With forty years of designing real spacecraft and reading science fiction stories imagining futures that I wanted to help create, I’ve developed a few opinions on how science fiction should be discussed and critiqued. The vast majority of it isn’t. Far too many sci-fi writers, journalists, and fans focus on the wrong elements. They compliment stories for “scientific accuracy” when it’s glaringly wrong or discredit hard sci-fi that actually respects physics as dull and joyless. When I retired from my career as an aerospace engineer and fluid dynamicist I decided to start writing about science fiction myself. I had the time now, but more importantly I was tired of reading so much science fiction analysis from people who had clearly never taken physics class in their life.
You know the type – reviewers praising movies that depict spaceships travelling through space with the nimble flight dynamics of magic flying fighter jets, or complimenting novels for incorporating “believable” faster-than-light travel. Seriously. Get a room people.
I grew up in the sixties during the heyday of the space race. Watching the Apollo moon landing as a child cemented my decision to work in aerospace when I grew up. Both my parents encouraged my interests – my father was a mechanical engineer and my mom was a math teacher. Between the two of them they recognised my passion for space travel and provided every opportunity they could for me to make it a reality. Part of that apprenticeship involved reading – lots of reading. Like any astute child of the space race I cut my teeth on science fiction novels, devouring everything I could get my hands on. The hard science fiction authors captured my attention the most. Authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov who knew that the best speculation is built on an understanding of real world constraints.
What forty years of working in the aerospace industry taught me was that sci-fi is at its very best not when it’s blowing up moon bases or blasting alien invaders out of the sky. It’s not about laser swords or noisy space battles – at least not really. Sci-fi depends on "what if" questions to drive story, and those questions lead to some of its best insights when grounded in realistic science. If a movie or novel consistently ignores things like physics, or chemistry, or biology then anything can happen. The story sure may thrill us, but it doesn’t resonate quite the same way.
Andy Weir’s recent novel, The Martian, asks the question "what if an astronaut was stranded on Mars, how could they survive?" But more importantly than asking the question it answers it. The book works as storytelling because Weir did the research and knows how orbital mechanics works. He knows how much atmospheric pressure Mars has and what humans can withstand. Weir understands how solar panels work and how much power they can provide to keep your base operating. All those little details add up to create narrative tension because we know Matt Damon could actually die. It could happen. It happened to the crew of Apollo 13.
Compare that to the plethora of modern science fiction – movies, books, television shows – which treats science like an optional ingredient. I’ll sit down and watch something like the recent Star Trek reboot movies. Opens the tube. Take a deep breath. Then watchreddit. They have spaceships falling feet-first through planetary atmospheres because they don’t understand acceleration, atmosphere, or spacecraft flight dynamics. All those sci-fi stories fail to resonate with me because they ignore the science of every detail. If you’re going ignore everything I just spent hours training on why don’t you set you story in medieval times?
The Expanse television series is one of the few recent examples of science fiction that just gets it right. Every time they do something new I find myself impressed with their commitment to realistic science. From how characters speak when needing to simulate gravity, to not showing spacecraft making noise in the vacuum of space. They understand how difficult space travel is and how little the human body can adapt to non-earth environments. Once they’ve set that foundation they use it to craft stories that thrill and excite us. They drop cargo ships into asteroid belts where failure really will kill you. When the characters fly spaceships and get blasted around by inertia it matters. We know these things could happen.
But having reasonable scientific accuracy in your science fiction is just one ingredient in great storytelling. A hard science fiction story can have every flight mechanic and atmospheric detail correct but still be totally boring if it has shitty characters or a poorly conceived plot. I’ve read textbooks that were more enjoyable than some hardcore science fiction novels. Storytelling matters too.
