Scientifically Accurate Sci-Fi for High-Schoolers? 268
Raul654 asks: "A member of my immediate family is a biology teacher at an all-girls high school. For some years, she's been giving her students the option to earn extra credit by reading a science-related book. What scientifically accurate science fiction books would you recommend for high school readers?"
That's easy... (Score:5, Funny)
A full scholarship for anyone who builds a working lightsaber.
Science.... fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Science.... fiction (Score:5, Informative)
Hard SF (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
First you are a troll.
Second... Please read some hard science fiction before you pan it, like any fiction genre "sci-fi" has many different sub categories (more than most actually) and most if not all of them serve a purpose.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A good example is "Neutron Star" by Larry Niven. It assumes hyperdrive technology and a (supposedly, that's the point of the story) invulnerable spaceship hull. After that the physics is spot on - and quite educational.
I would also suggest "The Mote in God's Eye" as a good example. I would go as far as to say that this is the best of the genre - ever.
BTW. Some have referred to the sequ
Re: (Score:2)
Think of diseases as very small parasites. Parasites need hosts. No host, no parasite. Any disease which is as violently and quickly lethal as depicted in The Hot Zone couldn't actually spread. It would kill off its hosts so effectively, it would kill off itself. This is why the really vicious diseases are new introductions (like Marb
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Science.... fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
What the article is requesting is a different type of science fiction, in my opinion: fiction that is about science itself. I loved reading George Smith's "Venus Equilateral" (as an example) because it was a technical exploration of a future in which we were living the same way humans currently live: competing, cooperating or fighting, inventing, only in space stations, using an entirely tube-based technology. It was a vision of the future that would make an engineer smile, as people put together increasingly technical workarounds to fix problems they needed to overcome (which always produced new and unforseen problems, that the next set of stories would deal with) all based on vacuum-tube technology. To Smith, and to other writers at the time, particularly Heinlein and Asimov, the future looked like it was all based on increasingly sophisticated vacuum tubes. (Tube-based learning systems show up in Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer", as I recall.)
Actually, while I'm on about it: Asimov cheated, as regards hard science, by waving his hands and making up 'positronics' that drove his robots' brains, but his work wasn't essentially about robotics, it was about how humans dealt with what they had created. Smith and early Heinlein was very much about the extension of then-cutting-edge technology far into the future, and how that affected people.
Anyway. Good fiction should be about what could happen and how that would change people, whether focusing on individuals or the whole race. Science fiction fits into that.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dragon's Egg by Robert Forward (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Scientifically accurate movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Real Genius had some excellent science advisors. The Laser he builds and the curves he draws to explain it are right for an Excimer Laser. The other stunts short of the grand finale actually happened at caltech so they are all true, even the contest entry winner.
Cinema Verite:
2001 set the high bar that has never been matched.
Primer is novel because it captures how scientist actually talk to each other, and make old equipment do new tricks. Also the time travel aspect of it actually would work--if
none really (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All, really (Score:2)
Why Fiction? (Score:2)
Biology relevant Hard-SF... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Andromeda Strain". Classic. The original "Jurassic Park". Also very very good. Both quite good biology based books. Sure JP is a little loose with cloning and DNA recombination, but that's the SF part.
Off the top of my ehad, those are some great bio-related hard-SF books.
Re:Biology relevant Hard-SF... (Score:4, Insightful)
Worst. Book. Ever.
It wouldn't have been so bad if Crichton hadn't managed to (single handedly, I might add) take Deus ex machina to a whole new level. It's so bad that if you look up Deus ex machina in the dictionary, it says "See: Andromeda Strain". (I'm only half joking. Look it up on Wikipedia.)
Crichton has written many other books that are of far more interest. Don't waste your time on AS.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
While this is true (don't get me wrong, the books are among my favourites) they do rely a bit on 'magic' like the Alderson drive & the Langston(?) shield. Pournelle's solo effort "Lucifer's Hammer", about the lead up to and aftermath of a comet impact, is well worth a read.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine you've released 3 groups of people into a room. Babies, 10 year olds, and professional basketball players. If you graph height vs how many people are that height, you'll see 3 humps. One about 2 feet, the second about 4 feet, and the third other 6 feet. But very few at 3 and 5 feet.
That's what the graph in Jurassic Park was supposed to look like, because the dinos were released in batches. Instead they saw one big hump. So to continue the analogy, where did
Speaking of Biology (Score:2)
Assuming this is an American high school... (Score:5, Funny)
Just point out the flaws... (Score:3, Funny)
SF is about people more than about science (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So we basically agree that the science is context, or background. Context (Wiki: "The context of an event, word, paradigm, change or other reality includes the circumstances and conditions which surround it") cannot stand on its own; it always relates to something or it just doesn't make sense to speak of it. Science and technology in SF stories are the backdrop to human action and interaction; stories that focus exclusively on the science/tech side are techno-fet
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I would also recommend his Quarantine [wikipedia.org] and Permutation City [wikipedia.org].
