is there one writer or novel in paticular that has “cranked” your head open?

No suprises to longtime readers here but for me its Larry Niven. Back in the 1970s growing up in suburban Toronto culture was like water at the Burning Man festival unless you trucked some in with you, you went without. You basicaly had two choices, veg out or geek out. I didn’t even know what geeking out was until I read Niven. Suddenly I realized you could get off on your imagination and before you know it was I engaged in all kinds of crazy, nerdy stuff that got me going and generaly delayed the loss of my viriginity. I don’t know how Known Space would stack up now if I reread that material. I’ve purposely avoided revisiting his work not conciously but consistently. There’s been plenty of times I’ve picked up a Niven novel with the intention or reading it and I can’t bring myself to read the first paragraph. At some level I want Niven to belong to my adolescence. I’m an incredibly critical reader nowadays and I don’t want to bring that viewpoint to his work.

Sorry for the drought btw and thanks for the emails, I’ll come back to you with some excuses later. Here’s some comments from some of my mates at Stumbleupon (links are going up in a few days after we’ve finnished a minor overhaul of the blog).

Christine:
Although there are many writers who have made a real impact on how I think, David Brin comes to mind when thinking of and author who really brings out a sense of “awe”. His essays are marvelous, especially “Otherness”, where he discusses the concept of “memes” and where he points out that quintessence American/Western concept of a respect for otherness, for other possibilities, the rights of other points of view to be recognized. It is to that ideal that I am incredibly patriotic, the thing I love most about my society, the thing which is so very new in the history of mankind. I have Brin to thank for clarifying it for me, and opening the concept up to make me recognize it in others. Startide Rising and the other novels in that series are amazing works of fiction, and reading them is an adventure everytime. The breadth of his universe and the ideas and deep understanding shown in his works still can give me that shivery feeling in the back of my neck when I’m on the cusp of grasping how everything is connected (I haven’t gotten there yet…) I can get that kind of mental excitement from no other genre. Science fiction has still provided me with some of the greatest epiphanies on the human, no, the sentient condition.

Christine (naiad8) is a mother,aspiring writer, unrepentant girl-geek and political junkie in Mountain View, CA

Fahim Farook:

I still love the golden age science fiction writers above all. To me the triumvirate of science fiction writers are (in no particular order) - Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. They have each affected the way I look at science fiction (and the world) in their own way. Clarke made me realize that science fiction (and the universe) wasn’t just about outer space and strange new planets, that we had unexplored spaces right here on our own planet in stories such as “The Deep Range” and “Dolphin Island”. He also introduced me to the concept of “sense of wonder” with stories such as “The Nine Billion Names of God”. Heinlein on the other hand, introduced me to the complexities of science fiction and paradoxes with stories such as “–All You Zombies–” and “By His Bootstraps”. But Asimov, what can I say about Asimov? He was the one who inspired me to want to write. I remember reading his “Opus 100″ (or was it “Opus 200″?) and wondering about the sheer breadth of subjects he’d written about. That was probably when I first wanted to be a writer just like him when I grew up :p

Justin Kahn:
I am sitting here with Clute’s Encyclopedia and some other reference books, thinking of ways to cite some obscure but seminal work. My honest answer is not any single work but that Phillip K. Dick counts as that one author.

Stanislaw Lem said that the achievement of PKD was taking high brow philosophical problems and allowing them to descend to the man of street so that he must solve abstract problems because his life depends on it. As a reader, that encourages me not only to test various ideas, but to feel briefly that what I Know about metaphysics and epistemology could theoretically make me a hero.

Justin is an adjunct instructor in Philosophy and some other stuff. Please read his blog, The Concept of Irony.

Alii_Cat:

Margaret Atwood has a real flair for bringing to life the seemingly impossible. I particularly enjoyed Oryx and Crake as it showed just how devastating science, and by extension malevolent or misguided scientists, can be.

Christiana Ellis:

One writer who has particularly influenced me is John Varley, who routinely manages to show me fantastic settings and incredible situations but without losing the essential humanity of his
characters. His characters might live for hundreds of years, change sex on a whim, or have a job composing beautiful thunderstorms for an underground theme park. But they still get irritated when they stub their toe in the dark, and they still get that goofy grin after a first kiss.

Brian DOw:

hmm…I haven’t finished it yet but Perdido Street Station kind of did that. I’m still looking for errant parts of my skull.

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There’s a somewhat silly question (ok maybe not so silly for some) that pops up in writer’s interviews. And that’s the question of writer’s block. I’ve not used it in any of our author interviews but as an experiment I’ve put together a mini-Brain Parade on the topic:

Do you get “writer’s block”? And if so how do you deal with it?

This question isn’t really one I can answer myself so I’m going straight to our commentators:

Marianne de Pierres:
It’s not something I’ve had to deal with. From the outside it seems symptomatic of a need for change, and usually, a release of pressure. Writers can get terribly self conscious about their words when they are trying hard. I guess that’s when you need to say, ‘Hey, lets not take all this too seriously.’ Kick back and go and do something meaningful.
Marianne de Pierres is an Australian Science Fiction writer and author of the Parrish Plessis books

Liz WilliamsI don’t tend to suffer from it. And deadlines concentrate the mind wonderfully….

Liz Williams is a British Science Fiction and Fantasy Author.

