Scientific Accuracy in Sci-fi

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but I couldn’t decide how to do it. Scientific accuracy in sci-fi is something I thought I’d talk about more in the Technology discussions, (The latest on Robotics is here!) but it hasn’t really worked out that way. So instead, it gets its own post.

When writing science fiction, nearly all authors in the genre struggle with the question of whether or not the technologies portrayed in their stories need to actually reflect what is scientifically possible. We often get caught between trying to make everything factually correct, and wondering if we can get away with bending the laws of science here or there. I often get stuck in the middle of this pickle myself.

The heart of the issue is this: Most of us that write sci-fi have heightened interests in real-world science and technology. We want to know how things work. This can be problematic when making up futuristic technologies because we question the underlying mechanics of the very things we create, whether they be machines, biological or chemical technologies, Alterations to time and space, etc. If we fail to form a good scientific basis to build these creations on, None of them will seem believable. The worlds we build start falling apart, and the work starts sliding into the realm of fantasy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with fantasy. It just serves a different purpose.)

So we can say that it’s necessary to at least base our creations in reality, but how far do you have to go? I can say with certainty that for me, and probably for most writers, there’s a turning point where the level of scientific accuracy no longer adds to the work as a whole. I used to be obsessed with making sure the technologies I made up could pass as being scientifically possible at a glance. I would even go so far as to draft mechanical drawings for machines that played significant roles in my stories. That’s quite excessive, and I certainly don’t do that anymore. Writers who agonize over the intricacies of things that don’t exist often find that they don’t get any writing done at all. It’s better to create something and have it end up as a scientific impossibility, than to try and inevitably fail to invent a working model for something like time travel and be left with nothing in the end.

This is not to say that a writer should stay away from hard topics altogether. The great advantage of being a fiction writer is that we can discuss concepts about which little is known in order to facilitate thought on a larger, more consequential theme. For example, interstellar travel would present a monumental change to life as we know it, but authors often use faster-than-light travel to drive plot in stories that follow characters from one star-system to another. Is such a thing possible? Maybe, but we don’t know yet. In cases like this, it’s not bad to assume some great and mysterious advancement in technology in order to avoid a few of the trickier rules of science, and to allow a greater theme to take the limelight. It is each author’s prerogative to choose how specific their descriptions of technology are. Variance in this regard contributes to individual voice, rather than detracting from the genre as a whole.

Writers of science fiction bear the responsibility to speculate what effects technologies both of the present and future could have on humanity. Often, our ability to base these speculations in scientific fact is limited by mankind’s understanding of science, but this discrepancy does not lessen the importance of making conjectures for the sake of mindful progress. Therefore, it is the sci-fi writer’s obligation to project beyond what is known to imagine diverse visions of futures both near and far-off, to inspire awe, creativity, and even fear in the minds of those whom we reach. It is by portraying these futures that we exert our influence over the world, each doing what little we can to steer it in a better direction.