Asimov, Dune (Score:2, Interesting)
Fantastic Voyage (2 especially) might be cool, too. Keep in mind, the movie sucked -- Asimov was hired to do the novelization and to be a scientific adviser, and he did advise them to change the deminaturization sequence, as miniturized humans should not be able to breathe unminaturized air.
Dune. Not particularly accurate with respect to our own universe, but wow, what a thoroughly done and rigoro
David Brin - MSc Physics, PhD Phil., Hugo, Nebula (Score:5, Interesting)
And Greg Egan (Score:5, Interesting)
Though my favourite Egan works tend to be more philosophical than scientific (eg the short story "Learning To Be Me").
Re:And Greg Egan x 2 (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I ate up books like Eon, forge of god, eternity, moving mars while I was at high school.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I recommend Australian writer Greg Egan.
Don't forget Hal Clement, who to a certain extent defined the 'hard science' SF genre. Mission of Gravity, Close to Critical, Still River... he's particularly well suited for assigned reading because his books tend to be structured as puzzles: here is a strange situation, what are the consequences of this?
Mission of Gravity [wikipedia.org] is probably his most famous book; an exploration of the planet Mesklin [martiniere.com], a superheavy Earth-like world that spins so fast that although the
Medea: Harlan's World (Score:2)
It's part SF anthology, part world-creation manual. The concept behind the book was that a team of prominent SF writers such as Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Thomas M Disch, Frank Herbert, Robert Silverberg, Theordore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison collaboratively created a world and its inhabitants, from astrophys
I love David Brin (Score:2)
I guess it's a sign of good writing that he managed to make me care about the characters so much.
Brin, Robinson (Score:2)
See also Kim Robinson's Red Mars and to a lesser extent the sequels. These involve Mars col
Have Space Suit, Will Travel by RA Heinlein (Score:2)
I loved that book as a kid.
And it more or less has worked examples of one or two useful calculations you might want to do if you get captured by aliens. Heh.
Re: (Score:2)
...and its set about now I think. Well... we could have had the moon base by now, if we had wanted to.
Hard Sci-Fi (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah good, someone's saved me the bother :)
Evolution is a fascinating read, and broken down nicely into chunks that can be read quickly and almost independently.
Red Mars (Score:5, Insightful)
Check it out. Even if the class doesn't end up using it, if you're a sci-fi fan then it will be time well spent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The parent makes some allusion to one of the groups in (i think) the third book that have a commune/
Strong female characters - mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
Since this is going to a girls school, Red Mars should get extra points for having so many female characters in the forefront - though I think Red Mars may be a tad long-winded for high school students. (Use this as a yardstick: Have they read Atlas Shrugged? If so, Red Mars is terse by comparison.)
Also, another poster mentioned Cosmos by Carl Sagan. This is an excellent suggestion. Not only is the main character female, but the story is captivating, and the science is impeccable.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hard SF, or Pop Sci books (Score:4, Informative)
Greg Egan - Diaspora, Permutation City, Schild's Ladder, or his short story collections such as Axiomatic or Luminous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Egan [wikipedia.org]
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series
Here's a good source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction [wikipedia.org]
Stephen Baxter & David Brin are also popular authors.
While Egan tends to cover a lot of speculative technology or concepts, novels generally will be more about plot & character rather than science. If this is for a science class, I'd recommend picking up a good pop-sci book. A few that come to mind:
Richard Dawkins: Climbing Mount Improbable, River Out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Blind Watchmaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins [wikipedia.org]
Jared Diamond: Guns Germs & Steel - great book combining history, anthropology, biology to explain how humanity diverged into such technologically disparate cultures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs%2C_and
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see now. (Score:2)
Mainly a lot of biology in sci-fi has not aged well at all as bio is a quickly expanding field. A few that deal more with
For an all girls school... (Score:3, Insightful)
I will fear no evil and stranger in a strange land are definitely worth a read
But thats more about adjusting the moral compass of todays youth to a more enlightened philosophy than it is about the science.
Most science fiction tends to ignore science - insofar as changing it goes - they may extrapolate something into the future, or even define their own entire universe - but once thats done they tend to ignore it and concentrate on the people. If you took out the futuristic settings most sci fi would simply be classed as drama, occssionally romance, or for the likes of Heinlein, porn.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein [wikipedia.org]
While I enjoy reading some of his work, it is hardly that good. Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, are both better writers in my opinion. Their work is more consistently good and they do not go all over the place (see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Who_Walks_Thr ough_Walls [wikipedia.org] for a story that ends up plain weird).