Kelly McCullough

Not in the classic sense, but there comes a point in each book, usually about 20,000 words in, where I suddenly slow down a lot and I feel stuck. After something between a couple of days and a week I realize that I’ve been here before and that I need to know what happens next, all of it. Then I spend some time pacing and thinking before I expand my rough outline into a scene-by-scene rundown of the rest of the book. Often this will involve a phone call to my good friend and fellow author, Lyda Morehouse, where she makes encouraging comments while I rant. (For context, WebMage is the 4th of 9 novels that I’ve written)
Kelly McCullough is the author of the recently released Webmage

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We’re lining up a new of futurism Brain Parades this November and we’re kicking it off with a series of Pet predictions.

Putting aside a comprehensive vision of the future, do you have a single “pet prediction” of something that you think might happen over the next decade or two?

The weather was crap today so I’m going to fire off a cynical one on the west’s collective response to Global Warming. Assuming that we’re not headed for an immediate Lovelock style catastrophe and that the next decade or two sees the west suffering very few adverse effects to Global Warming (and in some cases such as the English wine industry some benefits) then I expect that our response to Global Warming is going to largely consist of gesture politics. I just can’t see the west making a combination of massive capitol outlays and lifestyle sacrifices until such a time that it becomes painfuly obvious that Global Warming is going to hurt them. I’m very skeptical of Lovelock’s The End is Night prognosis but I think he’s ring on one score, the Developing world isn’t our problem, we’re theirs.

On the plus side I suspect we’ll probably switch away from fossil fuels by 2050. Fossil fuels will simply not be able to remain cost competitive or viable by then.

Now onto our commentators:

I predict that the birth rate in industrialized countries will
decrease dramatically as the socially-networked adults of the future opt for raising virtual progeny in fully immerse online worlds (the derivatives of SecondLife and World of Warcraft) rather than going through the commitment and stress of doing so in meat space. My 8 year old already prefers her Nintendog to the real thing…
Jonas Lamis, Founder of Singularity University

Young people everywhere will be grossed out to discover that the world’s largest population of “swinging singles” will be over age 65. The Boom generation is aging in a healthy way all over the world, and between divorce and the death of a spouse, single retirees will be looking for companionship.

Since pregnancy will not be an issue, carelessness on the part of older lovers will lead to increased rates of sexually transmitted disease. This will then cause both contraceptive companies and drug manufacturers to focus on the geriatric sexual health market. And teenagers everywhere will hate to watch those commercials. [Ack, in twenty years I’ll be that target market. Here’s hoping those pills work wonders. - Ed]

Daughters, lock up your mothers.

Eric Garland (Washington, DC) is a professional futurist. He is an advisor to executives at top corporations and government agencies as an expert in futures research and competitive intelligence. His dozens of major clients include Ford, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Wyeth, and Goodyear.

There’s more predictions to come as I’m in the process of asking this question of people in all kinds of fields. But I’m going to leave you today with a link I poached off Velcro City Tourist Board. It looked like one of Science Fiction’s cheesiest predictions might in fact me coming true. Remember the non sentient computers that gave plain english answers to to plain english questions? My favourite example was the computer named “Mother” in Alien where the captain would have to venture into a special room to talk to the computer and get spooky advice. Apparently in Space not only can you not hear screams, it’s also a bitch to set up LANs.

Anyways… apparently researchers are having sucess with a system that gives semantic answers to questions based on mining the the world wide web. This could get very weird and wonderful. Let’s hope it’s more useful than Ask.com.

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This is the second parter of a Brain Parade we ran back in September. Just to refresh your memory here’s the question:

Is the Enlightenment ideal on the rocks or is it merely a bit shaken?

The range of responses we’ve had to this one ranging on this one partly because the Enlightenment is also joined at the hip with the Age of Reason. I’ve gone back and forth on this question myself. The idea that man could perfect himself strictly through the application of reason seems a bit silly and naive in retrospect. And no doubt history is littered with horrific examples of people who were paying lip service to Enlightenment ideals. However that’s beside the point, the bleeding edge of rational evangelical is probably Richard Dawkins, militant athiest. You might think his tactics are a bit on the confrontational side but he’s a far cry from Maximilien Robespierre.

In part one of this Brain Parade Robert Freeman gave us an excellent answer which I’m going to fire off a rebuttal on his closing statement:

“And our hyper-mechanized civilization is very close to destroying itself and much of the rest of life by boiling the planet in our own gaseous effluent. By what insane contortion of language can this be considered “Enlightened”?”

I think we need to give our civilization a bit of credit. We indetified that CFCs were a problem and within a few years we collectively knocked that problem on its head. How often does a species modify its behaviour on a planetary scale that quickly in response to an existential crisis? It’s pretty easy to decry humanity for causing Global Warming. But to have forseen the impact fossil fuels might have on our climate before we started burning them a thousand years ago would have taken more than the application of reason but a feat of prescience that would make Paul Atriedes weak at the knees.

The original Englightenment Ideal may have been a bit naive and it’s certainly been expanded upon but the basic notion that we can make the world a better place through reason and logic and that religion can be displaced has largely come to pass. We haven’t chucked religion of course but we have fundamentaly changed its role. How often have we heard it said that religion and science aren’t in conflict because religious stories about the formation of the world are purely metaphors anyway? We have one of the world’s most religious nations (the United States) that has banned prayer in schools within living memory. And a state that used to submit people to religious trails (the UK) now has airs television programs rubbishing religion via its state sponsored media (the BBC). And we have we have christian conservatives in the west criticizing Islamic people for not being more secular. Those are pretty radical shifts when you think of it. Maybe it was naive to think that we’d do away with religion by now (or that it’s necessary) but you couldn’t claim that the nature and role of religion in our civilzation hasn’t undergone a radical shift since the Englightenment. Certainly the more repugnant aspects of religion that people were railing against have been expunged.

