Hard science fiction for all the other sciences

[alias_sqbr]

EDIT: Brief notes from the panel.

So I was thinking about the scifi that doesn't get the love it deserves, and had an idea for a con panel: Hard science fiction for subjects other than physics, maths, and computer science.

Where here by "hard" I mean "Fairly scientifically realistic (given one or two "what-if"s etc), someone with a degree in that field would think it was cool rather than painfully innaccurate". Normal (ie mathsy) examples in this field are people like Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter ("Raft" had me doing 3d intergration to figure out the gravity field of his space ship :)), some Asimov etc.

The problem is: I have a degree in maths and computer science, so what the hell do I know about these other subjects :D On the other hand, nico_wolfwood (who has volunteered to co-panelise it) has the right sort of degree but couldn't think of many examples :)

So, for those of you with a background in one of these other sciences what books do you feel make a genuine effort to explore the ideas of your field in an informed and inventive way? Any objections to our current suggestions?

The ones we can think of are:
Linguistics:

• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel has a very clever alien language (pity the characters are so annoying..)
  
• Mother Tongue has a "women's language" and features linguists and language very prominently as it relates to dealings with aliens and subgroups of people. Unfortunately, it also really annoyed me :)
  
• The story of your life by Ted Chiang: a language which changes the way you experience time.
  
• The Language of Pao by Jack Vance uses the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (that your language affects your thinking)
  

Biology:

• Some of Greg Bear's stuff ("Darwin's Radio", "Vitals" etc) but I have no idea how accurate it is, I get the feeling not very :)
  
• I found www.sciencefictionbiology.com but it's not clear which of these are good
  
• Seventy Two Letters "hard" sf using 18th century biology etc. Bizarre but cool :)
  
• Peter Watts books (starting with Starfish) I haven't read these myself
  
• Melissa Scott Maybe?
  

Psychology:

• Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon extrapolates the future of autism
  
• Some fiction about artificial intelligence skirts the boundary of cognitive science/psychology. Greg Egan's stuff has some interesting ideas about what the psychology of AIs and augmented minds might be like.
  

Sociology/Anthroplogy:

• There's lots of books which play around with these ideas, I have no idea how you'd classify them as "well informed" or not. See Social science fiction.
  
• Asimov's foundation series?
  
• Sleepless series by Nancy Kress: the sociological effects of having a genuinely superior subset of society. I didn't like her conclusions, nico_wolfwood did, and she is the one with an anthropology degree :)
  

Geology/environmental science etc:

• Red/Green/Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Detailed description of terraforming Mars. Characters irriated me too much, I stopped after a few chapters, but the science was interesting :)
  
• Kim Stanley Robinson's Capital Code series, doggedly explores the actual consequences of global warming
  

Other:

• William Gibson's Count Zero deals with Joseph Cornell's box constructions
  

Right. Now both my panel ideas are out there I feel much better. They're both doing ok in the panel voting and I at least feel semi-prepared for it if they do get taken up. And if I'm sick on the day nico_wolfwood etc have my notes to work from, should they feel the need :)

EDIT: More discussion here.

Comments

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel has a very clever alien language (pity the characters are so annoying..)

Hmmm. You know I was wondering why I'd put it down and never finished it...

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you can have hard SF without hard science. :P

The soft sciences certainly have SF based around them (the 'New Wave' movement is based around psychology, sociology, anthropology etc) but the lack of general agreement in these fields means that there can't really be a 'scientifically accurate' depiction.

Asimov's Foundation would be an example of SF based on sociology (even if he calls it psychohistory), but the mathematical aspect makes it unconvincing.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

I'll agree that, post-chaos theory, the mathematical aspect of Foundation is unconvincing.

However, I'm not sure that it would not have qualified as hard SF at the time it was written.

Larry Niven was famously burnt by this once - he wrote a story set on Mercury which included accurate science when he wrote it only to have the accepted scientific position change due to new information between submission and publication.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Did my research now and it was his first story "The Coldest Place".

"Larry comments on how his first story, The Coldest Place was obsolete almost before it was published when the first space probes approached Mercury and found that it was not a one face planet"

Quote from http://www.larryniven.org/www.shtml

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Science Marches On (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceMarchesOn) could make for an interesting panel, not least because you could reference Tin Tin.

