Readers
and writers of science fiction tend to be science nerds of one flavor or
another. By definition, SF is fiction, but it is fiction extrapolated from the
natural laws and phenomena that scientists have distilled from their experimentation
with nature. Thus, writers are constrained knowing that E always equals mc2
and objects in free fall will suffer collisions based on the particulars of
mass and gravitational forces. Readers also know about these constraints and
delight in discovering that a writer may have failed to do his homework. SF
writer Hal Clement, known for works like Mission
of Gravity, explained the kind of games SF fans play with each other in an
article he wrote in Astounding Science
Fiction in the 1950s:
“Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work...The
fun...lies in treating the whole thing as a game. I’ve been playing the game
since I was a child, so the rules must be quite simple. They are: for the
reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible
of the author’s statements or implications which conflict with the facts as
science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few
such slips as he possibly can.”
The writer
makes the first move in this game by telling a story. The reader makes all the
other moves in the game, trying to see how the writer may have gotten the
science wrong. Clement played his part of the game so well, that readers still
devour his work today. Mission of Gravity,
along with related fiction and commentary, appeared in 2002 under the title, Heavy Planet.
Clement
was famous for creating believable aliens. In Mission of Gravity aliens subject to the immense gravity of a rapidly
spinning Jupiter like planet called Mesklin evolved flattened, centipede-like
bodies to accommodate gravity that varied from 3 times Earth normal at the
equator to 700 times Earth normal at the poles. He designed a biochemistry for
his creatures based on methane as the key solvent rather than water.
My
new book will also feature aliens, although not quite from so exotic a world.
Nevertheless, I must fashion the world they come from in a way that is
consistent with what scientists know about Earth’s biology and ecology. In
particular, I will feature some of the knowledge science is rapidly acquiring
about microbiomes: the mostly hidden world of microbes that coexist with the
cells of complex organisms like us and provide many of the biochemical services
we must have to survive. A key question becomes “Whose in charge?”—us or our
microbial infrastructure? Undoubtedly alien worlds will have similar
relationships between the first simple life forms that evolved on their planet
and any complex ones that developed later.
The
next blog entry will feature some of the specifics of the world of Morticue
Ambergrand and his kin. It will be up to you to see if the world I create is
plausible. Let the games begin!
