But you're twisting things around to say that if our current understanding of the universe is wrong, then FTL is possible. Duh, of course. But no experiments violate relativity, so to make predictions based on relativity being wrong would be unscientific. If I wanted to make a prediction about future technology that had a better chance of being right, I'd use relativity, not throw it out. Do you see what I'm saying? I'd predict a spaceship, maybe a variation on a Bussard ramjet, that can travel at close to light speed, before I'd predict a FTL spaceship. Again, IF relativity is right (an assumption which is not the same thing as using the model as the definition), we'll never accelerate a spaceship faster than lightspeed. To posit such in a novel would require tossing out relativity -- which could be a very interesting part of the novel if you replaced it with a bigger and better theory that would also meet all of the experimental data we currently have. James P. Hogan did something like this in The Genesis Machine, building a new science on top of the old, and it was a pretty interesting book.
He did use the "ansible" however, for FTL communication. With such a device one could communicate not only across space, but also across time, an issue which Card avoided entirely. To make his interesting story work, he did need such a device, and it's difficult to see how to tell "Ender's Game" without it, at least anything close to its published form.
I think you're being unfairly broad here. I'm a graduate of Clarion West, a published sf novelist, a professor of astronomy, and I think this Mundane Manifesto is pretty foolish, too. I don't use FTL, and my aliens are not humanoid.
To be fair to them, I think they're really reacting to how fantasies like Star Wars have become the public perception of science fiction. I think that's a valid concern.
There are probably a lot of our ancestors, who lived as slaves, suffered from polio, endured religious persection, starvation, and more, who would see our world today as a utopia. Here, it's been over a century since we've had real war in the continental US. I have so much to eat I have to ration myself, lest I affect my health (but there's always liposuction, too). I can, anytime from nearly anyplace, talk to any of my friends. I can fly to China in less than a day. I can download porn into the privacy of my own home.
It's true they'd likely adjust quickly, then begin to complain about all the real and serious problems like we do, but the world really is a better place than it was 100 or 1000 or 10000 years ago for the vast majority of human beings alive today. That's the direct result of better technology, as well as more advanced political structures.
I'm a hard sf writer, and I agree with your basic premise. The Mundane Manifesto has made several claims that I would regard as controversial, and has followed them into realms that I consider unsupportable. What's makes one thing "better" than another? Someone's specific evaluation criteria, and I don't agree with theirs, or their conclusions.
Note, also, Haldeman in his fine book The Forever War did not emply FTL. The ships were sub-lightspeed, but close enough for relativistic time dilation to be important. That book was where I first learned the concept, and it was great for doing that. It was also great as a Vietnam commentary, and a response to Starship Troopers and other pro-military work.
It's not fair at all to claim that Einstein "rejected" special relativity. It's an excellent, well-tested theory that explains experiments quite accurately within the boundaries in which its assumptions hold true. It doesn't apply to accelerating reference frames or gravitational fields (which are equivalent in general relativity). Einstein expanded special relativity into general relativity by developing ways to deal with non-inertial frames. Again, I would describe this work as an expansion rather than a rejection.
It's pretty amusing to me that Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter and knew very, very little about computers. He had a vision, and he followed it, and created an engaging universe to share. He certainly didn't set out, as the Mundane Manifesto would imply, to write something based on current trends in computer science.
Stories in which "anything" is possible are fantasy, and yes, they can be a lot of fun and good. I would disagree with the notion that "science fiction is meant to be fun." It certainly can be fun, but there are difficult books out there, thought-provoking books, that are great books but far from fun. I doubt I'd call 1984 a fun book, but I didn't think I wasted my time reading it. Some subjects, to tackle them with all the power possible, benefit greatly from moving away from the world of today and embracing speculation.
Great science fiction requires both great writing/characters as well as ideas that provide a sense of wonder impossible to achieve in the world around us today.
It's got to have the fiction part down, but Shakespeare did that half a millenium ago. Science fiction needs to have an extra "pop," in my opinion. That pop can be a cautionary note about the dangers of technology, as the Mundanes seem to prefer, or an eye-opening extraopolation about some of the amazing possibilities in our future that the Mundanes probably would call "unlikely" and cross off their list.
Check out my first novel, Star Dragon, which came out in paperback earlier this year from Tor. I have a PhD in astrophysics.
The other current sf writer with a PhD in astronomy is Alastair Reynolds, and I like his work.
