Science Fiction Fan?

If you’re following me on social media (if you’re not, you really should <g>), you may have noticed that I’m doing a lot of book events.

Book events are delightful.

Yes, they can be exhausting and stressful, because, as any artist will tell you, nothing puts your ego on the line like presenting the results of your creative efforts to an audience. A novel, a song, a photograph, any artistic expression, is like sending your child to the first day of school. I love my child, but will anyone else? Will my child make friends?

But book events are delightful because people love the book. They love the front cover art; you can see it on their faces when they pick up a copy. They love the idea of the book; you can see it when they’re reading the back cover. You can tell, as we talk about the book, that they love, as I do, a good monster story that’s different. Different, because this story includes a meticulously researched imagining of a truly alien world and the creatures that might inhabit it.

Because I do love my book. I know that might sound egotistical. But it’s not delusions of grandeur (or even adequacy <g>).

It’s just that I wrote the book I have always wanted to read.

I concurrently love monster stories and hard science fiction. I’m the kind of guy that watches a movie set in southeast Asia grumbling because the rocks and plants and critters our heroes walk by are clearly from southern California.

I wanted a monster story grounded in reality. Realistic biology and realistic space travel and a realistic (albeit sobering) future history.

Daunting too, because, well, I’m shy. Those that know me may find that hard to believe; those that know me well will understand how true that is. I over compensate, sometimes, because, personally and professionally, in meetings and delivering presentations, or even writing this blog, that shyness often gets in the way. So I push it down, put on a smile, and reach out to connect with individuals and audiences.

But it’s an effort, and it can be exhausting.

Until I get to meet like minded fans of speculative fiction.

Sure, I’ve read (and re-read) a LOT of books. I’m a voracious reader. I have many, many favorite authors across a broad portfolio of genres; many you’re surely familiar with, and many that are more obscure.

I have what might seem, at first glance, to be a diverse library. Science fiction, of course, but also historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, horror, drama, and a lot of non-fiction.

What might seem an eclectic mix has one thing in common. They all create the opportunity to explore, “what if?”

What if I were a hobbit? What if I lived on the western frontier when it was still east of the Mississippi? What if I was born in feudal Japan? What if I’d been part of D-Day? What if I lived aboard a star ship? What if I were a serial killer? What if I were a shark?

What if I were a xenobiologist exploring the ecosystems of the first world discovered to have complex life? On a truly alien world, filled with diverse, truly alien life? What would it be like to explore such a world, and see what could be different, what must be the same? What if such exploration revealed, to me, subconscious biases that have constrained my thinking?

In my last blog post, I wrote about scientific revolutions. We experience the world around us through paradigms, conceptual frameworks, sets of ideas about how things work so fundamental that we don’t even realize we’re accepting them as filters for our perceptions until we’re confronted with something that breaks them.

I’m fascinated by conceptual frameworks, and I love stories, fictional or not, that let me try on a new conceptual framework.

Every story introduces characters, locations, and situations that may stretch your conceptual framework.

For me, a great story of any genre offers an opportunity to, temporarily, live a different life, adhere to a different code, experience a different conceptual framework.

A science fiction novel has a richer conceptual framework. If a novel is an exploration of human relationships and a science fiction novel explores those relationships in a speculative environment, then the conceptual framework has to include that speculative environment.

A hard science fiction novel has the additional challenge of a speculative environment that is founded on real science that may also need to be explained. In fact, as a reader of such fiction, I especially enjoy hard science fiction that imbues the story with an education about the underlying science without getting in the way of rapidly turning pages to learn what happens to the characters you’ve grown to care about.

While I do enjoy stories involving aliens that look very human except for some minor prosthetic like a pointed ear and I do enjoy stories involving fleets with phasers and blasters and photon torpedoes and light sabers and all of that, such stories, to me, feel more like fantasy than science fiction. That’s not to denigrate them; I love such stories the same way I love stories about Hobbits, Elves, and the like.