And even the creationists who attack Evolution now resort to kitchen sink pseudoscience, a tacit admission that the only valid refutation of Evolution would be a competing scientific explanation. That’s a far cry from the days of the Scopes monkey trial when the argument was that scripture trumped Science. And the products of the biological sciences aren’t contested even among the most ardently religious. I’m sure there are plenty of creationist farmers in the United States that don’t think twice about using Geneticaly Modified crops. It’s not Utopia but we’ve come a long way baby.

Terry Canaan:
I don’t know if either would be an accurate description. You could say that it’s in danger of being forgotten. Right now, we’re seeing extreme religious views leaking into the general populace — for instance, a majority of americans doubt evolution. Historically, religious groups who disapproved of mainstream society retreated from it, but these days, they have nowhere to retreat to. So they feel they have no choice but to change the society.

As this trend continues, people begin to fall back to the default position — authoritarianism. As much as american super-patriots who make up the religious extreme like to talk about freedom and democracy, they have very little tolerance of it. So the pendulum swings back. The most common and longest lasting governments have been monarchies. So we can assume that the natural state of human society is authoritarian and that democracy is something the people of the Enlightenment hoped to replace it with. Democracy took off like a shot — roughly half the nations in the world are democracies of one sort or another, all with differing degrees of perfection, while a mere 200-some years ago, there were none. But that doesn’t mean that democracy has become the default.

If we let the ideas of the Enlightenment be forgotten, ideas like freedom and liberty will be forgotten as well. While we probably wouldn’t have to worry about a return of kings, the modern equivalent is totalitarian dictatorships. Democracy is rule by consensus and coalition. It is, by necessity, a government of reason.

Terry Canaan is a photographer and former political fundraiser who blogs at Griper Blade.

Rjurik Davidson:
Oh, the old Enlightenment ideals, huh? That old chestnut….Of course you know that whole books - no, whole careers! - have been built on this one. Well, the problem with Enlightenment ideals is that they were always a bit totalitarian. Coming into the nineteen sixties, we had a scientism that thought that humanity was headed from the suburbs to the stars. Liberal capitalism was seen as self-evident and hand in hand with science, destined to lead humanity to a glorious future where problems would simply be scientifically managed out of existence. So the Enlightenment was due for a bit of a fall. Hippy transcendentalism, post-structuralism, attacks from feminism and other theories - all these were just around the corner. In many ways, this moment formed the cultural field we deal with now. The point, I think, is that enlightenment notions - reason, science, progress - should be able to incorporate these criticisms into their own internal structures. What we end up with, then, is a new, more sophisticated group of ideas, more able to take into account their own limitations.

The final, and important thing to remember, though, is that most Enlightenment notions are now bound to corporate interests. Science is science for corporations, progress meanst the free market, and so on. It’s something that I think needs to be fought against.

Rjurik Davidson is a writer and editor. He won the Aurealis Award for Best New Talent in 2005.

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Apologies for the lack of Brain Parades lately. I allowed myself to fall behind before I went away to Spain and Rosie has been buried under work with school. I’m currently working on compiling a dozen Brain Parades but it’s going to be at least another week before any of them are finnished.

I do have a little tidbit to tide you over on the subject of nanotechnology.

Do you think the benefits of nanotechnology will be equitably distributed around the world or do you think there is a risk that nanotech and nanoscience will entrench existing inequalities?

I’ve often heard utopian arguments that nanotechnology is going to uplift the developing world. And this may very well happen in the long run (and I hope it does) but I’m very skeptical for the immediate future.

We’ve also heard similar arguments with respect to Geneticaly Modified crops. Biotech companies were going to create a whole host of uber crops that third world farmers could use to reap harvests in semi-arable conditions. That hasn’t happened of course, the biotech giants have for the most part produced crops that allow farmers to use higher dosages of pesticides and herbicides.

Whenever ubitiquitour Drexerlike nanotech arrives, if it does arrive , it’s going to be preceeded by tens of billions of dollars worth of R&D. The corporations footing the bill for that research are going to want a return on that investment. That doesn’t mean they won’t be willing to sell their products to the developing world but it does mean that they’ll be marketing products and services in such a way as to demand a signifigant return on that investment. They won’t be acting to exclude the developing world but I doubt they’ll be developing and pricing products that people in the developing world will be able to use anytime soon.

I’m not so much decrying this situation and demanding Nanotech Now For the Third World! so much as splashing a handful of cold water on the idea that nanotechnology or technologies like it are going to change the world from the poorest rung up.

David Berube: In the short term, it would be nice to discuss how to get advances in health and medicine, water treatment and energy development to developing countries. It is appalling that the fates of the poor are often used as a warrant in claims regarding why government and private investment in nanotechnology is desirable, yet the transfer of these technologies into developing economies is seldom discussed.
Sensor technologies and that will affect privacy on many different levels and we need some serious discussion here because it will affect how we think of ourselves as a free society.

David M. Berube, Ph.D is Professor of Communication Studies/Film/English, NanoScience and Technology Studies and Communications Director of Nanohype

Related
Kevin Kelly’s essay The Myth of Leapfrogging

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The third season of Battlestar Galactica has featured characters using suicide bomber tactics, using temples to hide weapons and generally behaving like the Enemies of Freedom. This is pretty incendiary stuff but as near as I can tell the fans are lapping it up just fine.