There are quite a few physicists with PhDs who write great books (Benford and Brin come to mind) and some in other fields like Computer Science (Vernor Vinge). And there are a few others who don't have doctorates, but write very good hard sf (Joe Haldeman, Greg Bear, Syne Mitchell, and Wil McCarthy). You do have to look around a little harder, but that's the name of the game, isn't it.
I agree with this very much, and it is one major reason why I love science fiction and often prefer it over mainstream. I want to confront situations that test the soul but cannot happen in the current world, or the forseeable near future. Thinking about such things is interesting, and mind-expanding.
I like there to be real science in the science fiction, or it may as well be labelled fantasy, which is a fine thing on its own, but different in flavor. I think science fiction can serve an important secondary purpose in helping to explain our increasingly technological world, and to explain the tools that are used in creating it. I mean, in a romantic comedy, we expect all the laws of physics to work, and they should work in science fiction, too. The Force in Star Wars is magic, and mixing magic with the tropes of science fiction (robots, spaceships), has created the situation that the Mundanes are responding to.
I agree very much with your first point. However, FTL is more of a fantasy than most other science-based predictions one can make, so I must disagree with your second point. There are some creative ways to cheat on it, but our current ideas make it impossible to accelerate ourselves faster than the speed of light. It really is impossible, in the true definition of the word, if special relativity, a very well-tested theory, is correct.
A good, creative writer can work within that constraint, and still have interstellar travel, aliens, and the like. Special relativity also provides you with time dilation, which makes light speed irrelevent to passangers onboard a relativistic ship. If you could travel at lightspeed, to you, no time would pass and you could travel anywhere instantaneously.
It's also important to note an often-overlooked fact associated with FTL. If you can go FTL, relativity says you can travel backward in time and violate causality. I'd be interested in seeing a story with FTL travel that actually handled time correctly. [Gregory Benford's excellent Timescape does this by using tachyons to communicate through time, and the Mundanes actually claim this book as one of their own, which I find amusing since it would seem to violate their manifesto.]
Unfortunately, true. Science-positive, forward-looking science fiction is still being published, but it tends to be the exception by far. Why should science fiction focuse solely on the cautionary tale? Why should that be considered better, as by the Mundanes? I got a great review at scifi.com for my first novel, and got credit for avoiding a bleak future:
By setting his tale five centuries from now, and positing another 500-year transition awaiting his explorers, he implicitly sets up a timeline of never-ending change, a Utopia explosion. As Stearn says, life just keeps getting "better and better.... And it'll be better still in the future." This kind of radical optimism is what once drove the core of SF, and it's refreshing to see this narrative engine flaring once more.
I guess the last sentence is basically your point, which I agree with.
I hate the word "mundane" to start with, as sf fans have warped the meaning of the word to indicate those who have little vision or imagination, so I'm already biased against this "movement." Taking an objective step back, I still think it's full of crap. It's possible to play with the entire universe and stay within the realm of known science, which is something I try hard to do myself. I've even been funded by the National Science Foundation to edit an anthology to be used in conjuction with astronomy classes.
I teach this stuff. I live this stuff. I'm a working scientist and a published science fiction writer, a big believer in the positive power of science and the positive power of fiction to educate, illuminate, and enlighten.
Sure, write some "mundane" science fiction, but don't pretend it's intrinsically better than anything else. Do recognize you've put yourself in a box that will limit the stories you can do, and will eliminate some perfectly wonderful stories containing very good hard science. I have to say I pretty much agree with Ian McDonald here in his criticisms.
If Ryman wants to be such a "realist" and limit himself to what is known, he and similarly-minded people should probably write mainstream and forget the future entirely. His guesses are going to be as unlikely as aliens visiting us tomorrow, and he's foolish to think otherwise. Robert Heinlein, a visionary writer to be sure, had his characters using slide rules as they flew from planet to planet. While I think we can still use some thoughtful stories about near-future cloning, I think elevating such tales above and beyond those extropolating into a future where interstellar travel is possible is clearly hubris.
My personal manifesto is to use only known science, or new science that doesn't violate known science. I enjoy fantasy as much as anyone, but it does irk me when writers don't understand enough science to write science fiction. Star Wars is a fantasy, and a good one, but it's not science fiction.
I pretty much agree with you. The National Geographic article, like most of the "Science of..." books out there, try to EXPLAIN with SCIENCE how the things in the movies/TV shows could be true rather than using science to show how they're silly fantasy. If you haven't visited the site, please check out www.badastronomy.com which is a wonderful educational debunking site run by an astronomer.
