:For an all girls school...

[Anonymous Coward]

or for the likes of Heinlein, porn.

Mmmm, Heinie porn...

Re:For an all girls school...

[muridae]

Long before advocating ANYONE read any Gor novels I'd be suggesting The Story of O and probably the works of the Marquis de Sade - its better to see some middle ground on a topic before going right to the extreme end.

You skipped Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs as well, which might provide a good alternative of woman in power that counters both de Sade and The Story of O.

I don't see how Heinlein's later novels come anywhere near the explicit sexual nature of any of these other books discussed. Heinlein's stories seemed more focused on the social and political ramifications with the behavior of the characters providing both the reason to discuss those issues and another way of keeping the reader feeling slightly out of place, while the others seem more tuned to the psychological behaviors of the characters involved and the character's reasons for being where or what they are.

note: I haven't read the Gor novels yet, so I'm not making any note about how those portray the behaviors of the characters.

Re:For an all girls school...

[simm1701]

Heinlein novels don't

They are suggestive and pressent a different culture and set of morals - which is why I put the books forward - it was a reply to my original post that started advocating Gor - I'm assuming as derogatory irony

Thanks for the mention of Venus in Furs, I couldn't think of any titles at the time that represented that orinetation and being in the office wasn't in a position to search for it!!

Orson Scott Card's...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ender's Game.

The Swarm (Der Schwarm)

[TransEurope]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0060813261 /sr=8-2/qid=ARRAY(0x66d11a30)/ref=dp_image_0/002-8 166626-0307252?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=117386 0727&qid=1173860727&sr=8-2

Nice Book, a eco-bio-sci-fi-thiller. Some characters are a lil bit stereotype, but all the katastrophes and scientific speculations are accurate. And it's pretty cheap.

The first time ever that the german version of the cover looks better than the UK/US one in my opinion.
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/images/3596164532/ sr=8-1/qid=1173860930/ref=dp_image_0/302-6225487-6 896802?ie=UTF8&n=299956&s=books&qid=1173860930&sr= 8-1

Imagination!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read a *lot* of sci-fi. More than your average fan, I'd dare say (but no, I'm sure not as much as you, indignant person).

The fact of the matter is that it's fiction! SF is an art form, not a science.

So much can be grounded in solid science, but so much of a good story borders on the fantastic or the exceptional rather than solid science. Good SF depends as much on good storytelling and good imagination as facts. Usually SF is more about society with a technology rather than the technology itself. If you don't want anything that is beyond factually proven things, I think you're not going to have something that actually is an entertaining or an imagination triggering read. I think imagination (but not entertainment) is the most important thing for the budding science interest. Entertainment is very important to keep people interested.

These things have to remain in the realm of somewhat plausible to be useful scientifically. Mainly dealing with current theories or limits of thinking.

Hyperspace is necessary for the Foundation series. Is it even possible? We have very little evidence that points to Yes - though it's not been disproved by any means. Room temperature fusion or some extremely advanced materials are necessary for (some of) Asimov's robots' power sources. Not to mention positronic brains. These things aren't impossible, but we sure don't know how to do them yet. This doesn't invalidate the influence these books have had on me that moved me towards science. Also, easy enough to argue that Foundation is more of a social book than hard science.

Some of the things that influenced me that way are even more ridiculous. Edgar Rice Burroughs mars series is one that really comes to mind. I really think imagination is key over spending time in a story on largely hard facts.

I think the Mote in God's Eye is a pretty good read. I'm not really convinced that it's a good treatment of xenobiology or xenosociology - but I would say it's the best I have seen yet. I don't think one could go actually go there before we realize how alien aliens could be.

Fantastic Voyage II is pretty excellent, biologically speaking. But it's also 20 years old biologically so hopefully it's much more out of date than the textbooks.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy is fairly nicely grounded in science. The first book (Red Mars) is nice biologically, sociologically, and planetologically.

Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a good place if you're interested in computer history or cryptography. But the Republic of the Philippines owns any Japanese war gold you find there. The Diamond Age is a nice treatment on pervasive nanotechnology, but we're still decades away from the possibility of that society.

Honestly, SF is an art, it's not a science. You (and your immediate family member) won't get 100% scientifically accurate stories, but these stories aren't scientifically invalid. Far better to excite minds about the possibilities of science. Also better that your immediate family member reads these books and offers a mutatable list of what they'd consider worth credit SF wise, than giving credit for something they've never read.

Re:Imagination!

[Lonewolf666]

So much can be grounded in solid science, but so much of a good story borders on the fantastic or the exceptional rather than solid science. Good SF depends as much on good storytelling and good imagination as facts. Usually SF is more about society with a technology rather than the technology itself. If you don't want anything that is beyond factually proven things, I think you're not going to have something that actually is an entertaining or an imagination triggering read.

I think it puts you into another genre ;-)
Authors like Tom Clancy or Dale Brown write warfare/adventure stories that use today's technology or modest extrapolations. Those are typically called "techno-thrillers" and can be quite entertaining, but I would not call them Science Fiction.
BTW, there are huge differences in quality. If you want to check out the techno-thriller genre, try the earlier stuff of Tom Clancy. Up to "Debt Of Honor", after that he drifted off into political ramblings rather than telling gripping adventure stories.

Re:Imagination!

[cduffy]

I think the Mote in God's Eye is a pretty good read. I'm not really convinced that it's a good treatment of xenobiology or xenosociology - but I would say it's the best I have seen yet.

While Vinge breaks from hard sci-fi here and there, both A Deepness In The Sky and A Fire Upon The Deep have a fair bit to be said for them along those lines. (If you haven't read them, start with the former).

Re:Imagination!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same AC. Yeah, no way to verify that, apologies.

I've read very little along those lines. I did read Patriot Games and found it rather engaging. This is definitely my opinion, but I didn't find it imagination inspiring, did you? I mean outside of a "yeah this could be real or happening at this very moment".

I think I see your argument, maybe my post would be better if it had said usually SF is more about an extrapolated society with a certain technology rather than the technology itself. And by extrapolated I fully intend to imply a technology that we don't yet have access to or haven't been able to try yet, but we can surmise it exists based on current theories. Intelligent Robots, Hyperspace, Terraforming, Aliens, Nanotech, Space Exploration, Time Traveling, you know?

Re:Imagination!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quality fiction, and the aliens are interesting. A Deepness in the Sky is a prequel of sorts, and should thus be read after A Fire Upon the Deep. Not that it matters much, since the only connection is one of the characters, and the same universe at two very different times and places.

LEM

[SharpFang]

There are many to be credited for scientific accuracy, but science is something you can learn in school as well.
Stanislaw Lem doesn't necessarily indulge in precise science of the future, but outlines all kinds of social and what not problems that could arise from them. You can build a new device, or use it, but what unforseen consequences could it have? Lem teaches us to look past "technological progress" and see how each solution can open new problems.

Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

[Kjellander]

Arthur C. Clarke books are often very true to science. One of my favourites is Rendevouz with Rama . The first in a trilogy about the encounter of enormous spaceships all of a sudden found racing through our solar system.

Also Isaac Asimovs books are nice. Try starting with I, Robot , which has a much better story than the movie they made.

Re:Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

[TheThiefMaster]

Yeah, Isaac Asimov wrote a lot of really good science fiction stories, along with a lot of more cerebral (thought-provoking) stories that just happen to be set in a science-fiction setting, eg "The Last Question".

And don't even get me started on that movie, all it pinched from the book(s) were the laws of robotics, which they didn't follow, the names of some of the characters and the name of the book. The story of the film is an insult to the books, it really is.

Re:Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

[thue]

Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.

Even includes a section on the plausibility of the technologies used in the book.

Re:Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

[ampathee]

It should be noted that the rest of the Rama series, being written by some jackass, not Clarke, is rubbish :(

Re:Anything by Arthur C. Clarke

[sconeu]

Clarke is one of the major writers who gives Einstein his due.

There are none!

[joto]

If you want a scientifically accurate book, you know where to find it. If you want a work of fiction, you also know where to find it.

Science fiction is first and foremost fiction. The point of science fiction is to speculate about the future, and that nearly always involves technology that is not invented yet, and might never be invented, such as interstellar travel, fusion energy, real artificial intelligence, lightsabres, human cloning, rampant genetic engineering, force-fields, wormholes, nanotechnology, etc. The only exception to this is if the story is about a society after the fall of civilization (i.e. post-cataclysmic, due to nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, etc...), and it's mostly about vikings riding Harley-Davidson motorbikes raiding nearby villages for women and booze, or something like that (see also Kevin Costners Waterworld).