On the other hand a BBC show Spooks had the audacity to occasionally feature terrorists that aren’t Muslim which caused a tempest in a teacup. . There was also quite a bit of “I’m outraged” blog posts on the subject bandied about by the stripe of political bloggers that like to beat their chests on a regular basis. Apparently Spooks has had dozens of episodes making references to and employing Muslim terrorists. Which is all well and fine but as soon as they vary the playbook they get slammed, hard.

So why does Battlestar Galactica get off the hook portraying our heroes behaving like a bunch of Iraqi insurgents? Herein lies the beauty of Science Fiction’s ability to evade the tripwires of our prejudices and look at things from an angle we normally wouldn’t allow ourselves too using the power of What If?

To the show’s credit it isn’t a sermon as to why the Iraq War is bad. If it was I think it would turn a lot of people off. The show’s writers have focused on telling an entertaining story and are mining current events for elements which they’ve rearranged and kit bashed to suit their purposes. So we have all the elements of the War on Terror, terrorism, suicide bombers, torture, insurgents using temples as cover, secret trials, religious tensions, blinding hatreds, tensions between camps wanting mediation or “getting tougher” etc. reassembled in a different form. The first four episodes of the third season of Battlestar Galactica aren’t a transparent allegory of the Iraq War but it’s clearly heavily informed by it. And that’s how they get away with it. Hurrah for Science Fiction, we’re the only genre on television today that can talk about the War on Terror in a way that has both sides of the debate watching and enjoying it.

Dead Tree Science Fiction writers should be taking notes.

New SF novelist on the block and one of my favourite blogging authors David Louis Edelman caught my attention with a frivolous post 20 Reasons Why I Want to Live in a Cheesy SF Dome City. He’s talking about Logan’s Run style Domed Cities here, probably the best of the cheesey SF movie Domed cities caught on celluloid. Good work David but you missed a few of the best reasons in my book. Here’s my addition to David’s list. I’m not saying that David necessarily missed these points, he’s probably a cleaner living character than me. Consider these personal additions as opposed to corrections.

5. No crappy weather. Anyone who has had to put up with the black pit of despair that is the English winter will understand.
4. The final solution to seagulls and pidgeons. The rats of the sky will never crap in your pizza again.
3. It’s easy to overthrow the government. All you have to do is contradict something that the cities governing AI believes. The AI will throw a fit, start repeating itself ad nauseum, speaking slowly and stuff will start blowing up (unfortunately Dome Cities use an operating system that is even worse than the OS that Mac used in the early 90s). You’ll have just enough time to hoof it out of there before the computer blows up. The results of this are pretty spectacular so use it sparingly. You may want to bring a copy of Linux with you before you move to the CSFDC because frankly their default operating system blows serious monkey phallus. The locals will probably make you a hero for you efforts (not that you need much help with the ladies considering reason No.1).
2. Fantastic parties. The music does tend to be supremely wanky, although presumably it doesn’t annoy you if you take those high tech recreational drugs. If you are 30 or over you may want to avoid parties where you are the guest of honour. Be wary they may be looking to explode you.
1. It’s easy to get laid. Those guys in Logan’s Run had it made, they made the cast of your average porn movie look like Jehovah’s Witnesses in comparison. These girls really know how to party.

We’re returning to the issue of the New Atheism today. I’ve been thinking about it more and more lately. Rosie (whom I’ve had some spectacular arguments with over the topic) has just had a New Atheist T-shirt made up that reads “God: Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient” across the front of it. And Jason at EvolutionBlog has been bemoaning the fact that Dawkin’s The God Delusion hasn’t been getting better reviews.

I’m supremely skeptical about how successful this particular tactic Dawkins is adopting is going to be or even if its worthwhile. The only people who seem to be interested in what he’s saying are fellow militant atheists. If anything it might be tarnishing the reputation of atheism, didn’t we use to be the tolerant guys who sat quietly in the corner?

Personally I’m far more interested in “outing” the unspoken religious dimensions behind some beliefs such as the anthropogenic Global Warming deniers. A lot of this thinking is clearly informed by Christian Dominionist and Millenialist viewpoints especially with comments such as these ones being quite common on many christian conservative blogs:

“It’s arrogant to assume that man can change the world’s climate/end the world/prevent the end of the world”

Of course people who state such things don’t mention that they’re speaking from a religious viewpoint. In fact they almost always represent such beliefs as a rational viewpoint. Very often they are claiming to be the true defenders of the scientific method with a popular mantra being “If it’s consensus it’s not science”.

These are the kinds of beliefs that should be vigorously attacked. The religious and partisan political underpinnings of such thinking should be exposed for what they are. I think you can engage people much more successfully on that kind of turf than by trying to “convert” them to atheism. And its something that I suspect you’ll be much more successful at.

The mere fact that people don’t come out and say things like:

“I don’t believe in anthropogenic Global Warming because clearly ending the world is God’s job.”

“Escalating conflict in the Middle East is a good thing, it means the messiah is coming.”

Is evidence that they realize at some level that such views would be seen as absurd by others. But I don’t doubt for a second that the sentiment expressed in these hypothetical statements isn’t widespread. All you have to do is wade through the comments section of a few blogs favoured by conservative Christians and read between the lines. Predictions of a World War between Christians and Muslims are expressed with barely concealed excitment, dismissals of Global Warming are based on the assumption that affecting the world’s climate is something that man could concievably do. Many of the opinions expressed clearly have religious underpinnings although they are dressed in rationalist clothing.

