Science Comedian

Astronomy in Science Fiction

February 24th, 2009

When I attended the Uni­ver­sity of Texas, in Austin, back in the last cen­tury, I took a few astron­omy classes and the most inter­est­ing one was called “Astron­omy in Sci­ence Fiction.”

Through the fog of mem­ory that sits like inter­stel­lar dust between me and Total Recall, I can only say with a level of cer­tainty lim­ited by more than just Heisenberg’s equa­tions that we read at least one novel for the class – Tau Zero by Poul Ander­son – and numer­ous short sto­ries, includ­ing the clas­sic “Night­fall” by Isaac Asi­mov and a few Larry Niven sto­ries.  I’m pretty sure “There is a Tide” was one of them, and per­haps “The Hole Man.”  I rec­om­mend them all.

We read the sto­ries and then we dis­cussed the astron­omy and sci­ence con­cepts con­tained in them.  It was fun and edu­ca­tional, a great way to teach and learn science.

Mike Broth­er­ton had a sim­i­lar idea, which is not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing he’s both an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the depart­ment of physics and astron­omy at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming, and a sci­ence fic­tion author him­self.  He’s writ­ten two hard-SF nov­els – Star Dragon and Spi­der Star – and some short sto­ries, one of which is fea­tured in his new anthol­ogy (one of the perks of being the edi­tor of a book is the increased odds of being included in it).

Dia­monds in the Sky is avail­able for free online and was funded with a grant from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion.  How cool is that?

Accord­ing to Mike’s web­site, its pur­pose is…

“to pro­vide sto­ries with ample and accu­rate astron­omy span­ning a range of top­ics cov­ered in intro­duc­tory courses.  Instruc­tors in high school and col­lege may these sto­ries use­ful, as some stu­dents may learn con­cepts more eas­ily through story than from lec­ture.  Fans of sci­ence fic­tion with good sci­ence should also enjoy these sto­ries.  Con­tri­bu­tions include both orig­i­nal sto­ries and reprints from some of the top sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers work­ing today.”

One of the sto­ries, “Planet Killer,” is co-written by my friend, Kevin Gra­zier, who is a plan­e­tary sci­en­tist at JPL and the edi­tor of The Sci­ence of Michael Crich­ton, The Sci­ence of Dune, and the upcom­ing The Sci­ence of Bat­tlestar Galac­tica (he’s also sci­ence advi­sor to Bat­tlestar).

I men­tioned Dia­monds in the Sky in the new arti­cle about me at The Man­i­to­ban:  Q&A: Brian Malow, sci­ence come­dian.

Early in the inter­view, stu­dent jour­nal­ist Trevor Beko­lay asked about the role of sto­ry­telling in teach­ing sci­ence and we talked a bit about sci­ence fiction’s influ­ence.  It was cer­tainly a big influ­ence in my life – and con­tin­ues to be.  I credit Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Larry Niven, in par­tic­u­lar, with cap­ti­vat­ing me early on with their cre­ative use of real sci­ence con­cepts in their sci­ence fiction.

It’s a great way to get acquainted with sci­ence – in the con­text of an engag­ing story.

Check out Dia­monds in the Sky for free online.

Links:
Dia­monds in the Sky

Q&A: Brian Malow, sci­ence comedian

Related post: 
Sci­ence Come­dian in The Manitoban

Science Comedian in The Manitoban

February 24th, 2009

There’s a new Q&A with me up at The Man­i­to­ban – the inventively-named offi­cial stu­dent news­pa­per of the Uni­ver­sity of Man­i­toba, in Canada.

Stu­dent jour­nal­ist Trevor Beko­lay con­tacted me two weeks ago, intend­ing to write a short arti­cle about sci­ence and humor (or “humour,” as he calls it) but, after tran­scrib­ing our tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, he decided to just run it as a Q&A with a brief intro…

“No one has explored the con­nec­tion between sci­ence and humour more than Brian Malow.  A vet­eran standup come­dian, Malow frames his witty obser­va­tions with sci­en­tific the­ory, ask­ing from his audi­ence a basic under­stand­ing of the uni­verse and reward­ing them with laugh­ter from start to finish.

“Malow is tread­ing in uncharted ter­ri­tory for a standup comic…”

Thanks, Trevor!

One of the top­ics we dis­cussed was sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion, which leads me to my next post – Astron­omy in Sci­ence Fic­tion – about Mike Brotherton’s fan­tas­tic new anthol­ogy of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries that fea­ture accu­rate por­tray­als of sci­ence concepts.

Links:
Q&A: Brian Malow, sci­ence comedian

Related post:  Astron­omy in Sci­ence Fiction

Mike Brotherton and the Science Comedian

January 18th, 2009

Mike Broth­er­ton has a really nice blog post about me.  Mike is a sci­ence fic­tion writer who also hap­pens to be an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming in the depart­ment of Physics and Astron­omy.  Quasars are his spe­cialty!  And there’s a lot of great con­tent in his blog.  Check it out.

I’m ecsta­tic that, of the two jokes he sin­gled out for men­tion, one is an anal­ogy that rarely gets the laugh I wish for it.  It’s about the abil­ity of a virus to take down a human.  We must out­weigh them by a fac­tor of a bil­lion or more.  It’s the ulti­mate David and Goliath…  “It’s like Luke Sky­walker tak­ing out the Death Star in a lit­tle X-Wing Fighter.”

Well, it is, isn’t it?

He also says this about the embed­ded video:

Next time I teach an intro­duc­tory sci­ence class, I’m going to show some of these. I might be able to deliver a cou­ple of the sim­pler jokes and fit them into lec­tures. I’m a good lec­turer, but not great, and wak­ing peo­ple up with a smart joke that has some real sci­ence in it isn’t pan­der­ing, it’s educating.

Too often I think thatI just get depressed about the never end­ing bat­tle with igno­rance and sci­ence illit­er­acy, with the folks who reject our best knowl­edge because it con­tra­dicts their polit­i­cal or reli­gious beliefs.  Get­ting peo­ple to laugh and want in on the joke is prob­a­bly a bet­ter method of doing some­thing other than preach­ing to the choir and bring­ing in some peo­ple who want to chuckle, too.

Thanks, Mike!

I haven’t read his two nov­els yet – Star Dragon and Spi­der Star - but they’ve been praised by David Brin and Paul Di Fil­ippo.  They are hard SF and have been com­pared to the books of Larry Niven and Robert L. For­ward.  Sounds good to me!