Borderlands of Science Read online

  Borderlands of Science

  by Charles Sheffield

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright (c) 1999 by Charles Sheffield; "Science Bites" copyright (c) 2000 by Charles Sheffield.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-671-31953-1

  Cover art by Patrick Turner

  First paperback printing, November 2000

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication No. 99-37427

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION

  WITH SCIENCE IN IT

  "Charles Sheffield's book Borderlands of Science is an ambitious attempt to survey all of modern science—from a science fiction writer's perspective. . . . If you are fond of the effortless, science-simply-explained style of the late Isaac Asimov's science popularizations, then the new book by Charles Sheffield was written for you. His clear and somewhat witty style is clearly reminiscent of the good doctor. . . . It's fun simply as an evening's entertaining reading."

  —Geoffrey A. Landis, physicist with the

  NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts,

  The Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin

  "A tour through the borderlands where today's science turns into tomorrow's science fiction, from the physicist and Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning novelist. . . . Bang on target, in terms of appeal . . . As Mr. Spock would say: fascinating."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "Charles Sheffield, Ph.D., renowned scientist and award-winning science fiction writer, explains in an easy-to-follow narrative about the fascinating frontiers of science—from interstellar space ships to black-holes and immortality. Every library—high school, college or community—ought to have this book."

  —Eric Kotani, SF writer and astrophysicist

  for the Apollo and Skylab missions

  "Sheffield has long been one of the finest of our best hard SF authors. In his latest science fact collection, he joins the ranks of Asimov with his dissection of the science beneath the skin of science fiction."

  —Science Fiction Age

  "Sheffield has a low tolerance for bad science . . . He follows the maxim that you can't break the rules without knowing the rules. . . . For either aspiring writers or curious readers, Borderlands of Science is an excellent guidepost . . . in understanding the universe."

  —The Denver Post

  BAEN BOOKS by CHARLES SHEFFIELD:

  Borderlands of Science

  The Compleat McAndrew

  Convergent Series

  The Mind Pool

  My Brother's Keeper

  Proteus in the Underworld

  Transvergence

  The Spheres of Heaven (forthcoming)

  THANKS

  This book grew partly from a one-week series of seminars given at Dixie College, Utah, in the spring of 1998, on the subject of science and science fiction. I would like to thank all the participants in those seminars, particularly Ace Pilkington who organized and master-minded the event, for their useful analysis and comment. Before I went to Utah, I sent my material to Jim Baen asking him to look at what I had, and suggest places where the arguments seemed weak or insufficient. Much of the material had originally appeared in magazines that he published, and he offered considerable feedback. Several sections of the book owe much to our e-mail discussions. He also suggested that the material might make a useful and informative book.

  Finally I would like to thank Nancy Kress and Joel Welling, who read everything that I wrote and told me when I was unintelligible because of brevity, or in danger of going overboard on technical detail. I usually took their advice, but not always, so any residual incomprehensibility is due to me alone.

  Parts of this book are drawn from articles in New Destinies, Analog, and the Samsung Quarterly magazines.

  INTRODUCTION

  You are reading an out-of-date book. Since the frontiers of science constantly advance, today's discussion of the borderlands of science will be obsolete tomorrow.

  Unfortunately, I can't tell you which parts of the book that you are holding need an immediate update. With luck, the short-term changes will be mostly in the details, and the roots of each subject covered will survive intact. The biggest changes in science usually turn out to be the most surprising, the least predicted, and the slowest to be accepted.

  Around the year 1900 there were plenty of forecasts as to what the coming century might bring. They were all wrong, not because of what they included, but because of what they left out. On the abstract side, no one expected relativity, quantum theory, the expansion of the universe, holography, subatomic structure, the conversion of matter to energy, solid state physics devices (such as transistors), information theory, black holes, the molecular structure of DNA, retroviruses, genome mapping, and the theory of finite state automata. Still less did anyone expect the torrent of practical applications, with their massive social fallout, that would follow from the new theories: television and telephones in almost every home, personal computers, supersonic aircraft, humans to the Moon and observing equipment to the planets, lasers, genetic engineering, video recorders, antibiotics, CAT scans, nuclear energy plants and nuclear bombs, and artificial satellites in regular use for communications, weather, and monitoring of the Earth's surface. No one in 1900 imagined that by 2000 the automobile would be absolutely central to many people's lives, as the principal means of transportation, recreation, and even courtship. Even in 1950, not a person on the planet would have predicted the existence of hundreds of millions of computers, used daily to conduct business, play games, send and receive mail, and wander at will through a world-wide information network.

