Using a long spoon
Oct. 10th, 2013 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe Book Festival last night actually aciknowledges the existence of science fiction - sort of. The event was a debate: Is great science great science fiction?
One thing all participants seemed to agree on was that they didn't know what the question meant. Looking now at the programme, it's perfectly clear what's under discussion: "From God particles to embryonic stem-cell research, our scientific discoveries are saturated with wonder and the downright weird. But do we create scientific facts or do scientists simply discover what’s already there?" But that's a different question to the one up for debate, and it's all about science and the world, and not about fiction or science fiction. Indeed, for a book festival event, the whole thing was remarkably book-free: there was a handy electronic device on each seat, to allow us to vote yes or no, but not a book to be seen.
The speakers were two academics for the affirmative - Professor Tom McLeish (molecular physicist) and Professor Patricia Waugh (English studies) - opposed by two novelists - Ken MacLeod and Andrew Crumey.
Patricia Waugh spoke first, with great verve and much hand-waving, but I couldn't find any thread to follow in the torrent of ideas. She lost whatever sympathy I might have had by not only asking for extra time when the klaxon told us her ten minutes were up, but asking for extra time when she had exhausted that first indulgence, and carrying on regardless until the microphone was physically removed. Frustratingly, at this point she had just embarked on a history of the novel and was making some point about Robinson Crusoe which sounded as if it might have some bearing on the question.
I was on Andrew Crumey's side from the start. He was just so reasonable: this is science, this is fiction, they are not the same thing. Science is about external reality, fiction is stuff we make up. From time to time I have picked up on of his novels, failed to gain any purchase on it and put it down again; but on the strength of last night, I might give it another go.
Tom McLeish was an interesting speaker, both because he had interesting things to say, and because he took pains to say them in interesting ways - it's a pity this included some cheap rhetorical points equating his opponents' arguments with 'the tired old idea of the two cultures' (since both were novelists whose academic background was in the sciences, not really). But he had some great material quoting eminent scientists on the element of creativity in their work, and scientific discovery as a narrative, and... I would have liked to hear him in conversation rather than in debate.
Finally, Ken MacLeod lowered the intellectual tone by talking about science fiction (hooray!) and whether it required great science: no, but the science does have to be Just Good EnoughTM, I think, and the devil is in the detail.
There were questions from the audience, most of which I have forgotten, but I sympathised with the person who asked, never mind whether great science is great science fiction, is bad science bad science fiction? No, said Ken MacLeod, look at Heinlein. Later Tom McLeish came back to this point with a distinction that I need to think about: science isn't bad science just because it's wrong, he said. Isaac Newton was a great scientist, but much of Newton's view of the universe has been discarded. I don't think he was talking about Newton's occultism, either.
One thing all participants seemed to agree on was that they didn't know what the question meant. Looking now at the programme, it's perfectly clear what's under discussion: "From God particles to embryonic stem-cell research, our scientific discoveries are saturated with wonder and the downright weird. But do we create scientific facts or do scientists simply discover what’s already there?" But that's a different question to the one up for debate, and it's all about science and the world, and not about fiction or science fiction. Indeed, for a book festival event, the whole thing was remarkably book-free: there was a handy electronic device on each seat, to allow us to vote yes or no, but not a book to be seen.
The speakers were two academics for the affirmative - Professor Tom McLeish (molecular physicist) and Professor Patricia Waugh (English studies) - opposed by two novelists - Ken MacLeod and Andrew Crumey.
Patricia Waugh spoke first, with great verve and much hand-waving, but I couldn't find any thread to follow in the torrent of ideas. She lost whatever sympathy I might have had by not only asking for extra time when the klaxon told us her ten minutes were up, but asking for extra time when she had exhausted that first indulgence, and carrying on regardless until the microphone was physically removed. Frustratingly, at this point she had just embarked on a history of the novel and was making some point about Robinson Crusoe which sounded as if it might have some bearing on the question.
I was on Andrew Crumey's side from the start. He was just so reasonable: this is science, this is fiction, they are not the same thing. Science is about external reality, fiction is stuff we make up. From time to time I have picked up on of his novels, failed to gain any purchase on it and put it down again; but on the strength of last night, I might give it another go.
Tom McLeish was an interesting speaker, both because he had interesting things to say, and because he took pains to say them in interesting ways - it's a pity this included some cheap rhetorical points equating his opponents' arguments with 'the tired old idea of the two cultures' (since both were novelists whose academic background was in the sciences, not really). But he had some great material quoting eminent scientists on the element of creativity in their work, and scientific discovery as a narrative, and... I would have liked to hear him in conversation rather than in debate.
Finally, Ken MacLeod lowered the intellectual tone by talking about science fiction (hooray!) and whether it required great science: no, but the science does have to be Just Good EnoughTM, I think, and the devil is in the detail.
There were questions from the audience, most of which I have forgotten, but I sympathised with the person who asked, never mind whether great science is great science fiction, is bad science bad science fiction? No, said Ken MacLeod, look at Heinlein. Later Tom McLeish came back to this point with a distinction that I need to think about: science isn't bad science just because it's wrong, he said. Isaac Newton was a great scientist, but much of Newton's view of the universe has been discarded. I don't think he was talking about Newton's occultism, either.
