Sci-fi actually needs science

[psikeyhackr]

A few years ago I read a book called Cleopatra, which purported to be a true history. It had her going to Rome, and at first being well accepted (until the Senate started besmirching her).

So....

Sorry, looks like I was wrong somewher. I readacriticismofthatmovie sayingitwasincorrect.

Cleopatra, Ptolemy XIV and Caesarion visited Rome in the summer of 46 BC. The Egyptian queen resided in one of Caesar's country houses, which included the Horti Caesaris just outside Rome (as a foreign head of state she was not allowed inside Rome's pomerium)[22][23] The relationship between Cleopatra and Caesar was obvious to the Roman people and caused a scandal because the Roman dictator was already married to Calpurnia. But Caesar even erected a golden statue of Cleopatra represented as Isis in the temple of Venus Genetrix (the mythical ancestress of Caesar's family), which was situated at the Forum Julium.[24][25] The Roman orator Cicero said in his preserved letters that he hated the foreign queen.[23] Cleopatra and her entourage were still in Rome when Caesar was assassinated on 15 March 44 BC,[26] returning with her relatives to Egypt. When Ptolemy XIV died – allegedly poisoned by his older sister – Cleopatra made Caesarion her co-regent and successor and gave him the epithets Theos Philopator Philometor (= Father- and mother-loving God).[27][28][29]

Cleopatra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I will have to research the movie.

Some of the inaccuracies of the movie include the portrayal of Cleopatra by the beautiful and nubile Liz Taylor, when in real life she was not known for her delicate features, although she apparently did use her feminine wiles to good effect. Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar, is shown in the movie being made a Roman citizen, when in fact Caesar never acknowledged the boy.

10 Things History Got Wrong, Part Five (Movie Edition!) - History and Headlines

It has been a long time since I read the original complaint about the movie. Maybe it was her entrance into Rome portrayed in the movie that they complained about.

psik

 

[Ray Pullar]

OK, so we need to respect science but not too much else we'll never get laid. Hollywood has no respect for history - see Gladiator, Tarantino flicks, Braveheart. It has an enormous, pernicious effect on public understanding alas. And yes I knew about wave medium changes giving rise to FTL.

 

[zmunkz]

The distances between the stars necesitate some form of FTL if some stories are to be made. If you do not want to read any of those stories that is OK. Maybe FTL is impossible. I DO NOT KNOW! But I don't think anyone else does either.

And traveling between Galaxies requires... I don't even know. Insanely Faster Than Light travel I guess. Although we could reach about 9 stars within a single human lifetime traveling at sub-light speeds, so there is potential there to avoid FTL.

I've been out of this thread for a while, so not sure if this was shared, but to be clear... there ARE solutions to Einstein's equations that allow faster than light travel. Their practicality is curtailed by the energy requirements or matter structures we don't know how to make and sustain. Here is one recent popular example:

Alcubierre drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then there are the old worm-hole solutions. I bring these up because they don't even require new physics and are compatible with established principals, which brings the speculative elements down a bit. Who is to say what we might discover in the future in the realms of quantum relativity, or other places where current laws are known to be incomplete.

That is the primary objective of SCIENCE. FIGURING OUT WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW.

Indeed!

 

[Vertigo]

All the comments on FTL are exactly why I consider that to be acceptable speculative science. I might be less forgiving if the book is actually presented as hard SF but for general SF that sort of speculative science is just fine IMO. On the other hand getting something well known like orbital mechanics wrong is, well, just plain wrong and sloppy research. And that's the kind of thing that pulls me out of the story.

I had a book with a *EDIT: Unusually tilted* tilted planet, and I had lengthy discussion of the impacts of the particular planet's unusual arrangement with multiple geographers and astro physicists, to ensure that things went down in a scientifically plausible way. Of course, the tilt was only a single factor, and there was much more besides that had to be considered. To date nobody has complained to me about it, so hopefully it worked out for the best. Particularly since the story is more about people than places.

In a rather contradictory sense it is almost more important to get the (known rather than speculative) science right and consistent when the science is not the most important aspect of the story. The reason for this is it's all the more critical that sloppy bits of science don't distract from the really important themes.

 

[picklematrix]

I essentially pretend that books with bunk science are simply stories told in a parallel universe where the laws if physics are different!
A bit of effort to make the setting feel real and relatable is always welcone, but it is important to suspend disbelief, even with fiction that approaches 'hard' sci fi.
Peyer f hamilton has stated that readers are no longer satisfied with hand waving. I would say the authors just need to wave their hands slightly differently in previous years now that science has advanced.

 

[psikeyhackr]

And traveling between Galaxies requires... I don't even know. Insanely Faster Than Light travel I guess.

Considering the size of the Milky Way and our lack of knowledge about it I have always wondered what the point was of any author writing about travel to other galaxies.

Star Wars just takes place in a galaxy far, far away. The only FTL requirement is getting the story here. LOL

 

[tinkerdan]

For me, perhaps how I feel about Dune might explain my viewpoint.

There is some science in Dune and things like the suits they wear in the desert that seem to indicate some thought put into the story. However a lot of the overall science seems a bit sketchy sometimes and probably inscrutable in other places.

Overall, however, even today the story holds up for me with my usual suspension of disbelief in part because:

This (the story; the plot; the conflict) could only happen on Arrakis and only in the Dune Universe and only with these characters. If I have any qualms at all it is with the style of writing and has nothing to do with any of the science or lack of science in the whole thing. The internal consistency of the universe and its laws does help contribute to the comfort of reading and maintaining the illusion. It's more a matter of being well written, beyond my personal and more recent issues with some of the style decisions in the writing.