Even fiction that is not set in the future, tends to include speculative technologies and methods. Just look at CSI, James Bond, etc... If a book does not contain speculative science, chances are that it will not contain any science at all. It will be about other things, such as people, love, crime, war, or something like that.

If what you are after is something that is scientifically accurate and entertaining, but not necessarily fiction, I would introduce them to Richard Feynman. (I'm sure there are other good authors, e.g. Stephen Hawking has a good reputation, but he talks about stuff so far above our heads that it's hard to gain any understanding from it). (I realize none of these authors excel in biology. So maybe you should ask somebody else for suggestions there...)

In short: just forget about it. You won't find a fiction book that teaches you science, any more than you will find a science book with a good plot. The best you can hope for is a fiction book that inspires you about the possibilities of science, and a science book that is both entertaining and correct.

Funny, I liked Heinlein's earlier works better...

[Lonewolf666]

That means, everything up to and including "Stranger In A Strange Land". The few later Heinlein books I tried to read invariable bored me, because the suspense was gone. Somehow things were too easy for the heroes...

Hitch Hikers

[PrimordialSoup]

Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy it will put things in perspective for them "In the beginning the universe was created, This has made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move"

Freefall

[Anonymous Coward]

The Freefall comic strip (http://freefall.purrsia.com) is well known for its high attention to accuracy with scientific details.

It's also a great read, btw. :-)

Not Jurassic Park!

[Gregory Cox]

I seem to remember there was one part in the book with this graph of the normal distribution.

"Oh no, the dinosaurs must be breeding, because their population graph is a normal distribution curve!"

Maybe some expert biologist can explain that one? It doesn't make any sense to me...

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[Sterling Christensen]

I'm not a biologist, but I can explain it.

Imagine you've released 3 groups of people into a room. Babies, 10 year olds, and professional basketball players. If you graph height vs how many people are that height, you'll see 3 humps. One about 2 feet, the second about 4 feet, and the third other 6 feet. But very few at 3 and 5 feet.

That's what the graph in Jurassic Park was supposed to look like, because the dinos were released in batches. Instead they saw one big hump. So to continue the analogy, where did so many 3 foot and 5 foot high people come from? That's how Ian knew they must be breeding.

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[Bastard of Subhumani]

This probably isn't a good place to mention it, but there's this thing called sex. It's what causes babies.

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead they saw one big hump. So to continue the analogy, where did so many 3 foot and 5 foot high people come from? That's how Ian knew they must be breeding.

But how did they get so many babies from just one hump?

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[Ganesh999]

Strictly it doesn't make sense, that's why. The premise is sound - they plot the sizes of all dinosaurs, and find the trend follows a single bell curve instead of a series of spikes. Since they're dealing with clones there aren't a lot of reasons for big variations in dino size. Because there's a single, broad population instead of a number of narrow ones then they have either one single batch (which they know not to be true) or many, many more batches than they thought...so many that the individual spikes blend into a whole, in fact. Possible conclusions - either many more batches are being created than are recorded (which can be easily checked via their own internal investigation), or (essentially the same thing) the dinos are breeding. Now for the fast-and-loose bits, i.e. why this doesn't make sense. 1/ Most of the dinos couldn't breed when released, but a few or possibly all managed to start doing so owing to a vaguely-mentioned bit of trans-species DNA splicing (from modern frogs, if I recall, but since I haven't read the novel since it was first released in the UK, ~2 years b4 film, I can't be sure). Therefore there would still be signs of more than one population; first a couple of spikes, then the start of a kind of "spiky hump" which would subsequently merge into a smooth bell at the extreme tail. *That* kind of behaviour is unmistakeable, and would raise instant alarms. 2/ Not extremely relevant here, but it's something of a personal crusade for me: it's a common fault to spot a bell curve and assume it's "Normal". Note that a normal gaussian distribution is asymptotic in both directions. While I'm prepared to accept for the sake of argument that a dino 5 times the size of its siblings wouldn't realistically happen because the probability is too remote, I can't accept that a dino could ever be born with *negative* height; and assuming a single normal distribution allows for this possibility. Either the normal distribution should be applied to the *logarithm* of the dino dimensions (i.e. the so-called log-normal distribution, which will pin the minimum dino size to zero) or another distribution form should be tried. The Weibull family of distributions shows good correlation with life & size data, and includes a fair approximation to the normal & lognormal (albeit with fatter tails and a minimum life/size parameter). Overall, though, I loved the book because of its overall authenticity; and I was kind of sad that I could only resort to statistics to judge the veracity of the chaos maths arguments that underpin the storytelling (my understanding of choas maths stops at "Ooh, pretty fractals!"). The film, however, ranked at the top of my most hated of all time until the release of "I, Robot". There's a pattern: I was excited about the release of both films because of the hard science, intricate storytelling, and characters & character-deaths (the mathematician in JP is just so hilariously nihilistic). The films completely decimated both (what the hell happened to Susan Calvin & the refutation of the Frankenstein complex?), in the interests of effects and general "Hollywoodising" to pull in the crowds. The question was to list good, hard science sci-fi literature. Here's a TV/movie media example: Firefly/Serenity. Most things in those was spot-on - no sound in space; projectile firearms still useful; laser weapons with short battery lives and with quiet, sizzling beams that cut, not loud "bolts" that punch; military cruisers without a hint of streamlining; no aliens or AI to speak of; dying of cold before asphyxiation if your life support cuts out; random (and heartbreaking!) character deaths. That kind of detail is the kind of thing usually ditched & glossed over in the interests of general appeal, yet those details were half the reason I was captivated from the first episode. Kudos to the scriptwriting, acting, FX, etc., but the cultures, languages, and technical accuracy is what made me believe I was actually seeing it all happen. Brilliant.

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[xiong.chiamiov]

Ewww, basketball players and 10yo's!? Pervert.

Re:Not Jurassic Park!

[TBone]

Super Twins

Bull!

[cduffy]

Much soft science fiction might as well be fantasy -- but you're sorely misrepresenting the genre to claim that all of it is such. The short stories (interspersed between the non-fiction essays whose concepts they illustrate) in Robert Forward's Indistinguishable from Magic comprise solid examples, but they're exceedingly far from alone.

Grave situation

[renuk007]

Hal Clement is definitely the most faithful to "real" science that I've ever read, even considering Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke. "Mission of Gravity" was superb ... I think I read it about a hundred times, and I first read it at 16. Many, many years ago, but it started me on a quest on science that has not yet ended.

Drugs

[noz]

One with a realistic portrayal of drug use like Neuromancer.

It is for high schoolers, right?

Re:And Greg Egan x 2

[Nazlfrag]

I second Egan. Quarantine was the first hard SF I had read (and have read many times since). Permutation City is also great, Diaspora, hell they are all great. He weaves the hard science into straightforward(ish), easy to understand prose (the tech notes are there for the 'ish' stuff). And as you mention, he throws philosophy into the bargain. Highly recommended, 5 out of 5 stars from me.

Alastair Reynolds

[Zarhan]

I kinda liked the "Shrouders universe", consisting of Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution gap (and also separate story Chasm city). Take a look at the writer's own site. He's a former ESA astrophysicist so most of the basics are correct (granted, at Absolution gap you get to some pretty weirdish ideas about superstring theory, but...)

Re:Alastair Reynolds

[Rocketship Underpant]

I think his best is Century Rain. Again, fairly good, hard SF.

Re:Alastair Reynolds

[sammy baby]

I read Revelation Space recently on a business trip. I'd never heard of Reynolds before (I don't get to do a lot of leisure reading these days), but I really enjoyed it.

I had no idea there were sequels. Thanks for this suggestion!

Pessimistic ?

[Ihlosi]

The point of science fiction is to speculate about the future, and that nearly always involves technology that is not invented yet,

Pick Science Fiction that involves technology that already exists, but right now isn't being used because of, um, budget constraints or other reasons (ethical, practical, whatever).

Getting humans to Mars and back would be one of the many examples. Sure, if you threw enough money at it, it could be done with todays technology.

Or surveillance societies. Ok, what goes on today is bad enough, but the technology for making things ten times worse exists already.

Or genetics. What would happen if messing around with the human genome wouldn't raise any huge ethical red flags ?

Re:Pessimistic ?

[joto]

Pick Science Fiction that involves technology that already exists, but right now isn't being used because of, um, budget constraints or other reasons (ethical, practical, whatever).