Rather than attacking religion shouldn’t the Evangelists of Reason be focusing their efforts on exposing religious beliefs that are cross-dressing as Science and Reason? You’d think that would be a much more effective tactic but I don’t see it being used. People seem much more interested in just saying “your religion sucks”.

I’m also skeptical of the viewpoint that atheists are by default more rational than people with religious views. I’ve met a lot of supposed “atheists” who nevertheless believe all kinds of loony things (many of which I consider to be religious in nature like deified interpretations of the GAIA hypothesis). And conversely I’ve interviewed a number of devout Christians who are as rigorously rational as they come.

I’m not sure how many people Dawkins is going to convert to atheism but I suspect the number will be close to nil. However by taking the tack I’m advocating here I’ve managed to convert one christian conservative blogger into a believer on the Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis with just two short comments left in a right wing blog’s comment section. This blogger is now an evangelist on the issue amongst Canada’s right wing blogging community. Now I could go back in time and try the Dawkin’s tack instead and simply try to convert him to athiesm instead. Anyone have any doubt as to which approach would be more sucessful?

Dawkin’s New Athiesm amounts to preaching to the choir but the real missionary work lies elsewhere.

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I have to apologize from the erratic blogging. Me and Rosie are still reeling from a variety of things. Rosie mainly is buried under a mountain of work and I’m still playing catchup from the internet blackout I experienced while on vacation.

Our last Brain Parade closed off with commentary from a Nobel Prize winning scientist. Today I venture outside our usual territory of academics and writers and I asked a number of people from a wide variety of backgrounds the following question:

Has Science Fiction had an impact on your worldview? And if so how?

I’ve already answered this in a previous Brain Parade when I asked this question of a number of Science Fiction authors. So rather than reiterate that answer I’m going to talk about how Science Fiction blogging has impacted my worldview. It’s only been about six months but a number of my opinions on things have changed. Ironicaly enough I’ve become increasingly skeptical of futurism and predictions of the future although I’m more interested than ever in speculation on such matters for speculations sake. I’ve also become more skeptical of my own views from everything from religion to scientific theories I subscribe to. It’s become apparent to me that most of the things that we all believe are just plain wrong.

Now onto our commentators:

Christine (naiad8):

Science fiction was part of my life from very early on. My father introduced me to the stories and ideas in his much-edited renditions of various classics remixed as bedtime stories or roadtrip discussion fodder. SF forced me to think, forced me to question, forced me to wonder. It comes out now in everything I do, every issue I encounter, from national politics to decisions about how much television my toddler should watch. Everything from what is the meaning of life to what is the secret inner life of my laptop has come across my mind whilst reading or contemplating SF.

Christine (naiad8) is a mother,aspiring writer, unrepentant girl-geek and political junkie in Mountain View, CA

David Horn:

The Dune Chronicles are my favorite series of novels, though I must admit that I was unable to understand them the first time I read them. I had just graduated high school, and my range of experience was limited. Frank Herbert was obsessed with the phenomenon of leadership. How do we choose leaders? How do they shape us? When his characters expounded on flaws in the nature of democracy, I thought he was a communist. I conveniently forgot that he criticized socialism just as fervently. I had a secret theory that the same man that wrote the first book did not write its sequels, but, again, my experience was limited, and I did not understand at the time that he was writing tragedy.

Science fiction does not give me the enlightening epiphanies that, say, Kafka or Camus does. Reading Douglas Adams did not make me reevaluate the entirety of my life in a new way. Science fiction, like its time period, is forward thinking. It changes how we evaluate the consequences of choices. The people in these fantasy worlds are caricatures to observe, not people to identify with. Reading 1984 does not make us Winston Smith, but from that point onward we are always fearful of Big Brother.

Now that I’ve lived most of my aware years with Dune’s words in my mind, I can say it’s the single most influential work I have ever read. While I did not fully understand Herbert’s meaning when I read it the first time, from that point onward I saw the world partially through his eyes. Herbert made me a skeptic of governments, religions, ideas, and people; not a critic, but a skeptic. An important distinction. I never criticize an idea or action before I evaluate what brought it into existence; I do not believe or persue something before I evaluate its flaws. Dune did not give me a tool to reevaluate myself, but a tool to reevaluate the world.
David Horn is a sensei to aNinja Penguin

Fran:

Yes, it has. I discovered Science Fiction almost lately and for a chance, a friend lent me some book telling I would love. I was skeptical, since I did believe Sci-Fi was something boring or such, always about robots and re-presenting the same things over and over. But then with those books I discovered Dan Simmons and his work, the Hyperion serie of novels*, showed me how Sci-Fi can conglobate so many subjects [religion, ecology, poetry, ethic, philosophy] and talk about what it could be in a very realistic way. I discovered the quantum mechanics and John Keats by reading those books! And to discover the quantum mechanics have to change your worldview. I think I have never really thought about the universe until I started reading Sci-Fi. and the Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels also pointed out where we’re running to, as humankind, and what could happen if we go straight to this way. Lots to think about, actually.
Fran blogs at My Minimal Look

Fahim Farook:

