Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler – Page 65 – Discussions of Topics Related to Science and Science Fiction

The Science of Agriculture

Howdy there y’all, farmer Bob here. It’s plantin’ time and I’m right busy with my taters and tomaters, my lettuce, carrots, peppers and cucumbers.

What’s going on here you ask? What happened to Science and Science Fiction? Well it is springtime and I am working to get my garden started so I thought this would be a good time to talk a little about some of the scientific advances happening in the field of agriculture.

Now I hope we can all agree that the science of growing food is about as important a technology as there is. In today’s world there are some one billion people living on the edge of starvation and since the Earth’s population is expected to grow another three billion by 2050 our food production needs to grow more rapidly than that if we hope to eliminate hunger from the World.

To realize such an increase could require large scale implementation of technologies that have actually been around for a long time. I’m taking about hydroponics, aquaponics and vertical farming.

I’ll start with hydroponics because back when I was a kid there was a lot of talk that growing food in nutrient rich solutions without soil was going to revolutionize food production. William Gericke first used the term hydroponics in the 1920-30s when he succeeded in growing tomato plants over seven meters tall. Gericke promoted the technology and in the 1960s NASA became interested because of the possibility of growing food by hydroponics on the Moon or Mars where there is no soil.

The basic idea is simple enough. A shallow tank of nutrient rich water is covered with a lid with holes through which plant roots are dropped into the solution. If the water is aerated the entire root can be immersed otherwise enough of the root is kept in the air to allow oxygen to be absorbed. See the picture below.

One of the advantages of hydroponics is the ability to control almost every parameter of the growth process from the concentration of nutrients and oxygen in the water to its temperature. This allows the plants to grow in optimal conditions producing much greater yields.

Notice I didn’t mention controlling the amount of light the plants get. That’s because traditionally hydroponics still used the Sun as the energy source. More recently however Glo-light bulbs and LED arrays have allowed indoor hydroponic farms with 24 hour intense lighting further increasing yield.

Now aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics with fish or shrimp farming. The fish or shrimp are raised in their tanks and the water in which they live, and let’s face it shit, circulates through the hydroponic farm with the fish excrement providing the nutrients for the plants. Now it’s not quite that easy, between the fish and the plants you need a bacterial mat or substrate to first turn that excrement into nitrites, then nitrates, the nitrates then become the nutrients the plants consume. The now purified water returns to the fish tank to begin the cycle once again. Obviously this combination of technologies not only produces two food products but also reduces cost because each technology benefits the other.

Now entrepreneurs are bring all these technologies together on an industrial scale, indoors, in the middle of a city, in a technique called ‘Vertical Farming’.

Vertical Farming combines hydroponics with intensive lighting, stacks it in layers and puts it inside a factory setting. Here in Philadelphia a company called Metropolis Farms has renovated an existing and unused factory into a large scale food production facility, i.e. a farm.

The advantages of Vertical farming are many. The controlled environment allows food production year round. According to Jack Griffin the President of Metropolis Farms instead of the typical two crops a year that a farm would get in the Philadelphia area he achieves more than 17! The stacking of layers of hydroponic tanks also enables him to grow an acre’s worth of food in only 36 sq.ft. (That’s over 1200 square meters worth of food in one square meter!). Also producing food right inside the city where it will be eaten eliminates the cost and waste associated with transporting the food hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles. Finally, growing food indoors virtually eliminates the possibility of pests and diseases destroying your crops.

There are drawbacks to Vertical Farming, the biggest is the cost of power. It takes a lot of electricity to keep all those light lit, the water pumps working etc. Still, in my view the technologies are coming together, over the next few decades the trend will be toward more and more food production taking place in settings that the farmers of old would never recognize!

More Space News for April

Two days ago NASA held a press conference to announce some of the results that scientists have discovered from the Cassini spacecraft. Cassini is in orbit around the planet Saturn and is in the final few months of it’s twenty year long mission.