My point is that it is still speculative. Since the technology doesn't exist yet, we do not exactly know what will happen. That's why it's called fiction. Getting humans to mars is one example. There are dozens of ways it could be done. It could be millions of unforeseen incidents. Plenty of room for interesting stories to develop, you could focus on the astronauts experiences, the political consequences, the team developing the hardware, etc.. But it's still speculation and conjecture, i.e. fiction! And if we ever go to mars, it's probably not going to happen the same way as in the story.

The most famous book about surveillance societies is 1984. In some ways, it was a clear miss. In other ways it was scarily accurate. It was still speculation, even more so at the time it was written. A similar story today, would still be speculation. We do not know how future surveillance technologies will develop. Sure, we believe we know about CCTV face-recognition, rfid chips implanted under the skin, voice recognition, voice->text translation, pattern matching, etc... but anything we take for granted today, can be wrong. In science fiction movies from the 1950s, the space pirates would calculate their coordinates using slide rules before entering them into the mainframe (and flying off in their flying car to fight emperor Ming).

And we do not know the consequences of genetic tampering we do. That's why there are people against it. You can speculate about the wonderful things you'd be able to create, the terrible diseases you can create, the ecosystems you destroy, and so on, but it's still speculation. Jurassic Park is somewhat believable, but it's still speculation. The long-term effects of such a creation, even more so.

Get my point?

Re:Pessimistic ?

[Ihlosi]

My point is that it is still speculative.

But not about the technology, but about its consequences.

Getting humans to mars is one example. There are dozens of ways it could be done.

Yes. But a story that involves chemical rockets, spacesuits and a sometimes boring and long flight is more "science" than one involving warp drives and holodecks.

And we do not know the consequences of genetic tampering we do.

But the technology to do such tampering exists today. The story might be fiction, but the tools and principles used are not.

Re:Funny, I liked Heinlein's earlier works better.

[simm1701]

I prefered his earlier works myself - I just found his later works to have a high smut content in general

As for his later works "The cat who walked through walls" is just a little too sureal for me!! I think I got a headache when I read it!

Imagination or lack of it

[Lonewolf666]

You are right if you say the typical "techno-thriller" is not inspiring in the sense that it creates an imagination of different worlds. As I said, another genre ;-)

Non-fiction can be more inspiring

[valkoinen]

I myself have been greatly inspired by these great fiction and non-fiction books by scientists:

Carl Sagan:
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot and Contact (fiction, but the book and the movie are entertaining and based on good science)

From the curious character Richard Feynman: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

A good science fiction book that takes place in the near future is Accelerando by Charles Stross. I believe it is also available free online.

Re:Non-fiction can be more inspiring

[maxume]

Accelerando suffers from its own enthusiasm. It's o.k., but maybe not good.

Try this

[adinu79]

Something that has to do with biology, politics, the environment and a lot of other interesting subjects for a high-school student.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.
This is the first book in the series

The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle, from 1957

[Shivetya]

It may be hard to get a copy but its a very good read. Nothing out of this world, well unless you count the "Black Cloud". Very good science fiction with a good dose of politics; though tied to the times the politics would fit well today.

wiki link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

quite a few copies are available in various used forms from Amazon

Brin, Robinson

[Garrett Fox]

I second Startide Rising and add his Earth to some extent; flaky science in that one but with some interesting stuff about black holes and the environment. SR and the other Uplift novels (skip Sundiver) were what made me major in Biology for a while. A short story that's arguably completely hard SF, The Aficionado (aka. Life In the Extreme) is available free on Brin's Web site; it's a look at the origins of Uplift.

See also Kim Robinson's Red Mars and to a lesser extent the sequels. These involve Mars colonization without any nonsense about alien artifacts for once.

I'm tempted to suggest Stephenson's The Diamond Age because of the ideas about future societies and the "magic" book, but the last third or so of the book is unsuitable; I found it needlessly lurid and barely comprehensible. Maybe look at Stephenson's Baroque Cycle series? It's very long, but from what I've read of the first book it's got all sorts of apparently well-researched history-of-science material.

Ah! And if you're willing to include nonfiction that's a good read, look up Devil In the White City, re: one of the world's great feats of engineering and the individuals who made it work.

How about...

[MaggieL]

Red Thunder and Red Lightning by John Varley. Since she's a bio teacher, Titan, Demon and Wizard...also Varley. Almost anything by Heinlein, bearing in mind that some of the science may be a bit dated.

An all girls high school in USA???

[master_p]

I sincerely do not understand why, in this day and age, there are still schools that separate children based on their sex.

I suspect organized religion has done its deeds here as well...I was going to suggest Star Trek, the original series, but there is a grave danger in that: the girls might fall in love with captain Kirk (which appears half naked in many episodes), so perhaps a few episodes from Deep Space 9, season 6 or 7, will do. And the girls might learn their lesson that Pa-Wraith/devil worshipers will certainly burn in great mountain of fire/hell.

[/sarcasm]

Re:An all girls high school in USA???

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, geez, if you want to slap religion around a bit, show the Babylon 5 episode "Believers." And then, if you want to show that religion can be beneficial, show "The Parliament of Dreams" right after that.

Kind of moot, though, since the OP was asking about books. Otherwise I would have suggested the anime "Planetes."

Re:An all girls high school in USA???

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I sincerely do not understand why, in this day and age, there are still schools that separate children based on their sex.

I suspect organized religion has done its deeds here as well.

Once again, another paranoid "Blame everything on religion" rant. Some parents send their girls to all girls schools in the (mistaken?) belief that girls are overlooked in public schools in favor of boys and going to an all girls school will remedy this. It could also be that the school in question might just have a really good reputation as an academic institution and the fact that it is an all girls school is incidental to that. Some parents send their girls to all girls schools to keep them away from boys because of promiscuous behavior by the girls, but this never works. They always find ways to meet boys outside of school.

Re:An all girls high school in USA???

[Anonymous Coward]

"All girls school", I call them "lesbian factories".

Re:An all girls high school in USA???

[master_p]

But the reason all girls schools exist is because someone says that meeting with members of the opposite sex is a sin. Hence religion is again about to blame.

Why scientifically accurate

[nuggz]

I find the better Sci-Fi is about people and the science/technology is just a tool to create the environment to help the author tell the story.

Just be careful about recommending one of the more sex obsessed authors.

Michael Crichton and Orson Scott Card

[ArchAlchemist]

Try Michael Crichton... he exhaustively researches his books, and the science in them stretches a bit beyond what we can do now, but not to the point where it is unbelieveable. Also, this stretches from physics (Timeline) to Biology (Jurassic Park, Next). Highly recommended

Orson Scott Card - The Ender Saga... consider the fact that he wrote this ages ago... then read about everything he came up with based off of quantum entanglement and AI and the stretches he makes with technology... its a really fun read.

Wil McCarthy

[MythMoth]

I'd particularly recommend Bloom, but I also like The Collapsium. As with all SF, however, this is fiction. But reading SF can certainly lead to an interest in hard science - to which end, he's written a non-fiction book called "Hacking Matter" which is pretty good.

Other non-fiction I'd recommend would be the excellent Bill Bryson "A short history of nearly evreything." - I really wish that had been available when I was in high school.

The Hot Zone or The Cobra Event

[Lurker2288]

I don't think it was based on a book. There's a Robin Cook novel called 'Outbreak' that I believe deals with the Ebola virus, but the plot is completely different, and it was adapted into a made for tv movie called 'Robin Cook's Outbreak' or something like that. Though in the same vein, I'd second 'The Hot Zone,' or the author's second book 'The Cobra Event,' which is a fictional depiction of a bioterrorism attack in NYC.

Greg Bear

[argStyopa]

I'm a big fan of Greg Bear's books, they tend to have interesting stories with a hard-sf basis in fact.

But really, there are a lot of authors listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction that I would recommend.

Einstein's Bridge by physicist John Cramer

[Anonymous Coward]

Physicist John Cramer has written two hard-SF books: Twistor and Einstein's Bridge. Both are good. Einstein's Bridge has the added benefit of describing Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in lay-man's terms that nearly any bright high school kid should understand.

Re:Einstein's Bridge by physicist John Cramer

[Anonymous Coward]

I would second Cramer. Parts of the books are a little cheesy (like the "love" scenes), and the hacking parts are really dated now, but they were both great books.

Einstein's Bridge has the added novelty that it was written about the Super Conducting Super Collider both before and after it was canceled. I thought Cramer worked that into a plot pretty well.

"Connections" from James Burke - available online!

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is for a science class, I'd recommend picking up a good pop-sci book. A few that come to mind: [...]

In that vein, I highly recommend James Burke

He did the amazing TV series Connections (and 'Connections 2' + 'Connections 3') as well as 'The Day the Universe Changed'. These are about the history of science and its relation to human society. It's not just informative, but extremely insightful.