Just Niven, not Pournelle, on Ringworld. And yes, I think that would make an interesting movie. As I understand it, there was a lawsuit brought against Microsoft by Niven over Halo, and it was settled (I don't recall the details).
Still, the video game relies on the concept of a Ringworld very little. Also, gameplay != good movie watching, so they will have to work at this one. At this stage, I feel the appeal is simply in the name recognition.
...they'll lean heavily on Eric Nylund's novelizations, which are pretty good. You need additional backstory and characterization to make a decent script out of Halo, and these books provide it.
I am an astronomer, and a Hubble user, and it will break my heart too to see it burn. I'm still hopeful that it will be later rather than sooner thanks in part to the change to Griffin.
A good scientist will write a paper such that another scientist could reproduce what they did, more or less exactly. I advise my students to strive for this when writing their methods sections. A good referee will make a bad scientist/writer include these details before accepting a paper.
The headline could also read "Vast Majority of Scientists Ethical and Trustworthy."
Also, there's a difference between science and individual scientists. Any individual scientists who makes up data and gets the wrong answer will be found out eventually, and science will move on with the right answer. Sure, I'd be happier with 100% of scientists always doing the right thing, but I wonder what percentage of businessmen cheat on their taxes?
I do radio astronomy sometimes (VLA), and I always have to throw away data due to interference. Cell phone signals are a major part of this interference.
Humans on Earth DID live among other intelligent hominid species, neandtertals being the most recent and best know. They all died out in competition against us.
I'm a scientist who learned to love science early because of science fiction (e.g., Star Trek), and I'm also a published science fiction novelist, so I KNOW this. There's a big difference between inspiration and a waste of time, however. Star Wars can inspire, but Star Wars is a fantasy and has little or no science in it. I can make up a bunch of stuff at random and ask scientists to look at it, or we can look at some things that are actually based on some reasoning rather than entertainment value alone. We might as well talk about the science of Lord of the Rings, otherwise, which is perhaps a better analogy than the ones I initially proposed.
I agree with you, this is for a laugh, but I'm not really laughing. National Geographic is a serious magazine, usually, and they interviewed serious scientists. And it comes out like a joke.
I have no problem with fantasy. I like fantasy. I think it's pointless and dumb to ask scientists to comment on the "science" in a "fantasy."
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But you're twisting things around to say that if our current understanding of the universe is wrong, then FTL is possible. Duh, of course. But no experiments violate relativity, so to make predictions based on relativity being wrong would be unscientific. If I wanted to make a prediction about future technology that had a better chance of being right, I'd use relativity, not throw it out. Do you see what I'm saying? I'd predict a spaceship, maybe a variation on a Bussard ramjet, that can travel at close to light speed, before I'd predict a FTL spaceship. Again, IF relativity is right (an assumption which is not the same thing as using the model as the definition), we'll never accelerate a spaceship faster than lightspeed. To posit such in a novel would require tossing out relativity -- which could be a very interesting part of the novel if you replaced it with a bigger and better theory that would also meet all of the experimental data we currently have. James P. Hogan did something like this in The Genesis Machine, building a new science on top of the old, and it was a pretty interesting book.
He did use the "ansible" however, for FTL communication. With such a device one could communicate not only across space, but also across time, an issue which Card avoided entirely. To make his interesting story work, he did need such a device, and it's difficult to see how to tell "Ender's Game" without it, at least anything close to its published form.
I think you're being unfairly broad here. I'm a graduate of Clarion West, a published sf novelist, a professor of astronomy, and I think this Mundane Manifesto is pretty foolish, too. I don't use FTL, and my aliens are not humanoid.
To be fair to them, I think they're really reacting to how fantasies like Star Wars have become the public perception of science fiction. I think that's a valid concern.
There are probably a lot of our ancestors, who lived as slaves, suffered from polio, endured religious persection, starvation, and more, who would see our world today as a utopia. Here, it's been over a century since we've had real war in the continental US. I have so much to eat I have to ration myself, lest I affect my health (but there's always liposuction, too). I can, anytime from nearly anyplace, talk to any of my friends. I can fly to China in less than a day. I can download porn into the privacy of my own home.
It's true they'd likely adjust quickly, then begin to complain about all the real and serious problems like we do, but the world really is a better place than it was 100 or 1000 or 10000 years ago for the vast majority of human beings alive today. That's the direct result of better technology, as well as more advanced political structures.
I'm a hard sf writer, and I agree with your basic premise. The Mundane Manifesto has made several claims that I would regard as controversial, and has followed them into realms that I consider unsupportable. What's makes one thing "better" than another? Someone's specific evaluation criteria, and I don't agree with theirs, or their conclusions.
