Bending Science

Science fiction: an oxymoron. Is it science or is it fiction–because science is the process of discovering and proving the truth of something and fiction is writing something that is not true.

But science fiction is a bit of both.

So when I write science fiction I try to study what is new in science and incorporate it into my novels, sometimes with a bit of bending of the truth so as to extend the imagination and make an interesting story. That is the fiction part.

Let me explain. Dark matter and dark energy. These are exciting new concepts that are still being proven. We are not exactly sure what properties they hold, but we hypothesize that they exist and some scientists claim to have found dark matter.  So, in Cosmic Entanglement they are mentioned and in the next book after that, they are an accepted part of space.

For years, Stephen Hawkings suggested the existence of black holes, but only recently have we actually proven that they exist…and in the heart of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Now we have found black holes at the center of most galaxies and some are suggesting that they are the power engine that drives galaxies. So, there had to be a wormhole or a black hole in one of my books.

Stephen Hawkings said that there are particle and anti particle pairs that are created near the event horizon. When this spontaneous creation occurs, as it does everywhere in space, the particle and antiparticle travels in opposite directions. If one member of the pair travels into the event horizon, the other will fly away from the black hole. (The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil). I used this idea and bent it a bit…okay, a whole lot. But who’s to say, it might not occur? No one has been to a black hole. But I sent my ship near a vortex and used the idea to save my crew.

Speech recognition and computer implants: So for years they talked about speech recognition, but the human voice is a tricky thing. Now we have Siri and it feels like we are living in an imagined future. Science reality is catching up to science fiction. So, in one of my stories, the main character talks to his computer almost as if he considers it a live person.

As my stories go farther into the future of Alysia, I have to imagine what the science might be like in that future. One concept is the implanted A1 that has been made popular by authors such as John Scalzi, Richard Morgan, and yeah, Star Trek. The cyborg human. A neat idea that I use in another forthcoming novel. Taking the current science of prothesis and brain implants and bending it even more.

But the idea of implanting computers or mechanical devices is already a science reality. One of my former employers has Parkinson’s disease and underwent an operation that implanted a mechanical device to alleviate the shaking that racked his body. My own sister has an electronic device implanted in her brain, after having a tumor removed that left her deaf in one ear. You would never know now that she had a hearing problem.

So, what about the Not Yet Science of Alysia’s far future?  I incorporated the idea of nanotechnology that made humans disease resistance and extended their life. I also had a main character live over a hundred years. In our reality, Cro Magnon Era man lived to be 18 years old. Ancient Egypt 28 years. 1400 Europe 30 years. 1900 United State 48 years, and 2002 United States 78 years. Now we are inching toward 80 years of expected life. Arwoyn Telluria in Caught in Time lives to be over a hundred.

Also, Caught In Time has as a main character a clone variant that travels back in time. Neither time travel nor human cloning has yet been done…but we have cloned mammals. That amazes me. And manned exploration. Well, many a scifi author has done the manned exploration idea, but you got to have some of space travel in your science fiction. Still, I tried to study some of the advances being made as we prepare to travel to Mars in the not so distant future and I put them on board my ship. Some of the ideas I gave a bit of a bend to enable survivable travel.

The book coming out soon, soon, soon is Cosmic Entanglement. I am awaiting a proof copy right now. It is about an alien probe that crash lands on Alysia. I started it before our Mar Rovers landed, er bounced, on the red planet and now we have several probes out in deep space photographing and exploring what is out there. What might another species think and do if there was a chance encounter with one of our probes?

So these are some of the not yet sciences that by bending and extending current science reality, science fiction writers may imagine into science fact.