You can watch Connections in streaming video or download them from here.

You can find a few clips from TDtUC on youtube. Here's a short introductory clip. Here's a longer clip from an episode. (The clip concerns philosophy of science more than history.)

You can apparently get Connections 2 and Connections 3 on DVD from amazon, though the price seems a bit to me. With a little luck you may be able to get them from a nearby library. Burke also wrote some companion books for these series which may be available at your local library, or at least at amazon.com.

Greg Bear

[Stile 65]

I liked Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children for (what appeared to me to be) fairly sensible and well-researched biology. It's a refreshing treatment of human evolution when compared to X-Men and Heroes, and takes into account recent evidence that human evolution has been taking place fairly recently (that is, only tens of thousands to thousands of years ago).

Socially accurate Sci-Fi

[Anonymous Coward]

More important today than the science content is the social commentary of some of the Sci-Fi classics.

• Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein.
• Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven.
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation.
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
• A Cure for Cancer by Michael Moorcock.
• Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells
• The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
• Mindkiller, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and Night of Power by Spider Robinson.

These are my favorite examples of the powerful social commentary possible with the vehicle of science fiction.

Nobody can hear you scream

[tiltowait]

Ditto on Clarke and Asimov. The 2001 movie is nice too, even if they don't understand all of it.

Considering its age, the depiction of space travel is really astounding. The only Hollywood concession I'm aware of is the opening shot of Discovery One, in which the front is lit as if it's facing the sun. There's something in one of the commentaries about this.

Reminds me of the ROTK commentary where Frodo is lying on the ground in one scene, and is also mysteriously well-lit. Elijah asked someone where the light was coming from once, and the response was, "the same place the music does."

Shorts like "They're Made Out of Meat" are good along with "The Last Question". Blade Runner is also a good introduction to some philosophical concepts.

57th Franz Kafka / Rucker

[Slugworth01]

More along the lines of math, philosophy and cyberpunk, you might want to give Rudy Rucker a try. I read The 57th Franz Kafka back in the day, which is a collection of short stories. I see that Gnarl! includes all those stories and then some.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Rucker

I can't believe no one has mentioned

[Drall]

"Pate de Foie Gras", Asimov's short story about the goose that laid golden eggs.

Re:I can't believe no one has mentioned

[kalirion]

"Pate de Foie Gras", Asimov's short story about the goose that laid golden eggs.

I see they succeeded at fooling you into believing that it was fiction....

Hal Clement

[Roger_Wilco]

Anything by Hal Clement I'd recommend; they're old but good, and include a good deal of accurate science. I really liked Close to Critical and Needle.

Re:Hal Clement

[bsa3]

What he said. And let's not forget the Mesklin novels and the short stories.

(Full disclosure: I can be found now and then in SF con dealers' rooms selling people nice hardbacks, some of which are collections of his stories -- Trio for Slide Rule and Typewriter has both of Roger_Wilco's recommendations.)

Re:"Connections" from James Burke - available onli

[Hognoxious]

In that vein, I highly recommend James Burke

I agree. Or do I ...?

Strong female characters - mod parent up

[Peter Trepan]

Since this is going to a girls school, Red Mars should get extra points for having so many female characters in the forefront - though I think Red Mars may be a tad long-winded for high school students. (Use this as a yardstick: Have they read Atlas Shrugged? If so, Red Mars is terse by comparison.)

Also, another poster mentioned Cosmos by Carl Sagan. This is an excellent suggestion. Not only is the main character female, but the story is captivating, and the science is impeccable.

Re:Strong female characters - mod parent up

[Jamey]

Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, was the voyage through the universe documentary done in conjunction with PBS. Contact is the novel.

Descent of Anansi

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mote in God's Eye has already been mentioned, but a lesser-known Niven that I enjoyed (co-authored with Steven Barnes IIRC) is "The Descent of Anansi". Most of the book is set in orbit around Earth and the plot is dictated by orbital mechanics more than anything else.

Why I always got in trouble in high school

[smchris]

I would argue for something like Stargate (except for the, well, "stargate" part) because of it's emphasis on the scientific _method_. Half the plots of their decade run were identical. They are gathering data with a probe, or a reconnaisance, and something unexpected occurs. They collect, capture, or are infected by "samples" where they retreat to the lab, sick bay or Daniel Jackson's library. After experimentation or other on-site or off-world research, group meetings are held to review the results and form a plan for further action.

One of the most rational fantasy shows around.

Re:Why I always got in trouble in high school

[orkysoft]

Actually, it's a comedy ;-)

Jupiter books

[MongolJohn]

The "Jupiter" series of books were written for young people. They reminded me of Heinlein's "coming of age" stories, that he wrote for Boy's Life back in the day. They tell stories of young people, mostly teenagers, growing up in space in the future. Most were written by James Hogan or Charles Sheffield.

Speaking of Heinlein, those stories would be excellent choices as well.

Re:Jupiter books

[rengav]

I second this choice. The are written for teens using characters, situations, themes, language, and sentence structure that they will understand and identify with. They are also fairly quick reads (350 pages each).

I would also recommend Arthur C Clarke, in particular "Fountains of Paradise" which is an excellent story about building a Sky Tower/Orbital Tether.

Larry Niven, Issac Asimov, and David Brin are also all excellent writers but may be too advanced for most high school students.

Maybe James P. Hogan

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a big fan of James P. Hogan precisely because his science was so rigorous. His earlier stuff (mid-1970s to early- or mid-1980s) is the best in my opinion, e.g. the giants trilogy was awesome in the way he starts with an astounding premise (a 50000 year old modern human corpse found on the moon in a spacesuit) and proceeds to find a plausible explanation for it, including illuminating the scientific process of finding that explanation.

In or after the mid-80s he started getting weirder and more overtly political. For example, I almost didn't finish Engame Enigma (1987) because it was mostly a boring pro-Capitalism rant more than anything else (though it did have a very good scientific surprise at the end -- just not sure it was enough to justify the rest of the book). I haven't read anything after that so I can't tell you more -- only that browsing his later books in bookstores, they didn't look as interesting to me as his early stuff.

Hogan is an artless writer; I liken him to Tom Clancy that way. His characters are one-dimensional, and his use of language is straightforward but bland. It's like reading a technical manual compared to an author who can really write, like Dick Francis (but Dick Francis doesn't write science fiction). But for rigorous hard science fiction where nothing but the story and the science count, he can be pretty hard to beat.

There's a Wikipedia article about him if you want more info.

Ursula K. Le Guin

[mbone]

For an all girls class, you might start with The Left Hand of Darkness.

Re:Ursula K. Le Guin

[Anonymous Coward]

Le Guin is more of a philosophy assignment than a science assignment though. Also, I'd say that a lot of her stuff would scar highschool kids of either gender, either with her graphic depictions of rape or just the sudden violation of any remaining innocence with her graphic depictions of the way the world works.

Good places to look

[YetAnotherBob]

A few authors to check out. The Science is close to real (or was when they were written). These people know what they are talking about.

Isaac Asimov. Major biochemist. suggest Robots series, Foundation series.

Robert Forward. Physicist, Nobel stature. Suggest Dragons Egg series.

Arthur Clark. Biologist. Any of his older short stories. He had the first depiction of a communications satelite..

Fred Hoyle, Astronomer. Several good books here. The science is good too. Most were written in the 50's or 60's, so some of the science is dated.

Larry Niven. just a writer. Good treatment in his short stories though. Suggest A Gift From Earth.

Hal Clement. High School Science Teacher (Chemistry?). Suggest Mission of Gravity.

Robert Heinline. writer. get any of his old juviniles from the 50's. space Cadet, Rolling Stone, Farmer in the Sky, Have Spacesuit will Travel, Star Beast etc. Some border on fantasy, but Heinline liked the science to work. Avoid anything he wrote after 1965. He tried to combine SF with erotic fantasy for several years.

If you are really gifted with explainations, you could try some of the more popular soft SF authors. These often are fantasy tech though. Andre Norton, Any Star Trek or Star Wars book, McCaffery (Dragonriders of Pern is a good series.)

Re:Good places to look

[Anonymous Coward]

Re heinlein, i whole heartedly agree on heinlein, alot of his later works were not just erotic fantasy, he seemed to spend alot of time exploring taboos in society, be it incest, pedophelia, pluralistic marriages, just some of the topics he explored. However even those stories tend to be a fascinating read especially when you keep in mind the era in which he was writing. Not sure that i would reccomend it to younger readers, but high school age kids should be able to deal with any of the topics he covers.