The press conference mainly dealt with some new discoveries about Saturn’s moon Enceladus which we knew from earlier observations was an ice covered world similar to Jupiter’s moon Europa. For several years now NASA astronomers have speculated that, again like Europa, Enceladus might have a liquid ocean beneath the ice covering, an ocean that could support life.

Now the heat energy that keeps the ocean warm would come from the flexing and squeezing of the moon’s interior caused by the interacting gravitational fields of Saturn and it’s other moon’s, the tidal pulls. The same process is known to cause the numerous volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and are suspected to keep the ocean on Europa warm. The heat generated by this process could also provide the energy for life on Enceladus.

Images taken of Enceladus by Cassini have discovered plumes of water spewing out of the Moon like geysers and now Cassini has even succeeded in flying through those plumes and identifying some of the chemicals contained in them. In their announcement NASA scientists stated that Cassini has detected considerable amounts of both Carbon Dioxide and Methane both of which are commonly associated with living processes. The image below details the processes going on at the moon.

These results give us another possible home for life in our Solar system. Along with Mars and Europa, Enceladus is another world we need to explore further. A specialized mission to search for life on Enceladus may take years to develop and launch however, but someday we’ll know whether or not we have close neighbors living around the ringed planet.

If you’d like to read more about NASA’s announcement click on the link below.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-missions-provide-new-insights-into-ocean-worlds-in-our-solar-system

There has also been another announcement from NASA concerning grant money being funded to a series of new technology programs. These grants are called the NASA Innovative Advanced Concept or NIAC program and are intended to study possible future technologies for spaceflight. The initial Phase I grants are about $125,000 dollars while Phase II grants can be as much as a half a million dollars.

The Phase I grants can be very interesting, even far out concepts while the Phase II grants tend to be a bit more realistic. In the Phase I group are included four completely new type of propulsion technologies, two are intended for interstellar travel, along with a ‘vacuum balloon’ to drift over the surface of Mars and Solar Surfing!

The Phase II grants include a probe of the interior of the planet Venus and a fusion enabled Pluto orbiter and lander. If you’d like to read a bit more about these possible future space technologies click on the link below.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2017_Phase_I_Phase_II

There’s always something new happening in space so I hope you’ll be coming back soon.

Book Review” Saturn Run by John Sandford and Ctein

‘Saturn Run’, the novel by the writer John Sandford and photographer Ctein is a well knit combination of Science Fiction and Espionage Thriller all in one. The Science Fiction consists of the voyage of a Earth spaceship traveling to Saturn after an alien spaceship is discovered entering our Solar system and going to the ringed planet. The story therefore fits into two of my six ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction’. Number 3, Alien encounter along with number 1, the Exploration of Space.

The Espionage Thriller part comes from the fact that there are two Earth ships, one American and one Chinese and each side is out to grab some alien technology all for itself. The story takes place in the year 2066 so the science and politics haven’t changed all that much from today.

As far as the Science Fiction is concerned ‘Saturn Run’ tries very hard to be as accurate and up to date as is possible. Everything in the two Earth Ships is based on extrapolations from current technologies and the technical descriptions while brief, this is a novel after all, are still clear enough to give a good idea of what is going on.

The story is certainly exciting and well written with an ensemble cast of well developed characters. The action is also fast paced, it certainly kept my attention.

I do have a criticism however. (Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know too much skip this paragraph and the next) The alien encounter is probably the least interesting part of the story. We never meet any actual aliens, the alien station out in Saturn’s rings is kind of an automated supply depot and it’s computer is programmed not to give out any information about the aliens.

It does give out technology however, everything anybody would want to know about making and using anti-matter. In fact the aliens in ‘Saturn Run’ are pretty much just a plot device. Supplying something valuable that the Americans and Chinese can then fight over.

To me, the idea that the first encounter with another intelligent species would give us more cause to fight amongst ourselves is pretty depressing. Unfortunately, knowing human beings it could very well turn out to be that way.

