Read an Excerpt

From the Introduction

"Everything starts as somebody’s daydream." —Larry Niven, science fiction author who has big dreams

"Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists." —Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

Have you ever dreamed about voyages between worlds in starships fully equipped with faster-than-light warp drives? Have you ever dreamed about battling aliens from other dimensions, or traveling to a parallel universe to defeat your evil twin and rescue the princess or prince? How about a world where princesses and princes can’t be differentiated by biology because gender is flexible?

I’m guessing that if you are reading this, then you must have. The good news is that although some of these dreams are unlikely, all are scientifically possible by extrapolating from today’s technology. The power of stories to inspire us has held true for all of human history. Today, science fiction has the ability to inspire breakthroughs that change our world. Companies used words like “robot” and “android” after they were popularized in fiction. Our STEM experts often say they were first inspired by stories they read when they were young.

This book exists to help you to understand a few of the more popular topics in science as well as how they are used (and sometimes misused) in science fiction. This book isn’t only for science fiction fans who want to know more about the science behind the plot. This book is for the curious — anyone who wants to know more about the natural world and the universe of which they are a part. It’s for the science geek in everyone.

Throughout each chapter, you will find a number of question marks. Many recent discoveries have led to questions that scientists never thought to ask before. Curiosity about our world drives fiction authors and filmmakers to explore the realm of possibility. Besides, isn’t science itself all about asking questions? Another thing to beware of is that this book contains spoilers. I only trend toward spoilage when it’s necessary to make or fully explain a scientific point about something in fiction.

Science fiction is about change, a world (or worlds) yet to be. Science fiction can explore a hopeful world where problems are solved, or a dangerous (dystopian) world where problems are caused, or a world of existential threats such as drastic climate change or destruction by asteroid (chapters 11 and 21 might cause you some anxiety on these last two topics).

To paraphrase Mark Watney, the intrepid engineer-agriculturist of Andy Weir’s novel The Martian: in the face of overwhelming odds, humans have scienced the shit out of a lot of problems. This book is packed with examples.

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Blockbuster Science can be read out of sequence if you want to hone right in on a specific topic, but the chapters do have some tendency to build upon each other. I also encourage speculations—your own, not just those that deal with fiction—throughout the book. I want this to be collaborative.

The first two chapters describe the twin pillars of twentieth-century physics: quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. Special and general relativity show us that time is woven into our universe and that our perception of time is correlated with gravity.

Before the theories of relativity were developed, studying the universe was like studying a three-dimensional cube as if it were a square—not too helpful. Einstein united space with time, matter with energy, and everything to gravity. From his theories, scientists have deduced the existence of wormholes, black holes, and the big bang.

Another major topic of relativity is the energy-mass equivalency (E=mc2), which is really amazing, and in that chapter 1, you find out why. Are you interested in time travel and space travel? (Who isn’t?) This is the chapter for you (along with a few others that dip into the same topic). In chapter 2, we learn that size really does matter . . . at least for quantum mechanics. We will consider really small stuff, subatomic small, to discover why uncertainty will always be a part of our universe. This is the area of physics where determinism is dumped. At the tiny scale, everything is fuzzy because tangible particles are also waves.

Wait, it gets weirder. The tangible particle can be anywhere in its own wave, where every occurrence of the particle in its own wave is merely a probability. Until an outcome is observed, all the occurrences exist simultaneously. This fuzziness has challenged the way scientists understand reality (and it might do the same for you). Chapter 2 also considers a couple of the more popular interpretations of what they believe this fuzziness and lack of determinism could mean.

Don’t worry about the weirdness. The trickier concepts of quantum mechanics are broken down into bite-sized chunks. By consuming these earlier chapters so daintily, in later chapters you will understand the theory behind topics like zero point energy, virtual particles, quantum entanglement, quantum computing, quantum teleportation, loop quantum gravity, quantum suicide and immortality, and time-traveling text messages.

Topics in later chapters include string theory, parallel worlds, antimatter, neutrinos, tachyons, invisibility, holograms, extraterrestrial life, interstellar communication, bioengineering, terraforming, global warming, cosmology, evolution, the origin of life (carbon-based life, at any rate), rocketry, genetic modification, thermodynamics, the “arrow of time,” what might be next for computers (artificial intelligence), ranking civilizations, plus much more.

Geez, that’s a lot. We are going to have fun! At least until the last chapter, which covers the end of everything—the earth, the sun, the universe . . . everything.

I hope this book will give you a sense of wonder and the desire to explore these topics even more.

The moral of this introduction: Science tells us what is, not what we want. Science fiction has no such restriction.

The moral of this introduction (originally printed on a parallel Earth): Science fiction is driven by fear or hope, while science is driven by necessity or curiosity. The overlap between their motivations is huge.

I am going to conclude this introduction by listing Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of prediction. Popular works of science fiction from Doctor Who to Star Trek have cited his third law ad nauseam. I encourage you to embrace all of them, but for fun, try living the second:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Buckle up, because here we go.