  Given our track record, and the fact that changes seem to be ever faster and more confusing, a pessimist could conclude that it is now impossible to write science fiction. Prediction of future conditions is impossible; even if we get the science right, surely the consequent social changes will be nothing like we suppose or can suppose. When reality is so surprising, what place is there for imagined worlds?

  I prefer to argue as an optimist. In science fiction, new science and new applications mean an endless supply of new story ideas. So long as science and technology continue to advance, we can never run out of subject matter.

  This book should be regarded as a beginning, not an end. It defines the frontiers—"borderlands"—of today's science. Those frontiers are not fixed, but constantly expanding. As they expand, the territory just beyond them comes into view. In that territory, waiting to be picked up and used, lie hundreds and thousands of gorgeous story ideas. They are pristine ideas, never used before, because they sit on ground never before explored.

  I invite you to join me in wandering the new territories, picking up the best ideas, and using them. My idea is to offer a starting place for the exploration, but certainly not an end point. For one thing this book, like any book ever written, reflects the author's personal interests and obsessions. It's not reasonable that your own favorite scenery will exactly match mine.

  A couple of final points need to be made. The first is an answer to the natural question: Why, with the Internet an integral part of most people's lives, do I not direct t
he reader to web sites for information? One answer will be obvious to you if you happen to be reading this book at the beach, or, as I like to think, secretly in a classroom while a teacher spouts New Age non-science at you. A book provides easy access, unobtrusively and with no need of special equipment.

  Second, if you want to talk about lack of quality control there is no better example than the Internet. Normally, if it comes from somewhere like the Jet Propulsion Lab or the National Institutes of Health, it should be reliable. But even that is not safe. Some names of well-known individuals and institutions have been pre-empted as web site names. You think you are reading a report from the famous Dr. X. What you don't know is that Dr. X. is at this very moment engaged in a lawsuit regarding the theft of his good name and reputation.

  One more caveat. This book makes another assumption. As a friend of mine, Roger Allen, said to me, "You call it science fiction, whereas most people pronounce it as science fiction." I plead guilty. That is indeed the way I view the science fiction field, or at least the part of the field that interests me. I assume that you, the reader, are interested in reading (and possibly writing) science fiction stories with some reasonable emphasis on science. If not, then this is not the book for you.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Borderlands of Science

  1.1 What you are reading. This is a text for the writer or critical reader who likes the science of stories to be right. We will define the limits of knowledge in many areas, then wander beyond them. We will spend little time surveying the scientific mainstream. Many other books do that, taking a detailed look at quantum theory, astronomy, spaceflight, genetics, chemistry, or any other science you care to mention. We will offer the brief summaries that we need, and list some of the better reference works. Then we'll head for the scientific outer limits.

  We will not try to tell you how to write. Nothing here will address plot, character, pacing, or style; nowhere will you see anything about markets, or foreign rights, or literary agents. When backgrounds appear, it will be for their scientific content only.

  Plenty of other works address the problems of being a writer, discussing everything from style to contract negotiation to royalty rates. There are also writing courses without number. These courses are valuable, especially when taught by successful writers, but not one of the courses—even when they are explicitly and specifically about science fiction—teaches anything about science. We, by contrast, will be concerned with only one thing: making the science in stories accurate, current, plausible (if the story is set in the future), and interesting. Readers of science fiction are an enthusiastic and forgiving audience. A writer of science fiction can perpetrate literary sins that are anathema in "mainstream" writing. But one thing you cannot get away with in my universe is botching the science of your story.

  Or rather, you may get away with it some of the time. Your editors, who usually have a literary background but often lack a science background, may not catch you. Your readers will. Write about Shakespeare's Paradise Lost, or say that Abraham Lincoln led America in the Revolutionary War, and the editor will jump all over you. Claim that Titan is a moon of Jupiter, and nothing may be said. I did not make up this example. It happened. Titan as a moon of Jupiter sailed right past the editor and past the copy editor. A reader totally outside the book's production process (me) caught the blunder, and it was corrected in the published work. But you cannot rely on friendly readers being around all the time.

  If you wander wildly beyond what scientists believe theoretically possible, you have to explain how and why. And you have to be reasonably current in your knowledge, because science changes constantly, and sometimes it changes fast. Three years ago, the idea of life anywhere in the universe, except on Earth, was pure speculation; today there is evidence, much disputed, for early life-forms on Mars.

  As Josh Billings put it, "It's not what we don't know that causes the trouble, it's the things we know that ain't so."

  Not all sciences are addressed in this book. When a field is omitted, one or more of the following will apply:

  1) The topic doesn't seem to me to provide good material for science fiction stories.