Re:Good places to look

[teflaime]

I would point out that Robert A. Heinlein was an acomplished engineer who did aeronautics work for the Navy during WWII. He also detailed many inventions in his writing that later prevented the patenting of many of those ideas (such as waterbeds). He was far more than just "a writer."

Hard SF

[jbeaupre]

I'd agree, stick with the Hard SF authors. Nice little explanation and list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction One author missing from the list is Michael Flynn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn. His Firestar series might work for the school especially since the protagonist is a woman. Set in contemporary times, no-nonsense science, but with an actual plot. Though maybe not a hard SF author, McMaster-Bujold's early work (especially Mountains of Mourning) might appeal to young women who prefer something more character driven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold Others have mentioned Forward and Dragon's Egg.

Re:Hard SF

[StikyPad]

Nice little explanation and list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction One author missing from the list is Michael Flynn

Call me crazy, but wouldn't it have made more sense to just add him to the list on Wikipedia than to post on Slashdot about his absence?

Re:Hard SF

[bluephone]

LMB is tied with Niven as my all time fave SF author. The Vorkosigan Saga is awesome. I am not, however, a young woman. :)

Re:Hard SF

[jbeaupre]

True. I've never added anything to Wikipedia. Maybe this is a chance to.

Re:Hard SF

[jbeaupre]

Sorry about that. She's one of my favorite authors as well, and I'm not a woman either. But you have to admit, Miles is more likely to appeal to women who are new to Sci-Fi than most other works.

Re:Hard SF

[bluephone]

In all honesty, you're quite right. Truly "A Civil Campaign" was targeted squarely at her female fans, intentionally or not. Love and swooning and weddings, meh. At least it did have a decent story. But I'm cool with that. I think we need more women in IT and science careers and even SciFi. I adore the Cordelia's Honor set (it's the books Shards of Honor and Barrayar in one binding for those of you wondering WTF we're on about), but more than once I've been asked why I was reading a romance novel (based purely on the cover/title). Oddly, it _is_ a romance novel, but not in the traditional sense. :)

All, really

[drdanny_orig]

If the instructor is sufficiently well-schooled in science and skepticism (a stretch, I'll admit), then any scifi book can be useful as a stimulus for investigations into whether the science is accurate or not. I found it fairly easy, even as a 4th grader, to understand that faster-than-light travel was not feasible while still managing to enjoy Zip-zip Goes to Mars and other books. (Ok, so Mars is close enough that FTL speeds aren't needed, but you get the idea.)

Science Fiction Vs Science Fantasy

[pcjunky]

You want something without at least the central idea being scientifically unsound. Star Wars is right out. Unfortunately so is Star Trek with so many scientifically unsound concepts such as warp drive and time travel.

Some films to consider:

2001 A Space oddessy - Much accurate here including the fact people will not explode when exposed to a vacuum. The depiction of space travel is reasonably sound.

Jurassic Park - Sound science about DNA. We may never be able to get good enough dino DNA to do this but if we could it may be possible. The park systems were completely non-sense however. You would never use active high voltage fences to contain such dangerous critters. (power failures will happen) And even a raptor couldn't bite through 1/2 inch steel cable.

Blade runner (Do androids dream of electric sheep) - Clone improved humans to do our fighting and perform such other undesirable/dangerous work. Lots of good science and discussion foder for what it means to be human.

I-robot / AI - More good what if with regard to Artificial intelligence.

20,000 Leagues under the sea. Good look back and science fiction become science fact.

Fantastic Voyage - Shrinking things like this complete nonsense but good anatomy lesson.

Time Machine - Shows accurate plausible future human evolution. Here two separated human populations change to adapt to their environment. This shows clearly the driving force behind evolution, environmental pressure. Darwin called it natural selection. (I hate shows/books that imply that we have an evolutionary predestined path. In one episode of Star Trek TNG we see some crew members have there evolution accelerated depicting what humans will evolve into. Evolution cannot be separated from the environment.)

Courtship Rite x Donald Kingsbury

[phunctor]

Available for $0.01 + postage, used, via Amazon.

What if evolutionary fitness were determined retroactively? First the admirable life, then the many children?

--
phunctor

If they were younger...

[GeekZilla]

I remember reading the "Danny Dunn" series like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Homework-Machine-Raymond-Abr ashkin-Williams/dp/0590468901/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002- 8587649-5217660?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173882058&sr= 8-2

However, the reading level is more like 6th grade instead of high school. But the stories had a lot of (apparently) accurate science related material. Even younger would be Encyclopedia Brown-but that's not science-orientated. Sorry, not much help for high school students.

Well...

[teflaime]

For hard sci-fi, I would recommend going with the following authors, who are accessible and pretty detail oriented: Hal Clement, Greg Bear, David Brin, Stephen Baxter...Maybe Joe Haldeman (though I really only recommend Forever War). In addition, Heinlein's juveniles are great reads, heavy in the science. But they were written for serialization the the BSA magazine Boy's Life...a girl might not find them as entertaining.

Medea: Harlan's World

[Malfourmed]

Your mention of Hal Clement prompted me to remember another fascinating and appropriate book, though it may now be out of print and thus hard to find: Medea: Harlan's World.

It's part SF anthology, part world-creation manual. The concept behind the book was that a team of prominent SF writers such as Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Thomas M Disch, Frank Herbert, Robert Silverberg, Theordore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison collaboratively created a world and its inhabitants, from astrophysics to theology; then they and some other writers (eg Jack Williamson, Kate Whilhelm) would write stories set on that world.

So Clement wrote a "specification" on the astrophysics of the system and its planets. Anderson outlined the geology, meterology, oceanography, geography, nomenclature and biology of Meda. Niven sketched out further thoughts on biology, ecology and xenology. Poul took the xenology baton and put down his thoughts on the sociology, politics, theology and mathematics of the world's various human and non-human species.

Then they all got together and discussed this blueprint, among each other, and with an audience (of UCLA students) in attendance that had the opportunity to pose questions and make suggestions. After some revision of their thoughts, they all went away and wrote stories based on the world they created together.

The result is Medea: Harlan's World, edited by Harlan Ellison. My edition was published by Bantom Books in 1985 and feature illustrations by Kelly Freas and cartography by Diane Duane.

I think it's a great suggestion for the school because it shows how science fiction writers can and do consider real scientific facts, theories and extrapolations (at least as best they are aware of them at the time) across a range of disciplines in order to craft their stories.

Other than the book now perhaps being hard to find, the only possible issue I can think of is that the "Medea Seminar" was conducted in the mid-1970s, so some of the science could have been superseded by now. Of course, that's the risk with any science, not just that used in creating fiction, so if that were to be the case, that in itself could be a lesson for students about the nature of the scientific process.

Greg Bear

[R3s0lut3]

I gotta give my vote to Greg Bear. Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children would be especially appropriate for a biology class.

I suggest Ringworld Engineers...

[Randolpho]

What better way to indoctrinate young girls into the ways of Rishathra?





*P.S. please take this post with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

James P. Hogan

[SixFactor]

Voyage from Yesteryear.

No warp drive, no artificial gravity, no sub-space communication... but does assume advanced reproductive methods, useful (and non-rebellious) AI/robots, and presages a clash of cultures. Very strongly libertarian-leaning, and hard to put down.

His Giants series carries similar themes, but goes further to posit the mechanics of faster-than-light travel, how our moon and asteroid belt were created, with some von Daniken-esque elements thrown in as well. Higlhy entertaining.

Re:James P. Hogan

[sabt-pestnu]

I would add another work by Hogan:

Bug Park - what would it REALLY be like to be miniaturized? How "honey, I shrunk the kids" etc get it wrong.

I could almost recommend The Two Faces of Tomorrow as well, for its description of the limits of expert systems (common sense doesn't "just happen"), but it then goes off into something between first-contact, coming-of-age, and speculation on the development of AI. A good story, just not quite as "hard" as many of the other suggestions in this thread.

Larry Niven

[dmatos]

Lots of Niven works have good, hard science in them. Two that spring to mind are Smoke Ring and The Integral Trees, which take the idea of tides from Neutron Star as a starting point.

Larry Niven

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Niven generally tried to be scientifically correct, and his anthologies of short stories are fun.

The Integral Trees

[Sperbels]

The Integral Trees by Larry Niven is a great book for helping students conceptualize celestial mechanics. It's about a primitive society of humans (descendants of a mutineer space travelers) living inside of a vast zero-g ecosystem that are suddenly displaced by an small ecological disaster. Along their way they discover other societies who have adapted to varied living conditions throughout the world. Quite an interesting book.