With that in mind I do recommend ‘Saturn Run’. It’s a fun read and the technology keeps your attention. If you liked ‘The Martian’, and who didn’t, you’ll enjoy it.

Lecture: Beasts in the Night Sky by Professor Patrick Glauthier

Last Wednesday night (5th April) I attended a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology entitled ‘Beasts of the Night Sky’ given by Professor Patrick Glauthier of the University’s Department of Classical Studies. The lecture dealt with the myths and stories behind the familiar constellations the ancients used to understand the night sky. Wednesday’s lecture was the fifth in the museum’s series ‘Great Beasts of Legend’

Great Beasts of Legend at the U of P Museum

Professor Glauthier began the lecture with a short description of how the night sky works. That is, how the constellations we see each night change with the seasons. How most constellations rise in the east and set in the west just as the Sun does but how the constellations near the pole star never set and how the planets move against the background of fixed stars, the Greek word planet means wanderer after all. Now it’s important to remember that to the ancients Earth was not a planet but the Sun and Moon were.

The Professor also described how in the ancient world the sky was the only way for people to keep track of time and the passing of the seasons. When Orion the Hunter was in the western sky just after the Sun set it was time to plant but when he rose in the east after sunset it was time to prepare for harvest.

This part of the lecture was all very familiar to me but there was a lot of good stuff to come. Professor Glauthier concentrated on the stories the Greeks and Romans told about the constellations so of course he began with Homer. Actually it turns out that Homer didn’t say much about the constellations, in fact he never mentions the constellations of the Zodiac at all.

In book 18 of the Iliad Homer mentions the Great Bear as facing Orion the hunter even though today we recognize several other constellations, most notably Gemini, as being between them. This indicates that Homer did not know about the constellation of Gemini! In fact according to Profession Glauthier the 12 constellations of the Zodiac were absorbed by the Greeks from Mesopotamia around the fifth century BCE.

Professor Glauthier also spoke about the group of constellations associated with the Myth of Perseus, Andromeda, the Sea Monster Cetus along with Andromeda’s parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia. The grouping of these constellations indicates that they are also very old, before the Greeks knew about the Zodiac. These were some of the first attempts to impose order on the night sky.

Now comes what I thought was the interesting part of the lecture because a couple of the Mesopotamian constellations the Greeks imported, Cancer the Crab and the Goat Fish of Capricorn for example had no Greek myth that could be applied to them so later Greek and Roman writers made up myths to try and explain how they got into the night sky. What was happening was that mythology was being manipulated in order to fit the growing knowledge of astronomy.

Professor Glauthier finished up the lecture with a brief description of how astrology began as a part of astronomy but how in the Roman period the attempts to foretell the future overshadowed the practical uses of the constellations in keeping track of the seasons.

Lectures like ‘Beasts of the Night Sky’ are regularly given at science and other museums throughout the world but very few people are aware of them. I’m a member of the U of P museum and if you live around Philadelphia or are planning a visit I heartily recommend stopping by. But wherever you live there are museums nearby so go to them, learn something, expand your brain. You may find you really enjoy it!

Is Graphene the Miracle Material?

There is a news items going around the various media right now concerned research at the University of Manchester in the UK. The research concerns the development and initial testing of a molecular sieve using the material Graphene for removing salt from seawater producing drinkable fresh water.

By itself this news is extremely important. It is estimated that over a billion people worldwide lack proper access to freshwater and that number is only going to increase in the years ahead. The sieve developed at the University of Manchester has to potential to greatly reduce of cost of producing freshwater from saltwater which could make it a key element in improving the lives of millions of people.

But that’s only a part of the story, for the sieve is composed of the material Graphene which many scientists have called a ‘Miracle’ material. Now Graphene is really just another form of the element Carbon, that wonderful atom that produces everything from fossil fuels to diamonds to life itself (after all, life is really just complex carbon compounds dissolved in water). What makes Graphene so special is that it is a one atom thick sheet of carbon atoms in a an endless hexagonal grid. See the picture below.