I believe it was in David G. Hartwell’s “Age of Wonders” that I first read that the “golden age of science fiction is twelve”. I take this in a slightly different context than it was probably meant - the younger you are when you are introduced to science fiction, the more deeply it seems to fuse with your very being. I was introduced to science fiction very early, and it has stayed with me, guided me and has moulded the way I look at the world. It has made me aware of the fact that there are other views besides mine, that there even might be other perspectives
besides the human one. It also has made me aware of how imperfect we are and yet, at the same time, the heights we can achieve as a race if we’d just set our minds to it and manage to leave behind our prejudices and our age-old hatreds. Sure, tales, such as those written by A. E. Van Vogt or Gordon R. Dickson, of humans with super abilities who are working in secret for the betterment of mankind might seem a bit dated today. But I still love them and hold out that hope for humanity - that we can indeed rise above our baser instincts.
Fahim Farook blogs at Solipistic Meanderings

Justin Kahn:

It hasn’t changed any of my beliefs yet, but it has given me a certain confidence that fiction can be used as a research tool in asking the questions philosophy used to focus on.

Alii_Cat:

Writing, I think, strives to write either about what you already know, or what is alien, and science fiction holds one extreme of this pole, not only exploring different characters and places but even imagining different universes and physical laws. This process is vital not only for opening up new facets of ourselves as people but even has a role to play at the fringes of science, where imagination can reign and the line between science and magic is blurred.
Alii_Cat is an armchair pyschologist who maintains this Livejournal

Jack Mangan:

1. Science Fiction has raised me from early childhood with an awareness of universal interconnectivity, a sensitivity to the complex hyper-connectedness of every action and life, even one as trivial as a prehistoric butterfly’s.

SF’s storylines and themes are usually possessed of titanic
tendencies, often featuring forces that may:

A) wipe out/enslave the entire human species
B) destroy the earth/galaxy/universe
C) permanently alter the fabric of time
D) permanently alter the fabric of reality
E) permanently alter the course of humanity’s physical and social evolution
F) you get the point. Something of great importance to our entire way of life is usually in jeopardy. (Yes, I know that you can cite tons of deeply personal, small-scale SF stories. Congratulations. I’ve written a few myself. Not the point. Let’s move on.)

This is where SF informs a globally/univerally conscious “Can’t we all get along?” worldview. If an invasion fleet of giant bugs were to swarm the earth tomorrow, I can guarantee that people would focus a lot less on petty, divisive ideologies.

I strive to view situations and conflicts on a personal scale, try not to cause undue stress, strife, or hardship for those around me, to generally bear in mind that even without killer alien hordes, life is difficult enough. Amidst all of the world’s turmoil and unrest, I have encountered a small number of enlightened souls taking action or simply living to enable a sort of global community of acceptance, cooperation, co-existence, and ultimately, an evolution into something greater than ourselves. A civilization that would benefit from but not be ruled by logic. One that is wise and mature enough to handle the awesome responsibility of our singularity-bound technology (let’s not get hung up on the “S” word). I try to always remain conscious of my place in such a community. If one actually did exist. I don’t know if the Science Fiction portions of my life’s media diet deserve all of the blame for this worldview, but given worlds enough, words enough, and time, I could draw countless direct connections.

Please do not dismiss my worldview as unrealistic Mr. Rogers-esque dogma. I endeavor to entertain no delusions — another characteristic at least partially learned from SF. Our inherited, jumbled human society is most certainly not a cooperative community, worthy of cheery Michael Stipe lyrics. The “street” has consistently found its own uses great and terrible for all techs great and small, including — sadly — jet airliners. This is why the classic, seminal works of Cyberpunk appeal so strongly to me. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Neal Stephenson, and their contemporaries presented us with the most unflinching, believable, tangible, frightening, impending future yet (sorry, but I find post-apocalyptic road mutants
almost as far-fetched as Wookies). Cyberpunk stories often involved commonfolk protagonists, often “high-tech lowlifes”, yet still placed them into scenarios to impact all of human civilzation. This is the stuff that forever changed my ideas of what the future, and also of what fiction — across all genres — at its best, bleakest, and most stylish could be.

2. Science Ficton writers think a lot about the past (history is a great, almost-unlimited resource of uncopyrighted plots, characters, and story arcs). And of course, we also think a lot about the future. When the past and future are studied with factual clarity and without the taint of personal agendas, like shoulder-perched angels, these guides will usually influence a “Can’t we all just get along?” worldview.

3. Science Fiction has encouraged me to be reasonably skeptical of any and all ruling classes and establishments. [Whew. Good answer- ed]
Jack Mangan maintains the Deadpan podcast

James Allen:

It’s affected me my whole life. I grew up the son of a Trekkie (no conventions, but if it was on, we were watching it) so it’s really been there my whole life. One of my favorite traits of science fiction is its ability to present our own faults and failures back to us in a digestible form. Look at what Battlestar Galactica has done in showing us a different look at a religious war. If that show was based in reality (say between Christians and Muslims) there is no way it could be shown. It would be too real to people for its message to be perceived. But by cloaking it in such an unfamiliar setting you let people focus on the details without bring their own baggage into the discussion. It really is an amazing tool in that way. There aren’t too many other ways out there for us to take an unbiased look at ourselves, but with science fiction it is possible.