Note, also, Haldeman in his fine book The Forever War did not emply FTL. The ships were sub-lightspeed, but close enough for relativistic time dilation to be important. That book was where I first learned the concept, and it was great for doing that. It was also great as a Vietnam commentary, and a response to Starship Troopers and other pro-military work.
It's not fair at all to claim that Einstein "rejected" special relativity. It's an excellent, well-tested theory that explains experiments quite accurately within the boundaries in which its assumptions hold true. It doesn't apply to accelerating reference frames or gravitational fields (which are equivalent in general relativity). Einstein expanded special relativity into general relativity by developing ways to deal with non-inertial frames. Again, I would describe this work as an expansion rather than a rejection.
It's pretty amusing to me that Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter and knew very, very little about computers. He had a vision, and he followed it, and created an engaging universe to share. He certainly didn't set out, as the Mundane Manifesto would imply, to write something based on current trends in computer science.
Stories in which "anything" is possible are fantasy, and yes, they can be a lot of fun and good. I would disagree with the notion that "science fiction is meant to be fun." It certainly can be fun, but there are difficult books out there, thought-provoking books, that are great books but far from fun. I doubt I'd call 1984 a fun book, but I didn't think I wasted my time reading it. Some subjects, to tackle them with all the power possible, benefit greatly from moving away from the world of today and embracing speculation.
Great science fiction requires both great writing/characters as well as ideas that provide a sense of wonder impossible to achieve in the world around us today.
It's got to have the fiction part down, but Shakespeare did that half a millenium ago. Science fiction needs to have an extra "pop," in my opinion. That pop can be a cautionary note about the dangers of technology, as the Mundanes seem to prefer, or an eye-opening extraopolation about some of the amazing possibilities in our future that the Mundanes probably would call "unlikely" and cross off their list.
Check out my first novel, Star Dragon, which came out in paperback earlier this year from Tor. I have a PhD in astrophysics.
The other current sf writer with a PhD in astronomy is Alastair Reynolds, and I like his work.
There are quite a few physicists with PhDs who write great books (Benford and Brin come to mind) and some in other fields like Computer Science (Vernor Vinge). And there are a few others who don't have doctorates, but write very good hard sf (Joe Haldeman, Greg Bear, Syne Mitchell, and Wil McCarthy). You do have to look around a little harder, but that's the name of the game, isn't it.
I agree with this very much, and it is one major reason why I love science fiction and often prefer it over mainstream. I want to confront situations that test the soul but cannot happen in the current world, or the forseeable near future. Thinking about such things is interesting, and mind-expanding.
I like there to be real science in the science fiction, or it may as well be labelled fantasy, which is a fine thing on its own, but different in flavor. I think science fiction can serve an important secondary purpose in helping to explain our increasingly technological world, and to explain the tools that are used in creating it. I mean, in a romantic comedy, we expect all the laws of physics to work, and they should work in science fiction, too. The Force in Star Wars is magic, and mixing magic with the tropes of science fiction (robots, spaceships), has created the situation that the Mundanes are responding to.
I agree very much with your first point. However, FTL is more of a fantasy than most other science-based predictions one can make, so I must disagree with your second point. There are some creative ways to cheat on it, but our current ideas make it impossible to accelerate ourselves faster than the speed of light. It really is impossible, in the true definition of the word, if special relativity, a very well-tested theory, is correct.
A good, creative writer can work within that constraint, and still have interstellar travel, aliens, and the like. Special relativity also provides you with time dilation, which makes light speed irrelevent to passangers onboard a relativistic ship. If you could travel at lightspeed, to you, no time would pass and you could travel anywhere instantaneously.
It's also important to note an often-overlooked fact associated with FTL. If you can go FTL, relativity says you can travel backward in time and violate causality. I'd be interested in seeing a story with FTL travel that actually handled time correctly. [Gregory Benford's excellent Timescape does this by using tachyons to communicate through time, and the Mundanes actually claim this book as one of their own, which I find amusing since it would seem to violate their manifesto.]
Unfortunately, true. Science-positive, forward-looking science fiction is still being published, but it tends to be the exception by far. Why should science fiction focuse solely on the cautionary tale? Why should that be considered better, as by the Mundanes? I got a great review at scifi.com for my first novel, and got credit for avoiding a bleak future:
... And it'll be better still in the future." This kind of radical optimism is what once drove the core of SF, and it's refreshing to see this narrative engine flaring once more.