Some of his non-fiction is worth a read
Re: (Score:2)
As I said good reading for a girls school, given them a sound basis for when they hit their 20's
Re: (Score:2)
Besides Gor is a rather rediculous portrayal of a purely male dominated society - whats even worse are those that follow it litterally in real life, and I do know a few that fall into that category.
Long before advocating ANYONE read any Gor novels I'd be suggesting The Story of O and probably the works of the Marquis de Sade - its better to see some middle ground on a topic before going right to the extreme end.
Funny, I liked Heinlein's earlier works better... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny, I liked Heinlein's earlier works better. (Score:2)
As for his later works "The cat who walked through walls" is just a little too sureal for me!! I think I got a headache when I read it!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
While you're at it, though, you might as w
LEM (Score:2)
Stanislaw Lem doesn't necessarily indulge in precise science of the future, but outlines all kinds of social and what not problems that could arise from them. You can build a new device, or use it, but what unforseen consequences could it have? Lem teaches us to look past "technological progress" and see how each solution can open new problems.
Anything by Arthur C. Clarke (Score:4, Informative)
Also Isaac Asimovs books are nice. Try starting with I, Robot [amazon.com], which has a much better story than the movie they made.
Re: (Score:2)
And don't even get me started on that movie, all it pinched from the book(s) were the laws of robotics, which they didn't follow, the names of some of the characters and the name of the book. The story of the film is an insult to the books, it really is.
Re: (Score:2)
Even includes a section on the plausibility of the technologies used in the book.
Nobody can hear you scream (Score:2)
Considering its age, the depiction of space travel is really astounding. The only Hollywood concession I'm aware of is the opening shot of Discovery One, in which the front is lit as if it's facing the sun. There's something in one of the commentaries about this.
Reminds me of the ROTK commentary where Frodo is lying on the ground in one scene, and is also mysteriously well-lit. Elijah asked someone where the ligh
Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov (Score:4, Interesting)
Rendezvous with Rama, Imperial Earth and The Fountains of Paradise remain some of my favourite Clarke books, and some of my favourite books, period. The current edition of Glidepath, an otherwise-excellent novel, is marred by lousy OCR and incompetent proofreading.
For high-school students, some of Heinlein's juveniles might still fit the bill, even if they were written 50 years ago. Have Space Suit, Will Travel holds up remarkably well, while students can debate Podkayne of Mars. None of these authors were that good at female characters at first, though they got better with time - who can forget Bliss ("Don't I look human?") or Dors, who wasn't what she seemed, or Calindy, who tasted like honey?
I just finished re-reading the Foundation novels. They illustrate a couple of the most important ideas in science fiction: if it's happened before, it will happen again, and consider the consequences. The whole series is about the decline and fall of an empire. A galactic one, this time.
...laura
Re: (Score:2)
I see they succeeded at fooling you into believing that it was fiction....
There are none! (Score:3, Informative)
If you want a scientifically accurate book, you know where to find it. If you want a work of fiction, you also know where to find it.
Science fiction is first and foremost fiction. The point of science fiction is to speculate about the future, and that nearly always involves technology that is not invented yet, and might never be invented, such as interstellar travel, fusion energy, real artificial intelligence, lightsabres, human cloning, rampant genetic engineering, force-fields, wormholes, nanotechnology, etc. The only exception to this is if the story is about a society after the fall of civilization (i.e. post-cataclysmic, due to nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, etc...), and it's mostly about vikings riding Harley-Davidson motorbikes raiding nearby villages for women and booze, or something like that (see also Kevin Costners Waterworld).
Even fiction that is not set in the future, tends to include speculative technologies and methods. Just look at CSI, James Bond, etc... If a book does not contain speculative science, chances are that it will not contain any science at all. It will be about other things, such as people, love, crime, war, or something like that.
If what you are after is something that is scientifically accurate and entertaining, but not necessarily fiction, I would introduce them to Richard Feynman. (I'm sure there are other good authors, e.g. Stephen Hawking has a good reputation, but he talks about stuff so far above our heads that it's hard to gain any understanding from it). (I realize none of these authors excel in biology. So maybe you should ask somebody else for suggestions there...)
In short: just forget about it. You won't find a fiction book that teaches you science, any more than you will find a science book with a good plot. The best you can hope for is a fiction book that inspires you about the possibilities of science, and a science book that is both entertaining and correct.