There are so many authors and books I’ve loved over the years that if I started naming them I’d run out of space. I’ll just focus on one that has stuck out to me all my life, Ender’s Game. Being a nerd (with the lack of social skills that entails) and being in the Gifted and Talented program in high school, really makes those of us that fall into that category feel very isolated and alone. I think even more than is normal for an adolescent. Although, obviously, I have nothing to compare to. Ender was that same kind of kid. But then you realize that everyone in the Battle School is too. Reading that in high school made me realize that I wasn’t so alone as I imagined. And then, of course, on further reflection, I love all the things in that book about distrust of authority and the point that small understandings can lead to such a horrible thing like genocide (or xenocide in the book). People around the world are more alike than different and we have to be constantly alert for those small understandings.
James Allen blogs at the Allen Alamanac

Christiana Ellis:

It’s hard to know how science fiction has changed my worldview, because I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a part of my life. Science fiction didn’t change my worldview so much as it helped to form my worldview.

I think that a love of science fiction has made me more forward thinking, less attached to any given “now.” This should not suggest that I have no time for smelling roses in my busy schedule, but rather that I am better able to accept that the rosebush is but a temporary fixture in an ever-changing landscape. When the inevitability of change is not only acknowledged, but embraced, it makes the ephemeral beauty of each moment all the more precious.

Science fiction can also show us our humanity in ways that are impossible for non-genre fiction. Advances in science and technology have been gradually freeing us from many of the more animal necessities, food, shelter, etc. As these things become ever cheaper and easier to obtain, we are able to devote more time to the things that make us more than mere animals. Art, philosophy, all that good stuff.

Science fiction takes that a step further, stripping away all limitations save those of our imaginations. What if free energy existed? What if we were able to change our bodies at will? What if we spread our wings to live among the stars? Will we still have teenage crushes? Sports? Pets? Freed of the limitations imposed by the world around us, we can examine humanity unbound.

Science fiction can present us with a breathtaking view of what our futures might hold. But just as interesting, I think, is what it can show us about who we are today.
Christiana Ellis maintains a regularly updated podcast where she discusses among other things Science Fiction.

Brian Dow:

Oh hell yeah! I mentioned this in my blog, but back in December and January I needed to have an aortic root reconstruction and a heart valve replacement. In english that means I had two open heart surgeries to fix some bad plumbing before it went boom. Now, being only 46, I really didn’t think I was going to need this kind of stuff until the third Star Wars trilogy came out, but my plumbing had other ideas. I mention this because I’ve known since I was a kid that I’d need something done about these things eventually, but I sort of thought that by the time I needed a valve replacement, the doc would just mail it to me, I’d swallow it, and get back to my life. Science fiction really prepared me for this event in that I was always marveling at the new technologies that were coming out. Then reading stories about growing new skin and new organs and body parts. I have even adopted a view that the medication that I’m supposed to be on for the rest of my life will go bye-bye as soon as they find a way to regrow a new organic valve from my own cells and therefore there’s no need for the meds.

I think that Science Fiction has, and continues to, show us what we can be and where we are going. Where we’ve perhaps gone astray and how we can be more than the sum of our parts. It really is a social and ethical barometer, if you will, of the human race.
Brian Dow is an artist whose work has graced the covers of Children’s, Fantasy and Science Fiction novels.

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Do you perceive a growing sense of mistrust from the public with respect to science?

This is the second parter of a Brain Parade that we ran last month. I’ve already given an answer focusing on the “culture wars” in the United States and Canada and growing acceptance of Global Warming back then.

Looking back at my most recent trip to Spain to visit family in some mountain villages in the North I can say that among the people living in those villages confidence and scientific literacy has grown since I was a boy. This is pretty telling as the people living in these mountain villages tend to be quite elderly (60 years +). They have a confidence in modern medicine now that many of them didn’t before (many of my relatives would refuse to see a doctor in the past even when very sick) and are aware of things such as Global Warming. This might seem parochial of me to mention but these are people who grew up in facist spain in an era when anything other the most rudimentary education meant you either had well to do parents or were training up to be a priest.

And in the United States where we’ve heard a lot of noise about Creationism and Intelligent Design lately it looks like the movement to get these taught in class as legitimate Science has fallen flat on its face and has been thoroughly discredited and even ridiculed. When I was a child in Canada I was taught the biblical story of Genesis, the flood and Noah’s Ark as a matter of course in a publicly funded school. Today that would be unthinkable. The recent push behind Intelligent Design isn’t the birth of religious education in public schools, its post-mortem twitching.

And the holdouts in North America on Global Warming seem to be more motivated by the fact that they percieve Global Warming to be a “liberal” issue. The fact that their vice-Nemesis, Al Gore, has made himself the poster child of the Global Warming hypothesis doesn’t help. I’ve noticed that many if not most threads on the subject of Global Warming on right wing blogs devolve into razzing Al Gore and the political “left”. This isn’t a case of people mistrusting science, but people letting political partisanship get in the way of their better judgement.

But the political right is bracing itself for a U turn on the global warming issue. In many case its shaky science that is convincing them (blaming Katrina on Global Warming for instance is a bit iffy in my opinion). I’ve noticed an increasing number of posts on the subject of Global Warming on right wing blogs and many of them no longer say out and out that it’s junk science. Instead they focus on accusing Greenpeace execs and Al Gore of hypocrisy over the issue for frequenct air travel and using limousines. Give them two more years and they’ll be accusing liberals of being “soft” on The War on Carbon.

Charles J. Cohen:
I think that the media likes to sensationalize the “growing mistrust of science” as it helps to gain ratings, so we hear about it more and more.

What I am noticing, though, is that, especially in schools, it is okay or even cool to be stupid. So now smart children find it even harder to be accepted, and all of the United States suffers because of this.

