While DISCOVER was in Las Vegas last week covering the Consumer Electronics Show, I noticed two science-fiction themed slot machines. The Star Wars machine has been out for about 18 months, the Star Trek machine was only unveiled about six months ago.
Even though my perfectly reasonable request to DISCOVER’s powers-that-be for a small research fund to investigate these machines was mysteriously refused (it’s all office politics here), I still felt obligated to try them out on your behalf, loyal readers, so I pulled up a chair and stuck in my hard-earned.
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As noted over on 80 Beats, scientists using the Spitzer space telescope have found strong evidence that Epsilon Eridani has a solar system not unlike our own, with rocky planets orbiting in the inner solar system and gas giants orbiting further out.
Science fiction writers must have breathed a collective sigh of relief, as Epsilon Eridani has been used in countless novels, short stories, TV shows, and movies as the location of more-or-less Earth like planets. Nothing dates a science fiction story like the cold hand of reality, such as when Mars was revealed to be a cratered desert with not a canal in sight, or when the clouds of Venus were shown to be concealing a lethal landscape of shattered rock, rather than lush jungle swamps.
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A recent episode of the “This American Life” podcast (episode #329: “Nice Work If You Can Get It”) opens with an amusing rundown of what astronauts actually spend their time doing now that there are almost no manned spaceflights. The answer was mostly: go to lots of meetings in Houston.
The more interesting revelation was that the astronauts get their vicarious space thrills by watching Farscape and Battlestar Galactica. Aside from being “hugely jealous” of the capacity for interstellar space flight, one of the astronauts pointed out that classic BSG Viper/Star Wars X-Wing Fighter design is pretty dumb:
“All of those shows assume that there is some sort of magical gravity thing so that when you’re in your vehicle, you know, everybody’s all walkin’ on the floor. Well, not in our space program.
“They’ve got fighter jet flying. They have pointy noses and wings and they make them look like fighters. None of that is any advantage when there’s no atmosphere.
“You could be a box and have the same maneuverability. The Borg had it right. They’re a big cube and they’re perfectly maneuverable, as opposed to the little star fighter with the pointed nose and the wings and the engine in the back.”
On the Popular Mechanics Web site, Eric Sofge complained a couple months ago that big, lumbering comic-book movies are sucking the life from the already shaky genre of intelligent Hollywood science fiction movies. His concern is not just artistic: He worries that the rise of the Iron Men and Spider-Men and the vanishing of think-oriented movies like Blade Runner is taking away the one piece of Tinseltown culture that inspires viewers to think, and maybe even act, like scientists.
It’s a clever, well-intentioned argument. I just don’t buy it for a minute. The line between smart scifi and dumb superhero scifi is not as clear as Erik tries to make it. Where would you put RoboCop and Total Recall, for instance? Lord of the Rings nurtured many a science nerd, even though there’s not a speck of realism in it; on the other side, Star Trek (original and all other flavors) has plenty of mumbo jumbo moments in it to rival Iron Man’s suit or Bruce Banner’s irradiated cells.
To my mind, the most effective scifi stories depend on two key factors: dealing with imaginary science & technology in a logically consistent manner, and being sensitive to its human implications. That’s what made Blade Runner and Terminator so great. At their best, the Iron Man and Spider-Man comics worked because they weren’t about the science at all; they were, like Batman, about life-transforming events that caused their heroes to deal with issues we all deal with, but on a wildly magnified scale. In short, they were almost all about the human side. Sure, their attention to realism was abysmal, but they were quite appealingly attentive to the idea of having to rely on your wits to succeed.
Is it so bad to tell kids to look up to a brilliant but socially awkward kid who used his smarts to fight crime and social injustice? And does Erik Sofge really want to argue that Outland and Saturn 3 were a big help in furthering the cause of science education in this country? If so…well, good luck with that, Erik.