But they don’t feel like science fiction to me.

For me, science fiction has sound, solid science at the heart of the story, the ‘what if?’ of the story.

That’s what I was striving for with “Kraken of Eden” and the new novel I’m now working. I want the science at the heart of it, with the plot turning on the science as our characters figure it out with us.

I’m always happy when I’m at a book event and someone decides they want a copy of “Kraken of Eden”.

But what makes the event a delight for me is when a prospective reader’s eyes light up as I explain that it’s not just a monster story, it’s a plausible monster story, grounded in sound science, with diverse, believable alien life.

That’s when I know my ‘child’ has made a lifelong friend.

So, are you a science fiction fan?

The Joys of Scientific Revolutions

I have loved science since I was just a wee nerd.

That love of science should be evident to anyone reading “Kraken of Eden”.

I wanted a thrilling monster story about a plausible monster. I wanted truly alien aliens on a truly alien world. I wanted to explore what could be different versus what must be the same. I wanted our scientists racing to understand what they were facing through sound scientific methods.

I also wanted to explore something that I believe is important and timely. I wanted to explore the degree to which our conceptual frameworks constrain our imagination.

Here’s what I didn’t want. I didn’t want yet another exploration of scientific hubris. Heartless, arrogant scientists are all too common in popular culture in stories that come across (at least to me) as condemnations of science.

Our daily lives are increasingly depending on the practical application of science, yet the average person demonstrates both a disdain for science and a profound lack of understanding with regard to the scientific method. I suspect part of this is a generation of screen writers bored to tears during science classes for want of inspirational teachers.

Here’s the thing.

The scientific method really isn’t that complicated. It’s really just orderly thinking. We make observations, we see patterns, we come up with ideas to explain the patterns, and we apply these ideas to make predictions.

Let’s poke at this.

First, note that I wrote ‘to make predictions’. Science is about making useful predictions. ‘Truth’ is the province of religion.

That doesn’t mean scientists don’t believe their theories are true!

But it does mean that if you present a scientist with an observation that breaks their theory, sure, they’ll question it. Sure, they’ll want to see it repeated. Sure, they’ll try to find a way to reconcile it with the theory.

But, ultimately, if the observation breaks the theory, they will amend or replace the theory with something better, then continue to move forward.

Amending or replacing our theories enables us to make ever richer models and ever better predictions about everything from tomorrow’s weather to plotting a course to intercept a celestial body with a probe.

That means that scientists are always looking for the observations that don’t quite fit, because those are the observations that improve theories and models and predictions.

Scientists searching for the exceptions that will improve theories are all too often misinterpreted by people that don’t understand the scientific method with questioning the science.

Probing climate science and finding discrepancies that lead to better models for climate change does NOT mean scientists are questioning human caused climate change.

Studies that refine our understanding of the health implications of our dietary habits does NOT mean anyone’s questioning the health hazards of tobacco.

Studies that revise our understanding of evolutionary processes do NOT mean scientists are questioning the validity of evolutionary theory.

That all said, there ARE times when an observation is so profound, it goes beyond revising theories.

We do, in science and in our lives, form paradigms. Conceptual frameworks for how we see the world that include presumptions so fundamental that we no longer realize we are filtering the world around us through these presumptions.

Until we make an observation that is so inconsistent with our world view, so disruptive, that we step back, step outside our conceptual framework, and see the universe in a new light.

Copernicus struggling to reconcile the complex movement of the planets in the night sky (the word ‘planet’ means ‘wanderer’) with Earth as the center of the universe, then realizing it all made much more sense if the Earth and the planets were orbiting the sun.

Darwin noticing that Galapagos finches diversified from source stock on the mainland to ecological niches inhabited by other species on the mainland.

Einstein realizing that the speed of light is a constant regardless of your frame of reference.