Bull! (Score:2)
Pessimistic ? (Score:2)
Pick Science Fiction that involves technology that already exists, but right now isn't being used because of, um, budget constraints or other reasons (ethical, practical, whatever).
Getting humans to Mars and back would be one of the many examples. Sure, if you threw enough money at it, it could be done with todays technology.
Or surveillance societies. Ok, what goes on today is
Re: (Score:2)
My point is that it is still speculative. Since the technology doesn't exist yet, we do not exactly know what will happen. That's why it's called fiction. Getting humans to mars is one example. There are dozens of ways it could be done. It could be millions of unforeseen incidents. Plenty of room for interesting stories to deve
Re: (Score:2)
But not about the technology, but about its consequences.
Getting humans to mars is one example. There are dozens of ways it could be done.
Yes. But a story that involves chemical rockets, spacesuits and a sometimes boring and long flight is more "science" than one involving warp drives and holodecks.
And we do not know the consequences of genetic tampering we do.
But the technology to do such tampering exists today. The story might be fiction, but the tools and princ
Hitch Hikers (Score:3, Funny)
Drugs (Score:2)
It is for high schoolers, right?
Alastair Reynolds (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I had no idea there were sequels. Thanks for this suggestion!
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle, from 1957 (Score:2)
wiki link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud [wikipedia.org]
quite a few copies are available in various used forms from Amazon
How about... (Score:2)
An all girls high school in USA??? (Score:2)
I suspect organized religion has done its deeds here as well...I was going to suggest Star Trek, the original series, but there is a grave danger in that: the girls might fall in love with captain Kirk (which appears half naked in many episodes), so perhaps a few episodes from Deep Space 9, season 6 or 7, will do. And the girls might learn their lesson that Pa-Wraith/devil worshipers wil
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect organized religion has done its deeds here as well.
Once again, another paranoid "Blame everything on religion" rant. Some parents send their girls to all girls schools in the (mistaken?) belief that girls are overlooked in public schools in favor of boys and going to an all girls school will remedy this. It could also be that the school in question might just have a really
Why scientifically accurate (Score:2)
Just be careful about recommending one of the more sex obsessed authors.
Wil McCarthy (Score:2)
Other non-fiction I'd recommend would be the excellent Bill Bryson "A short history of nearly evreything." - I really wish that had been available when I was in high school.
Greg Bear (Score:3, Informative)
But really, there are a lot of authors listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction [wikipedia.org] that I would recommend.
Greg Bear (Score:2)
Why I always got in trouble in high school (Score:2)
Ursula K. Le Guin (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
I suggest Ringworld Engineers... (Score:2)
*P.S. please take this post with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Larry Niven (Score:2)
A variant of this has already been discussed (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hilights include:
Asimov - Foundation series
Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide
Herbert - Dune
Card - Ender's Game
Clarke - 2001 or 2010
Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Heinlein - Juvenile series
Robinson - color Mars series (Red Mars, etc.)
Niven - Ringworld
Robinson has a good handle on science and human nature, in these stories people transform themselves to be better adapted to their environment versus the other way around - although there are s
Far Future stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Orion's Arm stuff -- this is the hardest of hard scifi I've ever seen, but most of it is incredibly far-future.
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Stephenson are both pretty firm, but have more tech than science stuff.
Contact, the movie based on a Carl Sagan book, is some fo the most scientific of science fiction; Buckaroo Banzai in the Eighth Dimension is also resoundingly scientific -- especially odd but appropriate for a parody of the genre.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it puts you into another
Imagination or lack of it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
...and lots of philosophy about the nature of consciosness, plus a certain amount of fairly subtle allegory/satire about how the scientific community works - plus the occasional joke (e.g. posthuman AIs scared of a coke can - which they see as a replecating viral meme).
The opening of "Diaspora" - an in-depth description of an artificial intelligence being "born" within a virtual digital space - is superficial
Niven, Pournelle, Barnes - Niven especially (Score:5, Informative)
"Legacy of Heorot" and "Beowulf's Children" (Niven, Pournelle, Barnes) have as their prime villain (villain being defined as an entity whose aims clash with those of the humans) the grendels, a creature native to the planet a colonizing starship has reached. The colonists very sensibly initially occupy a single island which has relatively little native life on it due to a recent natural catastrophe; trouble arises when they become overconfident of their understanding of the local ecology, failing to realize that grendels act as their own alpha predators. By killing the local grendel they have ensured that *all* the local samlon, which would normally have been predated down to what might have been nuisance levels, will mature into grendels... A nice side issue is that one reason for the human failure to see the problem is that the best ecological experts have suffered "ice on the mind", a form of brain damage caused by expanding ice crystals in the brain during their arteficial hibernation - more grist for a biology class.