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's all maths anyway.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I have't got around to reading them myself, but Peter Watts books (starting with Starfish) are supposed to be excellent hard SF, with both unusual physics (deep sea high pressure etc) and lots of biology.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

And lets not discuss those early Asimovs (and many others) with aquatic Venus etc.

Paul Krugman, this years Nobel prize winner for economics, said he wanted to be a psychohistorian, but economics was the closest he could get.

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I've spent a couple of pleasant hours surfing that wiki. :)

Aquatic Venus

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, you would bring those up...

I know Heinlein had those in his future history, did Clarke or Van Vogt also fall for that one?

[warpwind.livejournal.com]

is it strange that when I first saw this i imagined a geologist beneath the graph with a geopick saying "oooh shiney" and picking up a rock.

Also I'll have a think geology "hard science wise". At the moment all I come up with is Kim stanely Robinson's Red/blue/green Mars series but it's hardly the best example and I can't remember much of it..

[alias_sqbr]

Trust me, you didn't miss much. The "unnamably terrible thing" he spends the whole book angsting about is painfully contrived in it's pointless tragedy.

[alias_sqbr]

From my ignorant-about-social sciences POV I agree they seem to be hard to build informed books around that stand out from ignorant speculation, but for example this soesn't seem to be a problem for biology and linguistics. And I can't see that geology, say, has a lot of controversy around it, it's just that people seem more interested in writing about The Journey To The Centre Of The Earth than anything well researched :)

[alias_sqbr]

One could say that maths is just a narrow subset of philosophy :)

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for them.

[alias_sqbr]

You know, it would. I must remember to suggest it for 2010. Maybe you could run it :D

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

Linguistics is one of the most strongly-divided fields of study in all of academia, and new competing theories of evolution crop up all the time in biology.

Geology is a physical science, and therefore 'hard', but as you imply, it's way too dull to make an interesting story.

It's not that it's hard to draw a distinction between an informed academic perspective and an ignorant perspective, it's that there is no single informed academic perspective.

Ask ten physicists about how objects move in space and they will all give you the same answer. Ask ten linguists about how language is acquired, and you will get ten different answers.

If you just mean fiction that uses some informed version of genuine scientific theory in a field, fair enough. To me, though, that's not 'hard SF'. It's impossible to establish 'scientific accuracy' in fiction if the field of science discussed has not established a 'truth' of its own.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

I might be going to Eastercon in 2010 (this is a pretty huge maybe, though). ;)

[nico-wolfwood.livejournal.com]

This is probably just me, but in my head Social Science Fiction does not match up to Hard Science Fiction based in the social sciences. Social science fiction seems to involve the author being very interested in a social science concept and using it in the plot. Hard science fiction seems to be about writing a plot that matches the physical universe in every detail. I kind of agree with the people who suggest that since people are (at this point) not accurately describable this might be kinds of hard to do with a social science. How do we write a plot that matches human society in every concievable way? Alternatively, it can be suggested that every science fiction novel makes an attempt at this just matching the author's view of human society in every way.

I kind of like your description of it as 'Books which don't make the people who have degrees in the respective fields squirm upon reading' (paraphrased slightly) though...

[arcadiagt5.livejournal.com]

Oh good.

[alias_sqbr]

Well FINE, run off to your hoity toity english con, see if we care!

[alias_sqbr]

If you just mean fiction that uses some informed version of genuine scientific theory in a field, fair enough. To me, though, that's not 'hard SF'. It's impossible to establish 'scientific accuracy' in fiction if the field of science discussed has not established a 'truth' of its own.

Yes, that is what I mean, I guess. Hmm. I'm not very good with definitions.

I mean, you're not going to accurate anyway once you add the equivalent of time travel or what-have-you, but you can be rigorous.

[alias_sqbr]

I got about a chapter in and decided that while it did seem to have pretty accurate science the characters all irritated the hell out of me :)

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I think I need a better term than "hard science fiction", because it gives people the wrong idea of what I mean.

So, what books with a heavy sociological etc component haven't bugged the heck out of you with their stupidity? :)

[muse-books.livejournal.com]

You might add Kim Stanley Robinson's Capital Code series: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting.

All environmental-themed and marketed as hard science fiction - set in near future not off planet.

[http://users.livejournal.com/walkingscarlet_/]

Me too. I never got past the 2nd chapter

[alias_sqbr]

Huh, ok, I'd never heard of them, all I knew of his books was the Mars series. Thanks.