Forward, Asimov, Sagan, Hawking

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert L. Forward's stuff is generally based on principles that is theoretically possible but has never been implemented. _Dragon's Egg_ actually contains a theory section in an appendix.

Isaac Asimov is also generally very good about not braking any science laws, but tends to deemphasize the science and focus on characters, as does any good story, sci fi or otherwise.

Asimov, Sagan, and Hawking have all written very accessible non-fiction material as well.

Scientifically accurate movies

[goombah99]

Comedy:
Real Genius had some excellent science advisors. The Laser he builds and the curves he draws to explain it are right for an Excimer Laser. The other stunts short of the grand finale actually happened at caltech so they are all true, even the contest entry winner.

Cinema Verite:
2001 set the high bar that has never been matched.

Primer is novel because it captures how scientist actually talk to each other, and make old equipment do new tricks. Also the time travel aspect of it actually would work--if you were a photon who divided into a particle and anti-particle--so it's fair to say this is the first time travel movie that's does not entirely violate physical laws or postulate a mechanism that does not exist. Of course the plot will make your head explode and humans are not photons.

Solaris has a lot going for it.

as for reading material: Larry Niven which makes poor adult sci fi, I found very entertaining as a high schooler. And it strives for good science where it can and still be compelling to read (rocket ships can't take forever to get somewhere!).

Re:Scientifically accurate movies

[perfessor multigeek]

Also, Brainstorm does a wonderful job with things like lab politics, funding issues, etc. Amazing movie, and one that I've heard cited by a number of scientists. Sneakers, while some of the tech is absurd, is otherwise a superb intro into some of the ins and outs of crypto, hacking, and the computer business; iow, wonderful, as long as a knowledgable tech geek is there to provide commentary.

A variant of this has already been discussed

[JBoelke]

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/31/22 31228

Re:A variant of this has already been discussed

[Meostro]

Or this thread from 2000 looking for a sci-fi reading list for a 13-year old girl.

Hilights include:
Asimov - Foundation series
Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide
Herbert - Dune
Card - Ender's Game
Clarke - 2001 or 2010
Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Heinlein - Juvenile series
Robinson - color Mars series (Red Mars, etc.)
Niven - Ringworld

Robinson has a good handle on science and human nature, in these stories people transform themselves to be better adapted to their environment versus the other way around - although there are some interesting ideas on terraforming in the series as well. I'd recommend most of Stephenson's stuff, but with a grian of salt. Yes, there's a sound basis for nanotech factories that create substances, but personally I don't believe they'll be creating magical islands that pop out of the ocean on cue anytime soon. Cryptonomicon is good for math and a little history, but The Diamond Age is really just entertainment (although it's in my top 3 favorite books).

Another series suggested in the current thread would be "anything by Robin Cook," which I have to support. There is always some stretching of the truth in SciFi, but this series stretches it just enough to make the story interesting without going overboard. Also, since these stories are generally medical thrillers, there is more biology than most other SciFi series would have.

Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov

[spaceyhackerlady]

Rendezvous with Rama, Imperial Earth and The Fountains of Paradise remain some of my favourite Clarke books, and some of my favourite books, period. The current edition of Glidepath, an otherwise-excellent novel, is marred by lousy OCR and incompetent proofreading.

For high-school students, some of Heinlein's juveniles might still fit the bill, even if they were written 50 years ago. Have Space Suit, Will Travel holds up remarkably well, while students can debate Podkayne of Mars. None of these authors were that good at female characters at first, though they got better with time - who can forget Bliss ("Don't I look human?") or Dors, who wasn't what she seemed, or Calindy, who tasted like honey?

I just finished re-reading the Foundation novels. They illustrate a couple of the most important ideas in science fiction: if it's happened before, it will happen again, and consider the consequences. The whole series is about the decline and fall of an empire. A galactic one, this time.

...laura

Fallen Angels

[jmorris42]

> I'd also recommend Fallen Angels.

I wouldn't recommend that one. Don't get me wrong, I loved it but it is very 'inside baseball' in that it was written more as a professional fanfic (contradiction in terms I know) than anything else. If you aren't A) a long time SciFi fan and B) either a convention going fan or have studied enough to follow most of the inside jokes you aren't likely to enjoy the book. And the politically incorrect themes pervading the book would get any teacher recommending it sacked in most jurisdictions.

Re:Fallen Angels

[superpenguin]

Agreed. It's an enjoyable book, but definitely quite a lot of in-jokes and that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest, while I did enjoy reading it, I felt a little bit uncomfortable reading it, as it felt rather self-indulgent on the part of the authors. There were places where I felt very much like the 4th wall was coming down pretty hard. And yeah, very politically incorrect.

Re:Fallen Angels

[lone bear]

Point taken and accepted. But with the caveat of the original poster wanting stories with good science, which this story has.

Re:Fallen Angels

[techno-vampire]

At LACon II, back in '84, Larry and Jerry auctioned off the right to be a character in the book, with the authors consulting with the winners on personality and, if needed, way of dying. The proceeds went to paying off the mortgage on the LASFS clubhouse and the book they eventually wrote was Fallen Angels. That's why all the "in jokes" and references. A good friend of mine first learned about LASFS by reading that book and getting curious.

Tau Zero

[mathgenius]

Very exciting SF book that uses relativistic time/length contraction. Mind-blowing.
Simon.

Niven, Pournelle, Barnes - Niven especially

[DoctorFrog]

The team of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and sometimes Stephen Barnes have produced several books/series which intelligently use ecological themes.

"Legacy of Heorot" and "Beowulf's Children" (Niven, Pournelle, Barnes) have as their prime villain (villain being defined as an entity whose aims clash with those of the humans) the grendels, a creature native to the planet a colonizing starship has reached. The colonists very sensibly initially occupy a single island which has relatively little native life on it due to a recent natural catastrophe; trouble arises when they become overconfident of their understanding of the local ecology, failing to realize that grendels act as their own alpha predators. By killing the local grendel they have ensured that *all* the local samlon, which would normally have been predated down to what might have been nuisance levels, will mature into grendels... A nice side issue is that one reason for the human failure to see the problem is that the best ecological experts have suffered "ice on the mind", a form of brain damage caused by expanding ice crystals in the brain during their arteficial hibernation - more grist for a biology class.

"The Mote in God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand" (Niven, Pournelle) explore a world wherein a quirk of biology curses the intelligent aliens with perpetual population explosion, and the resultant atomic wars, runaway pollution and intense resource deficit only make the Darwinian struggle more acute; by the time humans come into contact with them, the Moties are individually and in small kin-groups amazingly more capable than Homo sapiens, but at the same time they are crippled by an inability to see beyond their local self-interest. The physics of the series allows two principal Just-Accept-It items, an instantaneous-jump Faster-Than-Light drive and a universally-absorbent energy field, but even here there are credible limitations on the technoloy; Alderson drives can only jump between points of equal stellar flux, and Langston Fields eventually must dissipate the energy they absorb. What really makes the series especially suitable for your friend's purposes is that the authors' examination of how deep and subtle the effects of breeding patterns on intelligent creatures, including their effect on ethics, has not been equalled in any other SF series I know of.

"Footfall" (Niven, Pournelle) is another First Contact novel, and despite the slight dating afforded by its Cold War milieu still easily one of the best (I like to think of it as an Alternate History in which the USSR survived longer than it did AND we were visited by aliens). As in the first series, no liberties whatsoever have been taken with physics - no FTL drive, nor any FTK communication. As in the second, the best part of the book is seeing how the biological origins of the aliens (and the humans!) informs their thinking, language, decision making, ethics, and of course how they misunderstand each other. The Traveler Fithp are herd animals, you see, and that has all kinds of consequences; for example, when they accept surrender thay think the whole herd has surrendered. What we call individualists they call rogues, i.e. insane, and they are not at all prepared to deal with a race where rogues approach being the norm; a resistance by a few humans is seen as a betrayal by the whole populace. The misunderstandings span large and small. For example, they *really* believe in law and order, including one of the characteristics they (nominally) share with us - they mate for life! It's really a good read, full of fast-paced action as well as some solid philosohical meat.

It's a little unclear whether you are only looking for SF based on biological themes or more general science is good; in either case Niven is the powerhouse of this team, and his solo work abounds with insight into physics (especially astrophysics) and ecology. The Ringworld series ("Ringworld", "The Ringworld Engineers", "Ringworld Throne" and "Ringworld's Children") are mostly cited for the physics of the Rin

Re:Niven, Pournelle, Barnes - Niven especially

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Speaking of ecology- the Ecotopia series from the 1970s is *very* relevant now, as the reality of alternative fuels economics threatens to split off Cascadia from the rest of the country.