By setting his tale five centuries from now, and positing another 500-year transition awaiting his explorers, he implicitly sets up a timeline of never-ending change, a Utopia explosion. As Stearn says, life just keeps getting "better and better.
I guess the last sentence is basically your point, which I agree with.
I hate the word "mundane" to start with, as sf fans have warped the meaning of the word to indicate those who have little vision or imagination, so I'm already biased against this "movement." Taking an objective step back, I still think it's full of crap. It's possible to play with the entire universe and stay within the realm of known science, which is something I try hard to do myself. I've even been funded by the National Science Foundation to edit an anthology to be used in conjuction with astronomy classes.
I teach this stuff. I live this stuff. I'm a working scientist and a published science fiction writer, a big believer in the positive power of science and the positive power of fiction to educate, illuminate, and enlighten.
Sure, write some "mundane" science fiction, but don't pretend it's intrinsically better than anything else. Do recognize you've put yourself in a box that will limit the stories you can do, and will eliminate some perfectly wonderful stories containing very good hard science. I have to say I pretty much agree with Ian McDonald here in his criticisms.
If Ryman wants to be such a "realist" and limit himself to what is known, he and similarly-minded people should probably write mainstream and forget the future entirely. His guesses are going to be as unlikely as aliens visiting us tomorrow, and he's foolish to think otherwise. Robert Heinlein, a visionary writer to be sure, had his characters using slide rules as they flew from planet to planet. While I think we can still use some thoughtful stories about near-future cloning, I think elevating such tales above and beyond those extropolating into a future where interstellar travel is possible is clearly hubris.
My personal manifesto is to use only known science, or new science that doesn't violate known science. I enjoy fantasy as much as anyone, but it does irk me when writers don't understand enough science to write science fiction. Star Wars is a fantasy, and a good one, but it's not science fiction.
I pretty much agree with you. The National Geographic article, like most of the "Science of..." books out there, try to EXPLAIN with SCIENCE how the things in the movies/TV shows could be true rather than using science to show how they're silly fantasy. If you haven't visited the site, please check out www.badastronomy.com which is a wonderful educational debunking site run by an astronomer.
Just Niven, not Pournelle, on Ringworld. And yes, I think that would make an interesting movie. As I understand it, there was a lawsuit brought against Microsoft by Niven over Halo, and it was settled (I don't recall the details).
Still, the video game relies on the concept of a Ringworld very little. Also, gameplay != good movie watching, so they will have to work at this one. At this stage, I feel the appeal is simply in the name recognition.
...they'll lean heavily on Eric Nylund's novelizations, which are pretty good. You need additional backstory and characterization to make a decent script out of Halo, and these books provide it.
I am an astronomer, and a Hubble user, and it will break my heart too to see it burn. I'm still hopeful that it will be later rather than sooner thanks in part to the change to Griffin.
A good scientist will write a paper such that another scientist could reproduce what they did, more or less exactly. I advise my students to strive for this when writing their methods sections. A good referee will make a bad scientist/writer include these details before accepting a paper.
The headline could also read "Vast Majority of Scientists Ethical and Trustworthy."
Also, there's a difference between science and individual scientists. Any individual scientists who makes up data and gets the wrong answer will be found out eventually, and science will move on with the right answer. Sure, I'd be happier with 100% of scientists always doing the right thing, but I wonder what percentage of businessmen cheat on their taxes?
I do radio astronomy sometimes (VLA), and I always have to throw away data due to interference. Cell phone signals are a major part of this interference.
This is called an exoskeleton, not a "robot suit!"
Sheesh.
Humans on Earth DID live among other intelligent hominid species, neandtertals being the most recent and best know. They all died out in competition against us.
I'm a scientist who learned to love science early because of science fiction (e.g., Star Trek), and I'm also a published science fiction novelist, so I KNOW this. There's a big difference between inspiration and a waste of time, however. Star Wars can inspire, but Star Wars is a fantasy and has little or no science in it. I can make up a bunch of stuff at random and ask scientists to look at it, or we can look at some things that are actually based on some reasoning rather than entertainment value alone. We might as well talk about the science of Lord of the Rings, otherwise, which is perhaps a better analogy than the ones I initially proposed.
I agree with you, this is for a laugh, but I'm not really laughing. National Geographic is a serious magazine, usually, and they interviewed serious scientists. And it comes out like a joke.
I have no problem with fantasy. I like fantasy. I think it's pointless and dumb to ask scientists to comment on the "science" in a "fantasy."