Dave -
By John L. Casti and Anders Karlqvist
Casti seems to hail from Santa Fe — anybody know him?
I met him just after he published "The Cambridge Quartet". I
also know Benford and Bear. All at the passing acquaintance,
one-or-two intense conversation level. Casti, I toured around
LANL and SFe, including helping him arrange an interview on one of
the Local Radio Stations (live from the El Dorado?).
Our conversations involving metaphor and story and science prompted me to reread this book over the weekend. I would like to highly recommend it to everyone on the list.
Thanks for the reference. I was NOT aware of this book in spite
of hosting a collection of SF authors at LANL during the 1998
Nebula Awards held in SFe. This is when I met Benford... Benford
was one of my respected colleagues PhD advisor... The theme of
the visit to LANL was at least partly about how SF authors often
*presage* scientific discoveries. Asimov is classic in this vein
(Scientist/SF writer) but another of my favorites is Robert L.
Forward, and there is a "new kid on the block" at LANL- Ian
Tregellis, though his fiction is closer to alternate history
or fantasy by some measures.
https://www.lanl.gov/discover/features/spotlight/ian-tregillis.php
MANY if not most colleagues in Engineering and Science that I
have polled anecdotally will reference the Science Fiction they
read as children and young adults as being the strongest influence
for preparing for their chosen careers.
This was also just as the OED was coming out with an appendix on
neologisms coined in fiction and literature. Our "guest of
honor" (Jack Wlliamson) had (I think) the most entries in the
first publication (or maybe draft) and told stories of being
questioned by the FBI for one of his short stories referencing an
atom bomb during the Manhattan Project. Since he was *from* NM (
working as a meteorologist in the Pacific during WWII, being too
old for military service (40ish?)), they apparently assumed he had
some kind of insider info on the project? His "defense" was to
pull out his copy of a 1933 short-story that presented the idea
for the first time (in his record).
My hypothesis of the *primary* role Speculative Fiction has in
Science is that it allows an author or a whole movement within a
genre to build a network of hypothesis about "whatever" without
the rigid need for grounding them out in observed facts. It is a
training/practice ground for "believing 6 impossible things before
breakfast" and then thoughtfully if not always carefully working
through the cascade of assumptions. "IF X were true then what are
the myriad possible consequences that might follow from that?".
Steven C. Gould (Jumper, Wild Side, etc.) states (paraphrasing)
"the difference between SF and Fantasy is that in Fantasy,
*everything* you know is up for grabs and in Science Fiction *one*
'new fact about reality' is introduced and from that the rest of
the story follows". It seemed trite when I first heard it but
much SF stands up to that description... I can't speak as much to
Fantasy.
The subtitle of the book is "stories and myths in the creation of scientific 'truth'."
Jon, Frank and anyone else who identifies as a mathematician will enjoy / find interesting the chapter by Ian Steward, "Secret Narratives of Mathematics." From the chapter:
"A proof is a story. Not any old story. It has to take off from the hypothesis and end by confirming the conclusion. Not end with the conclusion, by the way — any more than a novel is obliged to end with the hero and heroine riding off together into the sunset. The story ends when the conclusion is firmly pinned down. (This is where you stop and put your Halmos symbol.)
If a proof is a story, then a memorable proof must tell a ripping yarn."
Lot's of fun stuff about evolution, computational thinking, algorithmic and ascetic storytelling, something for everyone interested in science, how science is done, science as communication, science and prediction.
It is going on my pile! Though I'm not sure I will draw the same
conclusions from this body of work as you might?
What about Boundaries
and Barriers, which seems to be part of the buildup to
Abisko?
Thanks,
- Steve
-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives:
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC
http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
Locked
Untitled.jpg (284K)