Re:Bob Forward

[maxume]

Does he write with Lurch Back?

Jules Verne...

[sevenfactorial]

Jules Verne documents his science pretty obsessively, Cavorite notwithstanding.

On the other hand, your not going to make friends with many young people forcing them to read his prose.

Why fiction, specifically?

[pclminion]

There are other non-textbook science-related books which aren't fictional. For instance Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," Greene's "The Elegant Universe," Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps," or the various and sundry works about Feynman's life.

Then there's Lederman with "The God Particle," "Chaos" by Gleick, or if you're really into torturing yourself, "A New Kind of Science" by Wolfram.

There are plenty of good sci-fi works that are pertinent to real science, but I wouldn't limit myself only to fiction.

Sagan's "Contact"

[behindthewall]

Aside from being a wonderful story, it seems tailor made for the audience: A strong female protagonist, who is a scientist. A lot of discussion still -- after a couple of decades -- relevant, and well framed, with regard to the role of science in society. The sense of discovery and hope that permeates a strong, scientific drive. A good counterbalancing element of scientific rigor.

And lots of "real" science, where the speculation is extrapolation based on what is currently known and suspected, and not "fairies and purple sunsets".

One thing that causes me a little concern in making suggestions for a school population is that any number of the better stories deal with all aspects of social relationships -- although many avoid cheaply going after extensive graphical descriptions. I don't see a problem with this, personally, but a teacher picking reading assignments may need to consider it based on policy, politics, parental expectations, etc.

Vernor Vinge

[jfedor]

A Deepness in the Sky

Re:Vernor Vinge

[argent]

I loved both A Deepness in the Sky and Fire Upon the Deep, and Deepness is the better choice of that pair... it only rarely bends known physical law.

The stories in his nearer-term Fairmont High universe (Rainbow's End, Fast Times at Fairmont High) are practically ideal, with so much of the action centering around a future high school.

True Names is also interesting, though somewhat dated now, since it's the earliest story I know of to play with the concept of 'cyberspace' (called 'the other plane' in that story).

Re:Bob Forward

[alienmole]

No, but he sometimes writes with Lurch's brother, Rock.

D'oh!

[Peter Trepan]

Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, was the voyage through the universe documentary done in conjunction with PBS. Contact is the novel.

Whoops. Wish I could edit that.

Near Future Hard SciFi, rather than Military SciFi

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Charles Stroud, or Cory Doctorow.

Both are very much "10 years from now" writers, and so might be easier to read than other HardSci Fi, which tends to run to the Military Scifi, IMNSHO

Watch out for "controversial" content

[wikdwarlock]

Most sci-fi books I can think of, even the hard sf ones, often feature sexuality, swearing, and violence. While I am of the personal opinion that these are all parts of the real world, from which we should NOT protect our children, most high school principals, school boards, and legal counsel, will be quite squeamish around these topics. Short stories by someone like Asimov might be a bit more appropriate simply because they don't contain AS MUCH of the scary things that longer novels may have. Make sure anything picked for students has been fully vetted by the principal, superintendent, school board, etc. If those administrators aren't willing to fight for the inclusion of the sci-fi material in the classroom, drop it. It's not something I'd risk my job and career for.

Re:Watch out for "controversial" content

[durdur]

Depends on where you live and what kind of school it is. But if you are going to start exposing students to literature, they will run into themes and topics of the type you mention - many schools at least where I am are ok with this if the text also has literary merit. Romeo and Juliet, for example, has more than a bit of sex, violence and swearing.

I hate modern schools...

[Ritchie70]

... and I'm not even that old.

If students need extra credit in a science class, they should be doing something science related. Perhaps a nice research paper? Or something involving slicing up recently deceased animals?

I'm sorry, but nobody past about second grade should get extra credit for just reading a book.

If you really want a key component of the assignment to be them reading something, how about just telling them, in general, to write a book report about a book with a science-related theme, and the book they select must be approved by the teacher in advance. Then be a real SOB about approving the book, if necessary.

I only just found out last night that when my HS Junior says "took notes" in class what he means is "teacher gave us a copy of a PowerPoint, then proceeded to read it to us while we pretended to look at it on our laptops." I now understand why, when he tells us "took notes" in class, and we then ask "about what, exactly?" he, more often than not, cannot answer.

"juveniles"

[steveha]

Robert Heinlein wrote a whole string of novels that were intended for the young-adult audience; these are generally called his "juveniles". I recommend them all; even the ones that are a bit weak have enough merit to be worth reading at least once.

By far the best of Heinlein's juveniles was Citizen of the Galaxy, where the main character winds up transitioning from one cultural milieu to another no less than three times over the course of the book. I read and re-read that book and I never get tired of it.

Jerry Pournelle wrote a book called Starswarm that is pretty much a juvenile in the Heinlein tradition, and I recommend this as well. Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield together wrote another book called Higher Education that I would also recommend, although it's at least PG-13, so you might want to read it before you give it to a kid (to make sure you want that kid to read it).

steveha

Greg Bear and Catherine Asaro

[Shirlockc]

Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio was vetted by my friend who's a Ph.D. in molecular biology and virology. It read well and certainly falls under the science + fiction category. If memory serves, Catherine Asaro has a Ph.D. herself in physics. Her Skolian series has romantic themes as well as hard sci fi plot lines.

HHGTTG

[Ecuador]

Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy should be mandatory reading material.
If you think it is not entirely scientifically accurate, it is only because of the improbability drive after-effects. They should fade away as bistro-math is becoming mainstream...

Charles Sheffield

[superpenguin]

In particular, I would recommend the "Jupiter" series of young adult novels. These include "Higher Education" (co-authored with Jerry Pournelle), "Putting Up Roots", "The Cyborg From Earth", and "The Billion Dollar Boy." I have read and enjoyed the first three mentioned, and I'll occasionally pick one up if I want a quicker read. There are also other books not by Sheffield in this series, including at least one each by Pournelle and James P. Hogan. There may be others, too.

This is not really a series in the conventional sense of the word, as there isn't a lot of continuity between the books. I haven't read them recently enough to be sure, but I think the three that I read are likely all in the same universe, and there is certainly some continuity with some of his adult novels, but they are all self-contained stories with different characters. The conception of the "Jupiter" series is simply a line of hard sci-fi novels for young adults.

These were the books that immediately came to mind when I saw the article headline, but I have this sneaking suspicion that boys would probably enjoy them a little more, although there are certainly some strong female characters that I recall. Also, there is some probably PG-13 stuff in some of them, but not gratuitous, so it's probably okay for high-schoolers.

Orion's Arm

[nanosquid]

Have a look at Orion's Arm:

Orion's Arm is a bold new shared worldbuilding and creative writing project, creating and exploring a new vision of the future of humanity and other sentient beings, ten thousand years hence.

Our goal is to create a dramatic far-future universe that is internally consistent and abides as much as possible with the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Thus matter cannot travel faster than light, matter and energy are conserved, no evolved humanoid aliens have been discovered, future ultratech social issues are likely to be very different to those of today, and so on. We embrace speculative ideas like drexlerian assemblers, mind uploads, posthuman intelligences, femtotech, magnetic monopoles, wormholes, as it is proposed that future sciences, technologies, and developments will make these possible. And we attempt a logical explanation for even the most fantastic-seeming elements in OA. We aim to paint a future that is plausible at every level, from the scientific to the social to the psychological.

They're not going to get everything right, but they think about and discuss physical plasubility.

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

[himself]

For an all-girls school? Pfft, I can't believe no one has yet mentioned Larry Niven's classic boy meets girl, boy can't impregnate girl story, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex":

          http://www.larryniven.org/stories/Man_of_Steel_Wom an_of_Kleenex.shtml

I would suggest...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest a funny little book called "What Einstein told his cook". It's little physics and science stories involved with cooking or everyday living. It's very interesting.

peeps

[Derek]

"Peeps" by Scott Westerfield has lots of interesting bits about parasites.

Politics and character in Niven, Pournelle, et al

[perfessor multigeek]

That is one of the best posts I've ever seen on Slashdot. detailed, useful, well-written.

But...

Much though I respect Niven and his crowd for their engineering, as pedagogical tools, they are crippled by their handling of human beings. Like Heinlein, but to an even greater degree, that whole cluster of writers is reliably anti-democracy, vastly sexist, and contemptuous of any human worldview but their own. Like Crichton, anybody whose philosophy differs from their male-centric techno-libertarian/protofascist (!)* creed is cowardly, probably homosexual (the horror!) and intellectually bankrupt. Women are sex objects or Heinleinesque cartoon superwomen, usually "coincidentally" extremely young and pretty, etc.

