One of my running themes — here on this blog, in the reviews I’ve written of SF novels and stories in recent years, in my essay for Gary Westfahl awaiting publication, and in my book if I manage to write it — is that some of the ideals and presumptions of even the best science fiction of the 20th century are turning out to be totally wrong. The standard examples are: there are plenty of reasons to think that ESP, telepathy, precognition, all of that, is bunk, mere wishful thinking based on infantile perceptions of the world; and notions of easy interstellar travel that beg questions about how such travel will take place (given physics), and whether there are actually habitable planets out there we can just drop in on and build a colony. The principle reason here is that science has advanced greatly over the past century. Some of what science fiction might have legitimately speculated about 70 years ago is now out of bounds, if we’re being honest. (An earlier example: hollow Earth.) These presumptions persist in pop sci-fi — TV and movies, especially including Trek and Wars — and of course they appeal to the popular imagination in exactly the same way all those psychological biases do, that lure us into magical thinking and conspiracy theories. It’s fun to watch spaceships zooming from planet to planet in 5 minutes, and pretty to think it might be possible with technology advanced enough, but it’s unlikely to ever happen.
A few science fiction writers have realized this, the standard example, again, being Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2015 novel AURORA. But pop sci-fi, and even many published works, still attract more readers by appealing to intuitively thrilling but discredited notions.
Here’s an example of a scientist pointing out problems with one traditional science fiction, and pop sci-fi, presumption.
Big Think, Adam Frank, 11 Dec 2024: Galactic civilizations may be impossible. Here’s why., subtitled “The problem for galactic-scale civilizations comes down to two numbers.”
• For galactic-scale civilizations to exist in our Universe, they would have to overcome two major hurdles related to physics and biology. • One is the sheer distance between each society. The other is biological life span. • Astronomer Adam Frank outlines the difficulties with each problem.
In more detail:
The problem for galactic-scale civilizations comes down to two numbers. The first is the time it takes to cross between the stars (we will call this the “crossing time”: Tc). Considering Tc forces us to deal with another number, which is a fundamental constant of nature: the speed of light (represented by the letter “c”). As Einstein taught us, the speed of light represents the upper limit for velocities in the Universe. Nothing can travel faster than c, which is about 700 million miles per hour. While this may seem pretty fast (it is), the distances between the stars are so great that it still takes centuries to hundreds of millennia for light to reach us from all but the nearest stars. That means the time for a ship to reach across reasonable fractions of the galaxy must also be measured in centuries to hundreds of millennia. If your ship travels slower than light speed (which is what we will be stuck with for a while), then your crossing time (Tc) is even longer.
And similarly for “generational time” Tg. The problem is straightforward: currently, people don’t live long enough to communicate, let alone conduct commerce, across interstellar distances.
You see my point by now. All things that make a society a single structured whole become impossible on galactic length scales unless the members of that society are remarkably long-lived (and there even may be biophysical reasons why this is impossible for “thinking” creatures). The distances between the stars are so vast that only collections of very nearby stars might possibly form loose cultural alliances, i.e. societies. And even these will have their problems because of relativistic time dilation, which occurs when individuals traveling at light speed experience the flow of time differently from those on their destination planets.
Yes, yes; most science fiction fans (especially of pop sci-fi) will say that *this doesn’t matter* — it’s just a story! And that, I claim is an expression of the narrative bias, that reality must act in accordance with the human perceptions of cause and effect, of beginning-middle-end, and that understanding the reality of the universe we live in is irrelevant, even bothersome. Thus the vast majority of science fiction stories are stories familiar from our local history — good guys and bad guys fighting it out — superficially translated into intergalactic settings.
But again, there are science fiction writers who understand these problems. Some have reacted by avoiding the problems. There was a Mundane science fiction movement in the early 2000s, that proposed to simply avoid any such implausible topics. (I’m surprised how lengthy this Wikipedia article it is, looking at it right now; I’ll have to go through it.) But a few ambitious writers take these issues into account and imagine futures in which interstellar empires do exist, but among planets that contact each other only once every few centuries. The writer who comes to mind is Alastair Reynolds. Especially, as I recall, his novel HOUSE OF SUNS, and his novella TURQUOISE DAYS that I reviewed here. And writers like Gregory Benford and Kim Stanley Robinson have confined their visions to the relatively plausible.
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Let’s confine political items to short bullet points, for this evening.
- The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein, 13 Dec 2024: Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters, subtitled “Small-town America voted heavily in his favor—but the policies he’s pledged won’t reward that faith.” [Comment: well, of course. He will gradually step back from all his campaign promises. Will any of his supporters realize that none of his promises have come true? I’m guessing they won’t mind, because…]
- Hegseth backtracks. LGBTQNation, 13 Dec 2024: Pete Hegseth walks back his opposition to gay people serving in the military, subtitled “Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee is also changing his tune on women serving in combat roles.” [Comment: it’s as if Republicans have principles only until it prevents them from winning elections or receiving political appointments. If he truly believes gays and women have no place in the military, why doesn’t he say so? I would guess: Saying so drives up his appeal among conservatives. Which isn’t quite enough to win Senate confirmation. And principles give way to power.]
- JMG, 12 Dec 2024: Ohio GOP Bill Forces Hospitals To Prescribe Horse Paste [Comment: why not force hospitals to conduct voodoo rituals if that’s what their patients demand?]
- Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 12 Dec 24: Religious-Right Financier Art Ally Dismisses Climate Change As ‘A Bunch Of Nonsense’ [Comment: Whenever I see a piece like this, I try to understand *why* such a person would think such. Here: a deep superstition that “God is in control”, and misunderstanding of how data works (i.e. the concept of noise).]