"The Mote in God's Eye" and "The Gripping Hand" (Niven, Pournelle) explore a world wherein a quirk of biology curses the intelligent aliens with perpetual population explosion, and the resultant atomic wars, runaway pollution and intense resource deficit only make the Darwinian struggle more acute; by the time humans come into contact with them, the Moties are individually and in small kin-groups amazingly more capable than Homo sapiens, but at the same time they are crippled by an inability to see beyond their local self-interest. The physics of the series allows two principal Just-Accept-It items, an instantaneous-jump Faster-Than-Light drive and a universally-absorbent energy field, but even here there are credible limitations on the technoloy; Alderson drives can only jump between points of equal stellar flux, and Langston Fields eventually must dissipate the energy they absorb. What really makes the series especially suitable for your friend's purposes is that the authors' examination of how deep and subtle the effects of breeding patterns on intelligent creatures, including their effect on ethics, has not been equalled in any other SF series I know of.
"Footfall" (Niven, Pournelle) is another First Contact novel, and despite the slight dating afforded by its Cold War milieu still easily one of the best (I like to think of it as an Alternate History in which the USSR survived longer than it did AND we were visited by aliens). As in the first series, no liberties whatsoever have been taken with physics - no FTL drive, nor any FTK communication. As in the second, the best part of the book is seeing how the biological origins of the aliens (and the humans!) informs their thinking, language, decision making, ethics, and of course how they misunderstand each other. The Traveler Fithp are herd animals, you see, and that has all kinds of consequences; for example, when they accept surrender thay think the whole herd has surrendered. What we call individualists they call rogues, i.e. insane, and they are not at all prepared to deal with a race where rogues approach being the norm; a resistance by a few humans is seen as a betrayal by the whole populace. The misunderstandings span large and small. For example, they *really* believe in law and order, including one of the characteristics they (nominally) share with us - they mate for life! It's really a good read, full of fast-paced action as well as some solid philosohical meat.
It's a little unclear whether you are only looking for SF based on biological themes or more general science is good; in either case Niven is the powerhouse of this team, and his solo work abounds with insight into physics (especially astrophysics) and ecology. The Ringworld series ("Ringworld", "The Ringworld Engineers", "Ringworld Throne" and "Ringworld's Children") are mostly cited for the physics of the Rin
Politics and character in Niven, Pournelle, et al (Score:5, Insightful)
But...
Much though I respect Niven and his crowd for their engineering, as pedagogical tools, they are crippled by their handling of human beings. Like Heinlein, but to an even greater degree, that whole cluster of writers is reliably anti-democracy, vastly sexist, and contemptuous of any human worldview but their own. Like Crichton, anybody whose philosophy differs from their male-centric techno-libertarian/protofascist (!)* creed is cowardly, probably homosexual (the horror!) and intellectually bankrupt. Women are sex objects or Heinleinesque cartoon superwomen, usually "coincidentally" extremely young and pretty, etc.
Now, as a male techno-libertarian myself, with my own hyper-cute intellectual superwoman of a girlfriend, I find this stuff really annoying.
Yeah, the Mote books are fascinating and engrossing. But did the only human civilization worthy of respect have to be a Czarist, totalitarian, testosterone fantasyland of uniforms and commands and Very Big Guns?
I have recommended their books before, putting them forward as works like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, where one must live with the bad to get the good, and alienated those who I recommended them to. Personally, I find myself turning to works like mid-period Brunner or Delany or the Alliance/Union/Compact books of C.J. Cherryh. All of those are just as smart, technologically fascinating, but are simply less, well, adolescent than Niven and his crowd.
Do I feel that your recommendations are wrong? No. But best that we note their failings along with their strengths. And I want to note that, oddly enough, in my experience, the farther Niven veers from current and highly specific technology, the more open-minded his characterizations become. So, predicably, Lucifer's Hammer is terrible, from its pro-fission reactor idiocies to the explicit polemics, while Ringworld acknowledges complexity and even encompasses a bit of witty satire.
* I am well aware of the seeming contradiction of my locution, "techno-libertarian/protofascist". Ain't so. Both states, as seen in their books, are variations on "guys like me must be in charge, everyone else is contemptable". The only difference is that when they are writing about far away worlds, they fantasize about the benevolent despotism that "should" be imposed while in writing about near-term Earth, they retreat to truculent rejection of all government or democracy as self-evident tools of the inferior masses "we" are trying to get free of. Neither, may I note, has the sophistication of the considered and explicit libertarianism of works like the Tom Paine Maru books that try to figure out political approaches that respect all people.