Science and Fiction: Escape from the laws of physics

[jerome]

Iain Banks vient de rédiger un article en anglais intitulé : "Science and Fiction: Escape from the laws of physics "

Voici le début :

"I write science fiction novels and mainstream novels. And I have a confession to make . . . because, having been asked to write about the science in my science fiction, I came to the embarrassing conclusion that there is probably more science in the mainstream books.

Well, more reliable science, anyway. The technology in the mainstream novels at least exists, and even when it's a slightly off-the-wall pastiche of the scientific method at work, the results will tend to be in accord with our present understanding of reality (specifically, for example, there was a character in a recent novel who thought that just by humming he could make televisions malfunction, until he realised it was the vibrations he was setting up in his own eyeball that - by approximating the screens' refresh rate - were producing the wavering effect he observed).

Future science is more problematic. As Arthur C. Clarke famously observed, any advanced technology will appear indistinguishable from magic to those sufficiently further down the ladder of scientific understanding. But while SF writers can exploit the truth of this statement up to a point, they still have to pay at least lip service to the relevant physical laws, and the most irksome of those is hinted at, appropriately enough, in Clarke's middle initial. "

La suite

[rore]

Pas "vient de rédiger", non ;) .
Date de l'article : 20 March 1993

Mais j'imagine qu'il vient juste d'être publié sur le net.