  2) Some other popular text covers the ground thoroughly and well.

  3) I do not feel qualified to discuss the subject.

  4) I do not believe that the subject, regardless of the fact that it may use the word "science" in its name, is real science.

  A number of fringe areas, useful for stories whether or not you believe the theories, are described in Chapter 13.

  1.2 Defining science fiction. When science fiction writers and readers get together, one of the things they are likely to talk about is the definition of science fiction. It's hard to reach agreement. I have my own definition, which, if it has no other virtue, describes the sort of science fiction that I like to read and write. It takes a few sentences and needs a brief preamble, but the definition goes as follows:

  Science forms a great, sprawling continent, a body of learning and theories. Everything in science is interconnected, however loosely. If your theory doesn't connect with any part of the rest of science, you may be a genius with a new and profound understanding of the universe; but chances are you're wrong.

  Science fiction consists of stories set on the shore or out in the shallow coastal water of that huge scientific land mass. Stay inland, safe above high tide, and your story will be not science fiction, but fiction about science. Stray too far, out of sight of land, and you are in danger of writing fantasy—even if you think it's science fiction.

  The purpose of this book is to define the boundaries of science. Where do the limits lie, today, that define the scientific leading edge? And can we see places where, although no land is visible, prevailing currents or the sight of breakers convince us that it must exist? That, surely, is where we will find fertile ground for science fiction. On the other hand, we don't want to find ourselves out of our depth.

  1.3 The good, the bad, and the simply awful: an example.

  That's probably more than enough metaphors. Let me illustrate my point with a particular case.

  Suppose I decide to write a story that tells of a race of alien beings who come to Earth from a home world orbiting the star Rigel. Their ships are enormous and fast—they are five miles long, and they can travel at 5,000 miles a second. When the aliens land on Earth and march out of their ships, it turns out that they are also huge; they are a hundred feet high and two hundred across, and they look, breed, and eat just like giant spiders.

  Why are they here? To befriend humans, to educate us, to bring us into the Galactic federation of races, to enslave us, or to kill us?

  One of their leaders explains to our representative. They are an ancient species, with a recorded history going back forty billion years. They were drawn to Earth by receipt of our radio signals, but humans, as primitive newcomers to the galaxy, are no more than food animals to them. They have come to overpower us, breed us, and eat us. At best, a few of us will be selected to help control the rest. As a reward, those humans who do cooperate will live a natural human life span.

  Before our envoy can reply that the whole idea is intolerable, the Rigelian swallows him whole.

  Humans seem doomed, until another brave earthling, a scientist, discovers that the aliens' eyes are different from ours. They see using shortwave ultraviolet light. We build a generator that can be used from miles away to beam an ultraviolet signal into the aliens' eyes. The repeating signal pattern interacts with the alien brain waves, sending them into convulsions and bringing them crashing to the ground. Humans approach and overpower them, learn the secret of the alien ship, and decide to go to Rigel and remove the alien menace from the galaxy forever.

  An exceptionally dumb story? True. On the other hand, the smash-hit movie Independence Day was packed with worse scientific impossibilities and is in many ways a lot less plausible. I have never read anything quite like the tale I've described, but I will bet that the long-suffering editors o
f science fiction magazines see plenty.

  What we have here is not science fiction, it is fantasy. Let's see why; and let's find out if we can, with a little juggling, convert it to science fiction.

  First, consider how the aliens got here. A ship that travels at 5,000 miles a second (8,000 kilometers a second) sounds fast, but Rigel is more than 500 light-years away from the Sun. Light travels at almost 300,000 kilometers a second. Our aliens must be awfully patient in waiting for their dinners, because the journey here took them at least 18,000 years. If we intend to visit their home world and seek vengeance, it will take that long to get there.

  The first fix: The aliens must possess some kind of faster-than-light (FTL) drive. They only use their "slow" drive at 5,000 miles a second when they are close to Earth. It is not necessary to specify how the FTL drive works. Science fiction has certain conventions, required by and used in so many stories that no explanation is called for. The FTL drive is one of them. If you want to create your own using the ideas of Chapter 9, that's fine. But you don't need to. Just say the aliens have one.

  Next problem: The aliens supposedly had their attention drawn to Earth because they picked up our radio signals. But radio waves travel at the same speed as light, and we have been generating signals for only a century. Rigel is at least five hundred light-years away. The Rigelians ought not to know we even exist for another four hundred years or more.

  The fix: In addition to the FTL drive, the aliens must possess a form of FTL communications system, able to pick up FTL emanations associated with normal electromagnetic radiation. They knew of our presence as soon as we began to broadcast.