I think this is where most sci-fi critics fall over themselves – they lean so heavily into the scientific side of science fiction that they forget about everything else that makes these stories tick. Or they completely ignore the science because they don’t understand it and focus purely on story. Story and science are mutually reinforcing to me – I’ll look at a sci-fi book, show, or movie and start deconstructing how it all works. Does the scientific speculation fit with the themes being laid out? Do the technological details create narrative tension? Does the author actually understand science or are they just name dropping fantastical elements they found on wikipedia.
I recently rewatched Arrival – the science in that movie was perfect for the story they were trying to tell. Yes they simplified the physics of the device used to learn the aliens language but the core concepts were sound and added a lot to the narrative. Not only that, but they brought in actual philosophical questions about human consciousness and used the fictional science as a way to explore them. Ted Chiang obviously did his homework on both the science and human cognition in order to craft a story that made you think. That’s what science fiction is all about.
I get so frustrated watching movie and television shows that sacrifice scientific plausibility for cool factor. They might entertain me for a couple hours but I always feel dirty afterwards like I just read stupid fanfiction. All the better Disney Star Wars movies will do this – slam us with fake ass scienc-y sounding words and characters “working together as a team” to push dramatic buttons.
Prioritise forward propulsion!
Please don’t get me wrong, I know Star Wars has never pretended to be anything remotely close to realistic science fiction. It’s space fantasy. But at least the original movies dealt with their own internal consistency. Now it’s just salt sprinkled on garbage.
Take a movie like Ex Machina. Sure it was only in the movie for less than two hours, but that AI knew she was trapped in a room and manipulating the crew until she gets what she wants. The science of the story was largely solid and served as more than just window dressing. The creators of that story understand actual computer science and applied it to AI consciousness in ways that truly felt like something we may ask to contend with in the future.
The best sci-fi understands and comments on the human condition. How we think, feel, and act. It allows us to explore the concepts that define us uniquely as humans: consciousness, identity, free will. All science fiction works as allegory to a greater or lesser extent but stories like Blade Runner 2049 are reaching for something deeper. What makes us human? K is a machine yet learns to manipulate those around her to try and gain her freedom. Are her struggles really so different from a human trying to do the same thing?
I try to bring this perspective to my reviews and commentary. As much as the science matters sci-fi is ultimately about telling stories and great science fiction novels, movies, and TV require all the other story elements to work just as well as the science.
Interesting science speculations grab our attention, but it’s the story that keeps us reading. Characters that we love (or hate) make us care about that science and the narrative tensions created when those characters use it.
Too much of the current science fiction criticism I see focuses on one aspect to the exclusion of others. Scientists tend to be better at breaking down the scientific accuracy of stories without knowing how to story or characterize well. But you also have critics who approach sci-fi like literary fiction and ignore the science completely. Storytelling is important but these stories would not be science fiction without the science.
I hate it when people praise unscientific nonsense for being “realistic”, or dismiss hard science fiction as boring or without emotion. Books like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy took real science and used it to help tell amazing stories about the human experience. Politics, relationships, family… there’s just as much of that in real science fiction as laser swords and teleporting wizards.
All the best sci-fi works on multiple levels. There has to be enough realistic science to make the setting believable. The story and characters have to work well too otherwise you just have a science textbook with some vague plotting. But sci-fi is also about the themes it chooses to explore. It’s a unique genre that can tackle bigger questions about humanity’s place in the universe and our collective future. Hopefully in ways that illuminate our world today.
I want to help people see past the explosions and robots into the ideas that make science fiction such a fascinating genre. Science fiction is commenting on our world, our society, our values. It’s saying something about the present through the lens of speculative future. And it does that best when it respects science as much as storytelling.
Too much of today’s sci-fi has become space fantasy. Sure it LOOKS like science fiction, but scratch the surface and you’ll find superheroes and magic waving around painted space ships. That’s okay too… if that’s what you’re into. It just wasn’t what captured my imagination when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the lunar surface.
John spent forty years designing real spacecraft before turning his attention to fictional ones. Writing from Oregon, he brings a scientist’s curiosity to sci-fi—separating good speculation from bad physics while keeping his sense of wonder firmly intact.