The holes in the structure obviously make it a excellent choice for a sieve but Graphene has a lot more going for it than that. Among it’s other properties Graphene is 200 times as strong as steel, although it is much lighter. Graphene also conducts both heat and electricity better than copper does. These are only a few of the properties that have material scientists so excited by Graphene and the material’s possible uses are the subject of a great deal of research at the present time. Personally I know of several manufacturers of semiconductor electronics who are spending a lot of money on developing components made of Graphene rather than silicon.

Now Graphene has been around a long time. In fact if you write with a graphite pencil (an ordinary pencil) you will on occasion produce a small fragment of Graphene. The problem is trying to produce large enough quantities of pure Graphene to become commercially valuable. But don’t worry, there are hundreds of brilliant material scientists hard at work and you can be sure that in the years ahead you’re going to hear a lot more about Graphene. If you’d like to read more about the Graphene sieve click on the link below to go to the official announcement from Manchester University.

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/graphene-sieve-turns-seawater-into-drinking-water/

Before I go today I’d like to take a minute or two to talk about this blog ‘Science and Science Fiction’. Not only have I just reached 1500 registered subscribers but there have been some very complimentary comments submitted and I just want to thank you all for you encouragement and kind words. This blog is not yet 8 months old but it’s already far exceeded my expectations and that is all because or you so thanks again.

However, I like to say that every silver lining has a cloud around it and the cloud around the internet in general is the spammers and hackers who apparently are only happy when they’re making other people miserable.

In addition to many kind and insightful comments there have been some that either try to use my site to make them money or which are simply obscene. I can assure you those comments go immediately in the trash.

Now however it appears there are spammers out there trying to use ‘Science and Science Fiction’ to infect other sites and I’m going to be forced to install a form of security called CAPTCHA on my registration and comments links. To my friends out there I apologize and to those of you who made this necessary congratulations, you succeeded in making the world a little bit worse!

Space News for April

There was big news in the space community two days ago as SpaceX corporation succeeded in re-using a first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket. This is the breakthrough that SpaceX has been working toward ever since Elon Musk founded the company. The huge expense of space travel today comes primarily from the fact that launch systems costing tens of millions of dollars are allowed to simply crash into the ocean after one use.

SpaceX’s plan to change that and reduce the cost of traveling into space achieved it’s first great success two years ago with the first recovery of one of it’s Falcon 9. Before Thursday’s launch SpaceX had succeeded in recovering eight of their 14 story tall first stages and now they have demonstrated their ability to completely reuse and recover their rocket for yet another launch. SpaceX plans on another 6 launches this year that will employ rockets that have already flown once and been recovered.

To watch a video of the launch from Youtube click on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=octU47dHdz8

To watch the landing click on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsBUByZdGLU

SpaceX hopes that they can reduce the cost of getting into space (dollars per kilo to orbit) by a third and that the increased traffic that results will allow what are called ‘economies of scale’ to come into effect.

Thursday’s launch may have been historic but in reality it will only be important if the recovery and reuse of rockets becomes a routine business.

Another important news story this week came from the International Space Station (ISS) and dealt with a rearranging of one of the station’s docking adapters as a preparation for future missions by commercial spacecraft. NASA’s commercial crew program is scheduled to begin ferrying astronauts to the ISS next year with either the launch of Boeing’s Starliner or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.

During the long six and a half hour spacewalk astronauts Thomas Pesquet of the EU and NASA’s Shane Kimbrough succeeded in disconnecting the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3) so that the station’s robotic arm could move it from the station’s Tranquility module to it’s Harmony module. A second spacewalk is planned to reconnect PMA-3. Once this is accomplished the ISS will be ready for docking either the Starliner or Dragon spacecraft.

