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