Science in my Fiction

[Omphalos]

A blog about getting ahead of the science curve again in SF. New, but has an interesting concept and appears to be well traveled already.

http://crossedgenres.com/simf/

[A Thing of Eternity]

Thanks Omph, I enjoyed that. Maybe someone should email it to the hack.

[SandChigger]

I Tittered [sic] at them yesterday:

@SciInMyFi Dune unfortunately went "McFastFood" ten years ago when that #hack @TheKJA took control of it. That's why we call it #McDune.
about 18 hours ago via web in reply to SciInMyFi

[Trang]

Great article. Sci-fi will continue though, the crap floats to the top and washs away, while the foundations continue on, surprised he didnt mention Herbert in his troup of likes.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Herbert would have been a decent example of how you can write stories that have little or nothing to do with the science, but are still rooted in well thought out science.

[Omphalos]

You should read Herbert's short fiction. Lots and lots of it is hard SF.

Here's a link to all the Herbert stories I have archived in the OBR. A bunch of the links (to the collections, actually, and for some reason the covers) will not work properly because I'm about to update the board; they will work with the new board, but not the old one. But you can see how many of Herberts short stories have a hard-sf edge to them. he actually did a lot of good work in that subgenre.

http://www.omphalosbookreviews.com/inde ... herbert/NA

[A Thing of Eternity]

Yeah, I've read most of his shorts, definitely some hard-SF in there, but I think his main impact was by far in his stories that were not hard-SF, (but not shit-science-SF) and that would have made a good example for the article - that knowing the science and putting thought into it doesn't mean you're going to end up with stories that are dry and focus on technical details.

[Omphalos]

Actually, I think that Herbert, probably more than other writers, used his short stories as proving grounds for the things that he put into his novels. When it came to the science he used the short stories to figure out what the world would look like after the invention of some scientific concept/principle. Then he took that vision and used it in a novel, but just eliminated most of the scientific speculation. Without those short stories, I think his novels would have really looked quite different. So I think it's hard to say that Herbert wrote any stories that did not have a heavy scientific backdrop. Not even Dune escapes this, as he worked the science behind so many things like cloning, psi powers, fold space, the chemistry of addiction and many others in other venues first, then just pared away the scientific detail when he wrote Dune.

Certainly this is arguable, but Im certain that when it comes to his novels I can find an example of hard-sf speculation in the short stories for any "non-scientific" concept that you can identify.

[A Thing of Eternity]

That is a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way.

[Freakzilla]

Actually, I think that Herbert, probably more than other writers, used his short stories as proving grounds for the things that he put into his novels. When it came to the science he used the short stories to figure out what the world would look like after the invention of some scientific concept/principle. Then he took that vision and used it in a novel, but just eliminated most of the scientific speculation. Without those short stories, I think his novels would have really looked quite different. So I think it's hard to say that Herbert wrote any stories that did not have a heavy scientific backdrop. Not even Dune escapes this, as he worked the science behind so many things like cloning, psi powers, fold space, the chemistry of addiction and many others in other venues first, then just pared away the scientific detail when he wrote Dune.

Certainly this is arguable, but Im certain that when it comes to his novels I can find an example of hard-sf speculation in the short stories for any "non-scientific" concept that you can identify.

I'd even go as far as to say his "other novels" were proving grounds for the Dune series, too.

As far as his science goes, he asked us to make some very big leaps of faith.

I've said many times, with very little editing, Dune could have been fantasy.