To read more about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program click on the link below.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fs-2017-02-198-ksc_ccp_olia_fact_sheet_web.pdf

In a somewhat more amusing piece of news. Astrobiologist Julio Valdivia of Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology has been working with NASA’s Ames research center in Sunnyvale California to study the ability of Earth plants to survive in the environmental conditions existing on Mars and has had a major success, Potatoes. That’s right Professor Valdivia has found that the lowly Potato can both live and grow on Mars. But of course everyone who saw ‘The Martian’ already knew that.

What is Science Fiction: Part 4, Science Fiction and Fantasy

In my previous installment of ‘What is Science Fiction’ I completed our survey of what I like to call the six ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction’. Now what I’d like to do in this last post is to carry out an examination of the differences between Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Most of the time it’s rather easy to tell one from the other. We know that Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ is Science Fiction because it deals realistically with the conditions both on Mars, the rarefied air and extreme cold, and in outer space, zero gravity. Also, the technology in ‘The Martian’, whether it be the spaceship’s ion engines or the living habitats on Mars are solidly based on the technology we presently have.

On the other hand, in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkein the way a ring of invisibility or a sword that glows when bad guys are near work is never explained or even discussed, they’re just magic.

To me that’s the cardinal difference: In Science Fiction the assumption is that we, and by we I mean both the reader and the characters in the story, are intelligent enough that with time and effort we can understand whatever mysteries or powerful objects there are in the story. Sometimes this assumption is even emphasized by relating the main character’s education. Remember in the original ‘Star Trek’ series how Kirk went to Star Fleet Academy while Spock went to the Vulcan Science Academy, that’s where they learned how to control their advanced technology. (And remember how Victor Frankenstein learned science at Ingolstadt University)

This expectation of understandability limits the kind of plot twists and deus ex machina that the author can get away with in Science Fiction because everything has to feel natural, understandable.

In Fantasy however, the assumption is on the supernatural element, Gandalf and Sauron have magical powers because they are themselves magical. We never learn where Gandalf learned his magic, he just is magic.

Frodo can never understand how the one ring works simply because he is natural and it is supernatural. This means that in Fantasy the author has fewer restrictions on how to get his characters into and out of danger. Just have a Balrog appear and only later reveal that Gandalf was of course stronger than the Balrog was anyway, it’s all magic after all.

But now let’s a moment and consider ‘Star Wars’ for example. Certainly it has elements that are straight out of Science Fiction, spaceships, robots (O’k they’re called droits, so what?) and laser weapons. However it also has an all pervasive ‘Force’ that gives certain characters power that the others don’t have for no obvious reason and at the same time it seems like every planet has a breathable atmosphere and normal, that is Earth gravity.

Stars Wars. Science Fiction or Fantasy, or both?

This is intentional, when George Lukas first conceived of his epic he wanted a smooth blend of realism and mythology and that has certainly been one of the prime reasons for the saga’s enduring popularity.

It seems obvious therefore that any attempt to draw a hard line between Science Fiction and Fantasy would just be a waste of time. Instead let’s just take pleasure in both genres while promoting the best Science Fiction.

This brings to an end my little seminar on Science Fiction; I hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought and I look forward to reading your comments.

Trump’s Science Budget, or lack thereof.

I’d like to take a bit of a break from my series ‘What is Science Fiction’ to talk a little about the impact of the recently announced White House budget for 2018 on science. (Don’t worry, the final installment of “What is Science Fiction” will be posted this week.)

This is Donald Trump’s first budget and shows very clearly his intent for the future of such agencies as NASA, NOAA, NSF and the Department of Energy. We already knew that the EPA and National Institute for Health were going to take a big hit and boy did they! The EPA’s budget is cut by almost a third while the NIH losses 18% of it’s funding. I guess Donald Trump doesn’t want us to know how sick we’re getting from all the pollutants industry is dumping into the environment. Still, as I said we knew those cuts were coming.