Now, as a male techno-libertarian myself, with my own hyper-cute intellectual superwoman of a girlfriend, I find this stuff really annoying.

Yeah, the Mote books are fascinating and engrossing. But did the only human civilization worthy of respect have to be a Czarist, totalitarian, testosterone fantasyland of uniforms and commands and Very Big Guns?

I have recommended their books before, putting them forward as works like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, where one must live with the bad to get the good, and alienated those who I recommended them to. Personally, I find myself turning to works like mid-period Brunner or Delany or the Alliance/Union/Compact books of C.J. Cherryh. All of those are just as smart, technologically fascinating, but are simply less, well, adolescent than Niven and his crowd.

Do I feel that your recommendations are wrong? No. But best that we note their failings along with their strengths. And I want to note that, oddly enough, in my experience, the farther Niven veers from current and highly specific technology, the more open-minded his characterizations become. So, predicably, Lucifer's Hammer is terrible, from its pro-fission reactor idiocies to the explicit polemics, while Ringworld acknowledges complexity and even encompasses a bit of witty satire.

* I am well aware of the seeming contradiction of my locution, "techno-libertarian/protofascist". Ain't so. Both states, as seen in their books, are variations on "guys like me must be in charge, everyone else is contemptable". The only difference is that when they are writing about far away worlds, they fantasize about the benevolent despotism that "should" be imposed while in writing about near-term Earth, they retreat to truculent rejection of all government or democracy as self-evident tools of the inferior masses "we" are trying to get free of. Neither, may I note, has the sophistication of the considered and explicit libertarianism of works like the Tom Paine Maru books that try to figure out political approaches that respect all people.

Tales of Pirx the Pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

By Stansilaw Lem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Pirx_the_Pil ot

Ecotopia

[perfessor multigeek]

I agree but I strongly recommend reading them in order, starting with Ecotopia Emerging, and then, Ecotopia. Callenbach has some serious politicial and technological missteps in Ecotopia, and it helps if you start with the book written later. Also, if anybody wants to know more, he has now built quite a career on his non-fiction explorations of these same concepts.

Cascadia forever!

-Rustin

Pournelle's solo effort?!?!?

[mr_pins]

>Pournelle's solo effort "Lucifer's Hammer", about the lead up to and aftermath of a comet impact, is well worth a read.

I have Lucifer's Hammer on my desk right now and the cover says quite clearly: "LARRY NIVEN AND JERRY POURNELLE (Authors of the bestseller FOOTFALL)"

I am not aware of *ANY* good book Pournelle has written on his own.

Re:Pournelle's solo effort?!?!?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Not having the book to hand at work, I looked on Amazon. Seems it was a solo effort by both of them and a joint effort, if you look at the first three entries.

I do so beg your imperial smugness' pardon for being so unworthy and actually having fucking work to do.

Science outside the classroom

[Black Marlin]

You might suggest looking at cooking as an entree. There are plenty of books like What Einstein Told His Cook or Cookwise that apply science to the every day. Watching Alton Brown's Good Eats probably won't bother them much.

Far Future stuff

[Chrontius]

Singularity Sky by Stross - pretty far out, but firm; they allow loophole-based FTL, but explain stuff that's currently being researched rather well.

Orion's Arm stuff -- this is the hardest of hard scifi I've ever seen, but most of it is incredibly far-future.

Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Stephenson are both pretty firm, but have more tech than science stuff.

Contact, the movie based on a Carl Sagan book, is some fo the most scientific of science fiction; Buckaroo Banzai in the Eighth Dimension is also resoundingly scientific -- especially odd but appropriate for a parody of the genre.

Real Science by a SF Author

[hf256]

While I understand that it doesn't meet the exact definition of the question asked, I remember reading a couple of books by Asimov that covered Physics and especially Quantum Physics in a very readable style. Of course Google works for stuff that you've forgotten -- Go to http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalog ue.html and search for NONFICTION. It covers areas beyond just Physics!

Hal Clement

[PeterJFraser]

Old, 1950's, Did his best to be scientifically accurate. Most famous novel: Mission of Gravity

Robin Cook. Michael Chrichton.

[techstar25]

In my high school, a private Catholic school, we were required to read several books of our choice over the summer. There were several sci-fi choices that fell under the "Science" category, which included Robin Cook, and Michael Crichton, whose sci-fi books typically are based on real science (as opposed to say, Stephen King or John Saul, whose sci-fi is rooted in the supernatural). The point is just to get kids thinking about science.

Peter Watts

[Bahumat]

Dark, hard science fiction from that man. Check him out at http://www.rifters.com/

Starfish, Blindsight, and a few other titles, all with tons of hard science, all with good stories (and dark) to match.

Larry Niven

[zizzo]

Ringworld by Larry Niven is pretty good. Obviously, he takes liberties but Ringworld inspired a body of work focused on if it is actually possible and what it would take to make it happen. That sounds to me like a good educational opportunity. Some of his ideas are also complete bunk and sorting them out also seems like a nice way to discuss the text.

Amazon Link: http://tinyurl.com/39xh3o
Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

New media

[Kizor]

These aren't really applicable to schoolkids, but the bulk of this post's readers are looking for some good tips for themselves anyway. I recommend Schlock Mercenary , that rarest of beasts - a hard-scifi webcomic. It doesn't really pay enough attention to physics to be a learning tool, but sticks to its rules quite well. There's a bit of potty humor involved from time to time, but the associated forums are the only place where you can mention a 30-inch sniper rifle and people won't bat an eye in assuming that you're talking about the BORE DIAMETER.

The anime (not the manga) Planetes is remarkable: it has not just silent vacuums and accurate zero-g modelling, but everything down to invisible lasers. And adult diapers in spacesuits.

Re:New media

[Myself]

You might also enjoy Irregular Webcomic, which is written by a physics Ph.D and illustrated with LEGO minifigs. The subjects are weird and hilarious, and when there's a joke you might not get, the author provides annotations. Lately the annotations have gotten quite broad, catering to non-English-native readers, but in the beginning they only appeared for truly obscure jokes.

I went back to strip 1 and read the whole archive. It took me over a week, and I felt like I'd just attended a semester of school. The funny thing was, I truly wanted to learn all that stuff, because it was helping me appreciate humor. I think that's one of the strongest motivators ever.

Hal Clement

[sweet reason]

all of his works start from a basic physical principle and develop a story from there. for example, life at high temperature, under high gravity, or in a near-critical atmosphere. he is careful about technical accuracy, but writes good SF adventures. he does not throw in fantasy elements, as some of the other authors mentioned here sometimes do.

Re:David Brin - MSc Physics, PhD Phil., Hugo, Nebu

[cjp]

I thought "Earth" was very interesting. Bit preachy, but that's Brin ;-)

School is damned easy these days

[/dev/trash]

Extra credit for reading????

In summary

[perfessor multigeek]

Great post but kinda hard to read.

Summary points:

- much of the "science" in Crichton-based movies is actually, at best, superficially plausable handwaving.

- statistics handling in movies in general is kinda painful, with crucial misuse of basic terms and principles.

- the movie of I. Robot is crrrrrap!

- if you really want scientifically plausible s.f. movies and television, then Firefly/Serentity is spot-on, both in technology and plotting that comes from actual adult concerns with ambiguous and untidy endings.

Re:In summary

[Ganesh999]

"Great post but kinda hard to read." Yes, sorry about that. My first Slashdot post; if I'd hit "Preview" I'd have noticed that all my formatting had disappeared. Cheers, C

TEST

[Ganesh999]

And again!

Formatting, i.e. paragraph separation, disappears after I preview. What's going on?

Will try POT instead of the default HTML setting.

C

david said, ``Don't forget Hal Clement''

[WillAdams]

::applause:

And concur.

His collection _Space Lash_ (originally published as _Small Changes_) was a book I read and re-read as a youth.

William

Canadian SF author

[NeilTheStupidHead]

Robert J. Sawyer is one of my favourite authors (and an amazing speaker too). One of the reasons I enjoy his work is that much of it is very plausable and thought provoking, often dealing with the moral and ethical consequences of the characters' actions. Specifically, the "Hominids", "Humans", "Hybrids" triolgy and the stand-alone novel "Calculating God" are among my favourites.

Another excellent book is "The Truth Machine" by James Halperin, which is available as a free download here. Great for those cash-conscious (read: starved) schools or readers out there!