However I have to admit that I'm not a person who takes my science to the highest most serious level. I almost pity the person who does and uses that as their only measure, because their reading list has got to be so so small.

 

[Onyx]

Dune posits that virtually all the major tech comes from one Einstein-like physics discovery: The Holzman Effect is where suspensors, shields and wormhole FTL all come from. And then Herbert is very consistent with how those elements are used - it doesn't seem greatly different than Alastair Reynolds telling us about his spaceships that require no fuel or reaction mass - the science is simply stuff we don't know about.


On the whole "distant galaxy" thing - if you are able to reach large percentages of the speed of light - especially via constant acceleration, very long distances don't take that much longer than fairly short distances in crew time. At 1g acceleration, a 10 light year trip takes the crew 4.8 years, 100 LY trip takes 9 years and the 2,537,000 LY trip to Andromeda is only 28.6 years. Without violating FTL a lot of stuff becomes possible to travel to.

 

[Vertigo]

Dune posits that virtually all the major tech comes from one Einstein-like physics discovery: The Holzman Effect is where suspensors, shields and wormhole FTL all come from. And then Herbert is very consistent with how those elements are used - it doesn't seem greatly different than Alastair Reynolds telling us about his spaceships that require no fuel or reaction mass - the science is simply stuff we don't know about.


On the whole "distant galaxy" thing - if you are able to reach large percentages of the speed of light - especially via constant acceleration, very long distances don't take that much longer than fairly short distances in crew time. At 1g acceleration, a 10 light year trip takes the crew 4.8 years, 100 LY trip takes 9 years and the 2,537,000 LY trip to Andromeda is only 28.6 years. Without violating FTL a lot of stuff becomes possible to travel to.

Agreed you just have to work into the story the enormous time spans experienced by the rest of the universe during those relatively and subjectively short journeys. But there are plenty of authors who have done so very successfully (including Reynolds ).

 

[tinkerdan]

Seriously I have no Idea what Einstein-like physics is (maybe theoretical physics).

Einstein-like physics discovery: The Holtzman Effect is where suspensors, shields and wormhole FTL all come from.

I only recall that the Holzman Effect comes of two fictional characters Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva and that the rest are derived from that.

I do agree that since it all builds from the Holtzman Effect it is only necessary to keep that consistent within itself.

 

[Onyx]

Seriously I have no Idea what Einstein-like physics is (maybe theoretical physics).

I only recall that the Holzman Effect comes of two fictional characters Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva and that the rest are derived from that.

I do agree that since it all builds from the Holtzman Effect it is only necessary to keep that consistent within itself.

"Einstein-like physics" being a single theory that changes the fundamental understanding of physics.

Holtzman Effect physics (whoever discovered it), has 1, 2 and 3 dimensional attributes, which are used to produce suspensors, shields and fold space respectively. This is all Frank Herbert stuff, not Brian.

The point being, one specific revelation in physics has multiple impacts, much like Einsteins relativity led to multiple discoveries about gravity, light, time, etc.

 

[tinkerdan]

Then that would be Theoretical physics::

"Einstein-like physics" being a single theory that changes the fundamental understanding of physics.

:: Which mostly are the impetus to finding answers to questions that were not previously asked and we are still working on some of those answers.

In a small way The Holtzman Effect might suffer from a --search for the theory of everything phenomenon; which basically is the unfolding of several mysteries in physics through the practical application of a discovery derived from attempts to prove something that came out of theoretical physics. Those answers tend to be a finite number and the theory of everything continues to elude us.

Often we don't know that those answers are definitively correct.

In Dune I'm not absolutely certain here however it seems we really don't have a definitive on what theory they were working on that led to the Holtzman Effect. However that theory would be Einstein like.

 

[Onyx]

Then that would be Theoretical physics::

I'm sorry, I was not trying to get at categories of physics, but categories of discoveries. Some discoveries are deeply important but narrow in scope. Other discoveries are fundamental with surprising numbers of real world implications. I just meant that Holtzmen's (Cenva's) was the latter.

 

[-K2-]

Though I'm no doubt a scientific ignoramus compared to you folks, it is nice to find a site where your calls for science, scientific theory, basic facts or just plain common sense aren't answered with;

"Well what about magic?"

K2

 

[DrMclony]

That is because we realise that magic, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from science... Oh wait, I think I messed up that quote...

 

[Vertigo]

That is because we realise that magic, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from science... Oh wait, I think I messed up that quote...

Hehe I guess it does actually work both ways

 

[Mirannan]

Hehe I guess it does actually work both ways

Perhaps because magic accesses a part of physical law we don't know about yet.

Fictional magic often has fairly rigid laws of its own - certainly of comparable rigidity to the currently known real-world physical laws.

There is precedent for this sort of expansion of the known universe. Before the mid-19th century, the entire universe of electromagnetism was unknown to science although its effects could be seen. Before the very late 19th century, radioactivity and its associated phenomena were not known at all. And so on.

 

[-K2-]

Oh boy, I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the 'M-word.'

K2

 

[SilentRoamer]

Oh boy, I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the 'M-word.'

K2

Maybe M's make many musings more manageable, maybe magic M's make many musings more malleable, moreover maybe M's make me monstrously mad.

 

[-K2-]

Maybe M's make many musings more manageable, maybe magic M's make many musings more malleable, moreover maybe M's make me monstrously mad.

That's just monsense...

K2