The cuts at the Department of Energy were a bit more of a surprise. While the overall reduction is only 5% the cutback in scientific research controlled by the DOE is 20%. Not many people know that the DOE runs America’s high energy physics programs and other basic research installations like the Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory (LIGO) which just last year announced the first detection of gravity waves.

These cuts not only threaten America’s leadership in almost every field of scientific research but will cause many of our most brilliant and gifted young students to abandon careers in basic science. From the building of the very first atom smasher by E. O. Lawrence back in 1934 America has always led the world in physics experiments but no more! Europe has the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the Chinese are building dozens of scientific centers while we just let them take the lead. I guess Physics is a little too complicated for Donald Trump to understand.

One complete omission from the White house budget is the funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), it’s just simply not mentioned at all. However republicans over the last few years have begun to criticize the NSF for funding programs related to the environment and social sciences so you can bet on the NSF loosing some of it’s funding.

The one piece of good news in the budget is the fact that NASA’s funding is only cut by 0.8%. Even that silver lining has a cloud around it however as the funding for Earth research from Space is drastically cut. At the same time Trump has issued an executive order directing NASA to focus on a manned journey to Mars in the 2030s. I guess even Donald Trump is able to understand that a trip to Mars is something to brag about.

If you’d like to read more about the exact figures for Donald Trump’s science budget click the link below to read an article from ‘Nature’.

http://www.nature.com/news/us-science-agencies-face-deep-cuts-in-trump-budget-1.21652

And what’s the reasoning behind all these cutbacks in the very programs that make the United States the most technically advanced nation in the world. Is it to assure health care for all Americans, please don’t make me laugh. Is it to lower the deficit, nah republicans only care about deficit spending when it’s the democrats doing the spending. It’s so that we can spend more money on a military that already costs more than the next five nations spend on their military.

Hopefully Donald Trump will have the same success with his budget that he just had with his healthcare repeal and replace. Hopefully we can force the congress to put some of the science funding back into the budget. Neil deGrasse Tyson has called the Trump budget the “Make America Weak, Sick and Stupid Budget”. I certainly agree.

What is Science Fiction: Part 3, The Great Themes of Science Fiction (Cont.)

This time I intend to complete our discussion of the ‘Great Themes’ of Science Fiction as well as discuss Science Fiction stories that try to avoid using any of the themes, it’s not as easy as you might think.

As a reminder last time I proposed six themes that were central to the genre of Science Fiction:

The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself

In my previous post we talked a bit about the first three themes so with out further ado here’s number four.

The Creation of Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence and the novel I’ll use as an example will be ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelly which was first published in 1818. Of all the novels I’ve mentioned so far I think undoubtedly ‘Frankenstein’ is the most famous but just in case there’s someone who’s never heard of it here’s the story.

The story concerns a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who as a child read about the old alchemists and their search for the philosopher’s stone and the secret of immortality. As a student at the University of Ingolstadt he gains the knowledge of the then brand new sciences of chemistry and electricity. Using this knowledge he manufactures and brings life to an artificial man constructed from materials he obtained in “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house”.

The very instant the creature is brought to life Frankenstein is horrified by what he has accomplished and flees not only from his creation but from his responsibility to it. This is certainly the first moral of the novel, that scientists must be willing to take responsibility for their discoveries, a moral that rings even stronger today in our world of nuclear weapons, electronic surveillance, gene modification and you know I could go on and on.

The rest of the story continues the morality play with the creature, who is both intelligent and humane, being tormented for it’s ugliness and finally taking a brutal revenge on it’s maker for having abandoned it.

The plot of a scientist creating an intelligent being and then being destroyed by their creation has now become the most overdone cliché in all of Science Fiction. Whether the creature is portrayed as a robot or a trained ape (‘The Planet of the Apes’ has a strong trace of Frankenstein in it) doesn’t matter, Frankenstein’s monster is as alive today as it ever was.

