Science to serve the plot

We comment on a science-fiction novel in progress.

We were recently asked to come up with a plausible scientific scenario for the end of the world.  But not quite.  An author who already had the outline of a plot, an apocalyptic story, needed a way to threaten the end of the world (at least as far as humans go).  But it had to be averted by the actions of the principal character.  Well, we’ve already commented that this sort of close call is unlikely in the real world, though highly useful to fiction.  That makes it decidedly difficult to pull off convincingly.

The process was also the reverse of classic science fiction, in which some invention or development (space travel, overpopulation, amoral androids) forms the basic idea and the story explores possible consequences.  Here the story already existed, in its important points, and the science was needed to form the background.

We note that it would have been much easier in the genre of Fantasy, in which the rules of the game as we know them can be suspended.  For instance, one could invent a magic tree whose wood, when burned, made a cold fire, contravening thermodynamics.  (But the very freedom of that genre makes it more difficult to be at once believable and interesting, something we won’t go into further here.)

We found our task remarkably similar to doing actual science.  Within the directions given, we had to choose the sub-field to work in; review the basic science that could not plausibly be considered “wrong;” research some recent and promising work in various directions; and then ask several “what if” questions.

Of course it was not actual science.  Conspicuously absent was any actual calculation, to say nothing of construction of apparatus.  Difficulties with the latter can be depressingly mundane: one collegue of ours set out to find out about the behavior of certain kinds of atom, and instead spent a year finding out the many ways in which a vacuum system could leak.  That hardly makes for a gripping story.

But it also contrasted with the standard methods of paradoxers, who are conspicious for their lack of interest in the details of science as others practice it.  They tend to be inspired by an idea, and if it comes up against what it already known, the latter must be wrong.  In a way, it’s a subordination of science to the narrative, though in this case the narrative is generally one of persecution by an elite and is not terribly interesting.

Well, we won’t go into details of our results.  The novel is still very much in process, and things could change greatly from their present state.  There may come a time when we describe the workings of the Müller-Thornhaber Device.  But for now we can say we enjoyed the mixture of science and creativity involved, and look forward to the next challenge.