Actual science in science fiction

[james_davis_nicoll]

Not applied sciences, I mean, or feats of engineering but the actual process of science. Is this a suitable topic for SF, by which I mean "can it be the seed for a story?" Or maybe better yet, "how does one use it as the seed for a story?"

One example would be the Steerswoman books. I think part of what makes that possible is that the protagonist is discovering scientific models that we are already familiar with, so the author is not saddled with the problem of coming up with a new scientific model.

I am not fussy about "Yes, this was cutting edge science 200 years ago and it still is today" stories, where whatever bit of pop-science that made the cover of DISCOVER is still new and exciting centuries from now.

Comments

[rosefox]

Greg Bear's Blood Music comes to mind.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, the book I refered to in my first entry today used archaeology. That's a handy field for SF, because we are producing new past all the time and thanks to computers, most of it is being documented in ways that guarentee our descendents in a few thousand years will be left trying to figure out exactly _when_ Micky Mouse became the tutelary god of California or if Marilyn and Madonna are two names for the same deity.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Darwin's Radio?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

the first time i read the title of this, it said actuarial science in science fiction, which is also underrepresented.

[james-angove.livejournal.com]

Scientists doing science, or stories where the focus is on the science? For the later, some baxter might qualify, although he's going to be mostly applied astrophysics.

For the former: some Jack McDevitt, for archeology and anthropology.
Charles Sheffield must have had someone doing science, but I can't seem to think of anything.
I never read much Robert L. Forward, but I seem to recall _RocheWorld_ as a book mostly about the science of planetary systems. IIRC _Alpha Centauri_ had some scientists doing science as well, I thought, although it was of course mostly background for Barton and Capobianco's gedankenexperiment in social dysfunction.

There is probably a fair bit of short fiction from Analog that fits the bill, most likely involving an iconoclastic lone scientist overthowing the established order.

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

Probably not what you are looking for, since the focus is really as a memoir (though I found the chemistry and learning to be a chemist bits rather interesting) Primo Levi's The Periodic Table?

The Gregs

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

A number of novels by Greg Egan are science-related. For example "Teranesia" involves scientists trying to explain something that looks like directed evolution, with lots of similar "aha" moments like you're describing, and "Distress" has a number of plot-points revolve around scientific understanding of a Theory of Everything. "Schild's Ladder" is quite possibly as well, though it was a while ago that I read it.

Greg Bear uses similar plot twists in "The Forge of God" as scientists try to figure out how the Earth will be destroyed, though the developments are mostly a "oh shit, we're in trouble" "oh shit, it's even worse" kind.

...and I'm amused that both the recent posts I've made in your journal were about Greg Egan and Greg Bear. :)

[sraun]

Would Thrice Upon A Time by James Hogan qualify? Maybe the first one or two of his Giants books?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, the process of discovery and the chains of coincidence and hard work that go into it is an important part of the start of Asimov's The Gods Themselves. James Blish's The Frozen Year is about an (International Geophysical Year) polar expedition, seeking out Martian or asteroid belt meteorites that are easier to spot in Antarctica than other places, too, although the conclusion makes some leaps maybe stronger than the evidence collected would suggest.

Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud is similarly a taut story of astronomical observations and deduction up until the alien entity arrives, and Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama is effectively a commando archeology trip, even if the process of finding conclusions aren't drawn. There's much in 2010 that's characters sitting around a computer screen watching confused wiggles of ambiguous data from remote sensors, too.

Or have I misunderstood the question? (In any case these are certainly ancient books; the newest of them is a quarter-century old. I just don't know the modern field well enough.)

[orzelc.livejournal.com]

It's only marginally SF, if at all, but Carter Scholz'z Radiance is a terrific description of Big Science. It's not really uplifting reading, but it does a good job of showing science as a huge bureaucratic undertaking.

In a more surreal vein, Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table gets some of the atmosphere of a working lab right, but it's very strange.

The science-y bits of Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake are pretty good.

[daev.livejournal.com]

There's a book I once saw about how science actually works. I can't remember the author, but the title is something like "Science As A Collective Enterprise."

I'd like to sell it on RASFW with the subtitle Ipecac For Randroids.

[carbonel]

I believe Bellwether by Connie Willis would count. For that matter, so would her book Passage.