Moving on to our next Great Theme ‘The Future and Purpose (if there is one) of Humanity. Finding a novel that only displayed this theme turned out to be quite difficult so in the end I decided to cheat and go with H. G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ published in 1895. Now obviously The Time Machine also includes our first theme of Exploration of Space / Time but because it also demonstrates our present theme so clearly I hope you’ll forgive me.

In The Time Machine a scientist invents a means of traveling back and forth through time and uses his device to travel forward to the year 802,701 A.D. Arriving in the far future the Time Traveler, his name is never given in the story, finds that the human race has continued to evolve, indeed it had split into two species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Time Traveler conjectures that the split into two species happened when the rich aristocrats of his own time had forced the labouring poor to live underground (H. G. Wells was a socialist who got the idea from the building of the first London underground subway).

Without any need to struggle the Eloi have become both beautiful and graceful but at the same time they are small, weak and ineffectual. On the other hand the Morlocks are brutish troglodytes, unable to stand the bright light of the daytime. Also, because there are no large animals remaining on Earth (Because of mankind’s destruction of the environment?) the Eloi have become vegetarians while the Morlocks have turned the tables on their former masters and now eat the Eloi!

Not a pretty picture of our future perhaps but certainly one that illustrates our theme of ‘The Future and Purpose of Mankind’. Science Fiction stories that make use of the future of mankind theme do have a tendency to be either bleak or preachy, or both. Sometimes the author’s vision of the way ‘things ought to be’ can get in the way of telling the story but in my mind at least ‘The Time Machine’ avoids this problem.

We now come to our last theme ‘The Nature and Purpose (if there is one) of the Universe Itself’. If you think about it this theme really borders on religion, another way of stating it could be ‘Why did God create the Universe’ or even “Was there a recognizable “GOD” who created the Universe’. In keeping with the otherworldly aspects of this theme the novel I shall use as an example is H. G. Wells’ “Men Like Gods” first published in 1923.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in this theme, even more than our previous one, the author can easily find himself telling his readers how he things things ought to be instead of allowing them to imagine how things could be. In ‘Men like Gods’ Wells falls into this trap, making the story more sermon than Science Fiction.

In ‘Men like Gods’ the main character, a Mr. Barnstaple, is involved in a traffic accident that inexplicably transports him to a parallel world called Utopia. The fact that Wells has now resorted to magic when in his earlier stories he would have extrapolated from science is a symptom of how he’s become more interested in describing how the people living in a utopia would behave than in providing a realistic basis for that world.

And Wells’ utopia is based upon ideas originated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and promoted by Wells’ fellow socialist G. Bernard Shaw. The basic idea of Bergson and Shaw is that the entire Universe is permeated by a ‘Force of Life’. (And if that reminds you of ‘The Force’ in Star Wars, yes that is a variation of the idea). This Life Force is what causes evolution as it experiments with living creatures with the goal of creating more complex, more intelligent life.

The Utopia in ‘Men like Gods’ is simply a world that is further along in this process, about 3000 years in the story and as Mr. Barnstaple returns to our Earth with all its troubles he resolves to dedicate the rest of his life to bringing utopia to our world.

Before I finish for today I’d like to take just a brief moment to discuss those Science Fiction stories that don’t actually make any real use of our Great Themes. You may recall a review I wrote in my post of 1Mar17 about the novel ‘Luna: New Moon’ by Ian McDonald. In that review I made the point that even though the story takes place on the Moon, and there’s Hi-Tech wizardry on every page the plot would fit just as well during the time of the emperors of Rome.

So is ‘Luna: New Moon’ a Science Fiction story? Of course each of us will have to decide for ourselves but I’m always willing to be inclusive. The important thing for me is that a Science Fiction story should make me think. I have found that most of the time it will be about one of the six themes I’ve discussed, but thinking is the important thing.

Next time I’d like to finish my discussion of Science Fiction by considering the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy, at least as I see it. Till then.

