For the Love of Science Fiction

 Photo courtesy of Pexels, Inc.

Is anybody out there?

I love Sci Fi (science fiction); I write it, read it, and watch it on TV/movies. My dad worked at Grummas, building the Lunar Module which eventually took Neil Armstrong and the others to the moon and I was fascinated. Like anything else, choice is personal, but here are my fave Top 5 Sci Fi stories (not in order of preference):

1- The Martian (by Andy Weir). Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars trying to survive while NASA works out a plan to save him. Great cast performances, the science is believable, the effects and characters sterling.

2- Indepdence Day (by Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich). Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, and Randy Quaid are hysterical and quirky in this story about alien ships invading Earth. The special effects and fast pace keep you glued to your seat.

3- Alien (by Dan O'Bannion and Ronald Shusett). Holy smokes, this movie about an alien invadingn a space freighter and hunting the crew gave me nightmares for a year. Sigourney Weaver was the unexpected hero and the special effects- i.e. the Alien- still make me shiver! 

4- The Empire Strikes Back (by George Lucas). Iconic for all time. Luke. Darth Vader. Leia. Han Solo. And the Droids. Everyone knows the story. If you don't love it, we can't be friends good.

5- The Matrix (authorship unclear- the Wachowskis or Sophia Stewart). While Keanu Reeves is fantastic in any movie he makes, I think the Matrix is his best work. The whole premise- that humans are 'power cells' for a giant hostile computer matrix is mind bending. I wish I could conceive something this brilliant. 

There are tons of others that I love- the first in the Dune series, Edge of Tomorrow, Terminator, Star Trek (2009), I, Robot- there are so many to love! 

And it makes me want to go write a sequel to my original sci fi- Lethal Dose. (I plan on doing that anyway....) 

Happy Reading and Reaching For the Stars! 

Char 

Just Ignore the Science... Really!

I was chatting with my middle son, an engineering/math major, and he told me that it would be impossible for squirrels like my character Jack in the Evolution Revolution series to learn to use simple machines. When I mentioned Koko, the gorilla that learned sign language, he pointed out that Koko could answer she was 'fine' when asked 'How are you?' but did not ask the same question in return. For her, there was only that moment. Because of that sense of only here and now, she could not 'imagine' any action and its consequences. It would not be possible, my son argued, for Jack, even though he's learned about rolling and sees a rock impeding a wheel from moving, to apply this knowledge to stop bulldozers from coming into his wood. My argument was that squirrels share what they learn with other squirrels, thus 'disproving' (in my mind) that animals only think in the here and now, because teaching others to defeat a food puzzle (i.e. bird feeder), results in future gain.

Photo courtesy of Chris Carter, Pexels

I have some scientific basis for my argument. In a study published in Current Zoology, Professor Thomas Hills, a co-author, asserts that animals which can simulate future actions "must be able to distinguish between their imagined actions and those that are actually experienced." (In my case, it's Jack blocking the wheels on the construction machines because he already did so on a wheelchair, or me watching videos of squirrels solve puzzles and then teach other squirrels.) The authors say their data supports the concept that animals which can 'simulate environments and conceive the future must have some form of self-awareness," and this means projecting themselves into the future in a situation.

My son disagrees.

We will have to agree to disagree. It may not happen now or even in the near future, but I believe animal intellect is slowly increasing, evolving. But that's not science, that's imagination.

Sometimes though, you have to ignore the science. So many books, TV shows, and films would not exist if we simply followed the science. American astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson posted on social media that he was watching the sci fi movie, Armageddon even though it's got rotten science. (Apparently we can't blow a giant meteor in half with a nuclear bomb, and even if it were possible, the fragments hitting the earth would be life-ending events on their own.) There are numerous incidents which are impossible, at least with current knowledge, in many movies, TV shows, and novels. Staying within what we actually know would limit our imagination, and maybe not inspire future generations to achieve what was dreamed/proposed in creative works. (Cell phones first appeared in the original Star Trek.)

So, ignore the science - (but not all; some things are irrefutable like the laws of physics, and you don't want to be obviously ignorant about basic science or the audience won't believe your story.) Creativity and imagination sets us apart from all other animals...

At least for now.

Char