My favorite example is Antoine Lavoisier, raised in a conceptual framework that all things are composed of air, earth, water, and fire (blood is warm and red because it is composed of water and fire) wanted to determine the mass of fire. So he weighed a log, burned the log to release the fire, and weighed the results in order to determine the mass of the fire that had been released. But it GAINED mass, which would mean fire has NEGATIVE mass, a result he could not accept. So he stepped back and reimagined the universe, proposing the oxidation/reduction model that is the foundation of modern chemistry.

I wanted the Eden science team to be confronted with an intellectual crisis, an observation that breaks their conceptual framework. Not to suggest they are in any way intellectually inadequate or dogmatic.

Instead, I wanted to explore how real scientists, confronted with an observation that should not be possible, finally accept the reality of that observation, revise their conceptual framework, and then apply the scientific method to deal with the threat they face.

If you’ve read, and hopefully enjoyed, “Kraken of Eden”, I’d love to hear whether you think I was successful…

Politics, Climate Change, and Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Renewables

Recently, I found myself in a social media debate about climate change.

I know, I know; I really shouldn’t…

Anyway, I was responding to a post claiming that scientists are still debating whether climate change is happening. Coincidentally, just yesterday, I heard a story on NPR about this (link provided below). Towards the end, they reported that they’d asked the Heritage Fund which scientists they’d consulted, and they responded, “many scientists and respect their desire to provide this guidance in confidence.”

Say what you want about scientists, but such citations usually boost their ability to secure funding, so…

Okay. so I’m not a climate scientist.

On the other hand, climate is on my mind!

Here in Arizona, we’ve been breaking records not only for daily highs, but for how high the overnight lows are! We’re in a historic drought as we squabble with our neighboring states about what’s left of the Colorado River (link provided below).

As a diver, I’m all too aware of the challenges of finding pristine reefs as global temperatures rise and corals bleach.

As i review the literature, I don’t see any credible debate about the grim reality of climate change. I see debate about how bad it is, how bad it’ll get, how fast it’ll get that bad, and, tragically and frustratingly, whether we’re already too late.

But I do NOT see any debate about whether it’s happening or why it’s happening.

I do think it’s interesting that, while organizations like the Heritage Fund continue to dispute the climate crisis, our military is preparing for it (link provided below).

But, just for the sake of argument, let’s pretend there’s still a question about whether climate change is real and an existential threat.

Let’s look at this strictly as an economic question.

The simple fact is that the oil we extract today wasn’t extracted yesterday because, yesterday, it was too expensive. So we didn’t start extracting this oil until we extracted all the less expensive oil.

And the oil we’ll extract when this oil runs out isn’t being extracted yet because, today, it’s too expensive. We’ll extract that oil when this oil runs out.

Yes, oil is a commodity, and the price fluctuates for a number of reasons, but there’s absolutely, positively no question that the long term trend for oil prices is up.

And the long term trends for renewables are reduced cost and improved reliability.

We’ve already seen this for coal. I’m sorry; coal is NOT coming back, not just because it’s dangerous to extract or because of the environmental impacts of burning it. Coal is NOT coming back because renewables are already cheaper (link provided below).

So, strictly in terms of dollars, seems to me we have a choice.

We can invest in renewables, or we can continue to invest in fossil fuels.

But, if we don’t invest in renewables, at some point, when (not if!) renewables are less expensive than fossil fuels, we’ll have no choice but to buy our renewable energy technology from those countries that have invested in it.

I don’t know about you, but I know I’m thinking that’s not in our best long term interest…

Links:

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192634090/if-republicans-win-the-white-house-in-2024-climate-policy-will-likely-change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/05/colorado-river-drought-explained/

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3182522/dod-other-agencies-release-climate-adaptation-progress-reports/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2023/01/30/99-of-us-coal-plants-are-more-expensive-than-new-renewables-a-coal-to-clean-transition-is-worth-589-billion-mostly-in-red-states/?sh=321250325104