What is Science Fiction – Part 2: The Great Themes of Science Fiction

Today I’d like to begin talking about great themes or big questions that Science Fiction allows us to think about and discuss in clearer, more precise ways than any other form of writing. It is true that some of these themes can be written about in other genres, some were in fact first written about in other literary genres. However I hope to make a case that they are best treated as Science Fiction.

As I mentioned in the first part of this series I intend to examine these themes or questions using the novels and stories of the first two acknowledged masters of Science Fiction, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

Without any further ado the six themes or questions are:

The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself

Now obviously many, probably most Science Fiction stories combine more than one of these ideas in them. However I’m going to try to find examples that fit only into the single category I’m discussing at that time.

Let’s Start with ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time and the novel I will use as an example is Jules Verne’s ‘From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip around it’. The title is pretty much the plot. In 1865, right after the American Civil War union engineers who had developed Ironclad warships, repeating rifles, railroad mounted artillery and etc. are now looking for new challenges to tackle so they decide to build a cannon large enough to fire a projectile at the Moon.

Illustration to ‘From the Earth to The Moon’

When a daring Frenchman volunteers to be a passenger on the projectile two of the American engineers decide to join him and the three-man crew are off on a journey very reminiscent of the voyage of Apollo 8 nearly a hundred years later.

Now Verne’s novel is a pretty simple story, it’s really about nothing more than using science and the technology it provides to travel someplace that no one has ever been. But isn’t that simple idea built into our human DNA. Ever since the first humans left Africa we have always used our knowledge and our tools (science and technology) to journey over that next hill and the hill after that. That makes ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time’ almost certainly the first of the great themes of Science Fiction.

Our second great theme is “The Effect of new technology or invention on Human Society’ and our example will be ‘The Invisible Man’ written by H. G. Wells in 1897. Once again the title is the plot; a chemist discovers a formula that makes living flesh transparent, invisible. Now there’s an important point to be made here. Wells takes a page or two to discuss how invisibility might actually be possible, just how the optics of transparency works rather than just giving the power of invisibility to a ring or a cloak. This is science fiction taking knowledge we actually have and extrapolating beyond it in a way that is distinctly different a fantasy novel just saying ‘it’s magic’.

The chemist, Jack Griffin uses the formula on himself and becomes invisible. Now we get the moral of the story, science fiction is a great platform for illustrating morals, just as fables are. Anyway, the power that Griffin now has goes to his head. He can steal anything he wants, spy on anyone he wants, murder anyone he wants and no one can stop him because no one can see him. He becomes mad from the power that his technology has given him, perhaps a valuable warning for our present technology mad society. As with exploration, the concept of technology changing human society is as old as human society is making this another very ancient theme indeed.

Our third great theme is that of Contact with Alien Life, Alien Intelligence and the novel we shall use to illustrate it is H. G. Wells ‘The War of the Worlds’ that was also first published in 1897. In the novel Martians invade Earth in order to conquer it as a new home for themselves and humanity is helpless against their superior technology.

Wells used some of the best science of his time in “The War of the Worlds’ including infrared radiation (the Martians heat ray) the use of poison gas and mechanized devices in warfare (the Martians war machines are basically tanks on legs) so that even after more than a century the story seems very modern.

What Wells was really doing however it criticizing his own country of Britain’s and the rest of Europe’s empires in Africa and Asia in the late 19th century. “How would you like it?” Wells asks, if a technically superior race dropped from the sky and said “This is our land now! You belong to us now!” Again we see how Science Fiction is being used as a platform from which we can observe and criticize human behavior.

I think I’m going to have to stop here for today; this is already the longest post I’ve ever published. Next time we’ll finish our survey of Science Fiction’s great themes and we’ll also discuss whether or not a story can be Science Fiction without using one of our themes. Can a Science Fiction story just be a story? (Hint: Of course it can.)

Till next time.