I think that his philosophy is best represented by a quote from Whirlgig World (per Wikipedia): “Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work. (…) the fun (…) lies in treating the whole thing as a game. (…) the rules must be quite simple. They are; for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author’s statements or implications which conflict with the facts as science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few such slips as he possibly can (…) Certain exceptions are made [e.g., to allow travel faster than the speed of light], but fair play demands that all such matters be mentioned as early as possible in the story”

Which would argue against the music, too.

In fact, were that logic to be applied to every scene in every film, music should almost never be present on the sound track, but it nearly always is. Is that bad science?

BSG didn’t pull the rules of the universe out from under anyone. The seeds of the spiritual portion of the story were there from the get-go. Head-Six was there from right after the colonies were destroyed.

Anyhow, can anyone tell me what Sean Carroll’s “good clip” was? The one about time travel and you don’t need to hurry.

Have you read Poul Anderson’s ‘Tau Zero’ by any chance then? :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Zero

Or Arthur C. Clarke’s novel The Songs of Distant Earth’ :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Distant_Earth

Where Clarke “.. states that he wished it to be a realistic interstellar voyage, without use of warp drives or other fantastic technologies.”

Actually, Clarke’s Rama series also involved sub-light-speed travel and complications arising from it too. Plus there’s another one which, I think, was by Arthur C.Clarke as well (but might be wrong – cannot find my copy or recall the title) involving twins one on earth, one on a starship travelling at near-light speed.

Finally, if you want really realistic – often gloomily so – technically & scientifically well considered SF then may I recomend Stephen Baxter’s NASA trilogy :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Trilogy

Evocative and good hard near-future space exloration SF but at times – especially for Titan really depressing novels. Baxter’s Manifold series is similarly good like that too.

To say you have to have good science throughout for something to be science fiction means you have to leave a lot of interesting ideas untouched. Or only touched by some future being I can’t relate to.

There’s an old writers saying : “Never spoil a good story with the facts!”

That said, it helps if writers at least know *which* facts they’re getting wrong.

I don’t always mind bad SF where the special effects or other elements outweigh the scientific accuracy factor but I prefer good hard SF where the science is at least explored and a factor that’s been considered not just tossed away completely. Its a subjective thing of how much artistic license are you willing to give I guess.

I’m happy to turn my brain off and just soak in Star Wars and the like enjoying them for what they are. At the same time, I really love reading intelligent Science Fiction where the science is discussed and realistic (or at least made plausible) such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, (most) Stephen Baxter’s novels and much of Isaac Asimov’s SF works.

A faster-than-light drive is a fantasy, but it’s the only vehicle that will get Joe Ordinary into a story about some interesting alien ecologies or civilizations.

What about Carl Sagan’s use of the wormhole – for which he got good scientific advice in his Contact novel and subsequent movie?

In fairness, there are quite a few good stories that don’t use FTL as a MacGuffin but rather use generation ships, sub-light speed travel, incl. relativistic complications and so on.

I don’t complain about that anymore than I complain that there’s no anthropological evidence for Orcs, Trolls and Ents.

There’s plenty of anthropological evidence for Trolls out in the blogosphere!

PS. Doesn’t Discover Magazine like being called “the Hive Overmind” BA? Seems like a good & friendly enough nickname to me.

I won’t beat the dead horse of the bad science on that one – I’ll just direct readers to the BadAstronomy blog, entries 1-12, 15, 18, and 46-285 (rumor has it the fine blogger insisted on keeping each entry on the poor science in that movie to under 20,000 words, which would explain the multiple blog entries).

But even without the horrid science, the movie just blew chunks (no pun intended – it really brings out the gag reflex in me). Next time you feel like being tortured but your waterboarding bed is out for repair, watch this movie and keep an eye out for how the character played by William Fichtner is written. Now, that actor has done some fine work (Grace Under Fire, Heat, Go, West Wing) but his character goes from being an a**hole, to being a good guy, to being an a**hole, to being a decent guy, to being a REAL a**hole, to being a true hero. I keep trying to find evidence that Uwe Boll was associated with the movie… he HAD to be.

Oh, and your video player sucks. Any time I try to go to a different point in the clip, it starts from the beginning. I’ll never see the last 13 minutes….

As a personal example of this: The Doctor Who (2005) episode “The Satan Pit” immediately lost me in the opening sequence when they had a black hole act in a way that was completely and utterly wrong. It was so wrong that I’ve never seen its like before in science fantasy. But I’d have been fine with the episode if they’d just taken the standard Star Trek route and called it a “subspace singularity” or a “gravitational sinkhole” or some other nonsense. I know how black holes work (more or less), so the episode lost me. I have no idea how a subspace singularity might work, so the episode can throw any old crap at me and I’ll buy it.

Non-fiction: Really happened, or is claimed to have really happened.
Fiction: Anything that could happen under the physical laws of our reality, but didn’t actually happen. Can include things that are incredibly unlikely, but technically possible.
Fantasy: Anything that is not possible under the physical laws of our reality, as they are currently understood. Generally divided into two categories (though not exclusively):

1) Magical fantasy, where impossible things happen due to supernatural forces or other mysticism (BSG, LotR, etc), and

2) Science fantasy, where impossible things are explained via differences in physical laws (Star Trek, Stargate, Asimov’s books, etc). Science fantasy is usually premised on a philosophy of metaphysical naturalism. Anything that includes FTL travel is fantasy, not fiction.

There are others that fall into less common categories too.

The exception is things like Eureka, or Girl Genius. Mad science or Steampunk science are different – they’re basically silliness and magic anyway, so that’s fine. My sense of immersion is not “this could happen” but “welcome to another world”. I don’t complain about that anymore than I complain that there’s no anthropological evidence for Orcs, Trolls and Ents. Oh, and superhero type stories. Again, the basic premise is effectively magical, so I don’t worry that Iron Man armour still won’t save you from damage when you crash into the ground any more than full plate armour, sitting in a car or a concrete cube would. Setting the initial parameters of the world to “not real”, oddly enough, makes the immersion more effective.

A comment to gogblog regarding sounds in space, I think appropriate music could take the place of the nonsensical sounds in many sci-fi shows and be every bit as effective.