Back to your question though: as a society we accept science all the time, and, in fact, we expect it to continue to solve our problems. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be so surprised when science does fail or doesn’t have the answers we are looking for.
Charles J. Cohen is Vice President of Research and Development at Cybernet Systems Corporation

Alii_Cat:
I think popular perception of science is undergoing a sea change at the moment. Clearly the public have been reconciling themselves to the positive and negative aspects of science since the industrial revolution and before but, with the level of impact it has on our lives coupled with massive media coverage and an increasingly educated and aware public, that process is accelerating. Aspects of science which were once arcane are becoming commonplace in the popular consciousness, to be replaced with new pieces of science that seem arcane for 20 years or so and then they too become commonplace.

A good example of our relationship with science is probably nutrition. People still seem somewhat sceptical about the ever changing edicts nutritionists give us, joking that “butter will be good for you next week!” and I suppose that is partly a reaction to the bewildering change we see all around us- a desire for stability. But fundamentally, whether they realise it or not, people have absorbed a wealth of information about nutrition and can often make quite sophisticated judgements and inferences about the food they eat. Climate change is another example. Once obscure, and perhaps still straining credibility with some, nevertheless as time advances phrases such as “food miles” and “carbon footprint” are entering the popular consciousness and leaving their mark.

GM foods, “frankenfoods”, is the new science bogeyman, and misinformed public opinion has done a lot to keep these products out of supermarkets. Ironically, now that the results of mass trials are in, the GM case looks a lot weaker, and so it seems the public may have been right to resist GM through dumb luck. Over time the flourishing of knowledge about GM and the slow impact of this will no doubt bring popular perception to the relatively sophisticated levels it enjoys now with nutrition.
You can find Alii_Cat’s livejournal here

Selva Kumar:

Quite the contrary. I think the general public (I am one of them) is engaging more and more with science. Unlike religion where better engagement leads to disillusionment and distrust, science has the ability to win over people as they appreciate its ways more and more.
Selva Kumar blogs at Scienceblogs as The Scientific Indian

Kevin Vranes:
Do I sense a growing mistrust of science from the public? No, quite the opposite. From my experience in the United States, I sense the public growing more and more interested in science and technology, and more and more willing to engage in technical issues. I see this in the growth of cable television channels (not just shows, but entire channels) devoted to science and technology, in the wide popular support for space exploration and travel, and in the large majority of Americans who see climate change as an important problem.

However, one issue — creationism vs. natural selection — has crept up as one of the few areas where many people seem more willing to choose faith over science. I believe the issue does not make an entire class of creation-leaning people outright anti-science. For instance, most polling shows that even while a majority of people favor teaching creationism alongside evolution in schools, a large majority of people favor federal funding of stem cell research, as well as accept science in other areas such as global warming. My conclusion from such seemingly contradictory information is that Americans are science-savvy, but leave room for faith in their lives.

Unfortunately, I believe that the scientific community has put aside its ability to sense nuance in the public’s acceptance of science by taking popular acceptance of creationism/intelligent design as proof of a broad mistrust or hostility toward science. Out of this, instead of mistrust from the public, what I sense is a growing mistrust of the public by scientists. I see this as a dangerous development, for I sense a growing cultural divide between scientists and people that scientists perceive to the “enemies of science.” For this I put the onus squarely on scientists, who need to see beyond the public’s seeming rejection of evolution and trust that, in general, we have a fairly rational public willing to accept scientific consensus in most cases. Although I can understand why leaving such wriggle room is frustrating to many scientists (it is a pursuit that pursues rational analysis and eschews ambiguity, after all), for me, “most cases” is good enough.
Kevin Vranes has a phd in Physical Oceanography and Climatology. He blogs at NoSeNada

Mara Hvistendahl:
From my distant vantage point, it certainly looks like mistrust of science is growing in the U.S. The intelligent design controversy is especially alarming. In China, it’s another story. Chinese-born scientists are being wooed back from the West and treated like hotshots, and science is almost glamorous. When Stephen Hawking spoke at the Strings 2006 conference in Beijing in June, the audience gave him a reception worthy of a Hong Kong pop star. The government is spearheading a massive “science popularization” campaign with the aim of increasing awareness of science, but more importantly people here live in a society where real progress — scientific, economic, and otherwise – seems attainable. They want meaning at the same time, but they don’t necessarily see science and religion as incompatible. Some scholars compare that attitude to the way Americans felt in the 1950s. The question for the U.S. now is how to get back to the excitement of the Neil Armstrong era – or maybe rather how to find a place for science in our mature society.

Mara Hvistendahl is a Shanghai-based freelance writer and China correspondent for Seed

Dan@Okfuture:
I do not believe that the public-at-large is increasingly distrustful or suspicious of science. Rather, I believe that we are, inexorably, becoming more dependent upon the scientific community. If you believe, as I do, that technology is inseparable from science, then we can use the terms interchangeably. Thus, science/technology is so interwoven into our daily affairs, that we often neglect, or take for granted, its ubiquitous presence.

This could not have occurred in an environment of widespread public distrust. Though certain lobbying groups, with their attendant political representatives, attempt to curtail scientific advance ( think stem-cell research, the onerous regulating power of the FDA, etc.), this contravenes the will of the majority of the American, and world, public. People are dependent upon, and hungry for more cures, healthier life, more conveniences, increased personal security and easier access to all of these and other advances that science brings.

I am inclined to believe that any hint of pause or mistrust on the part of the public results from well orchestrated, propagandistic efforts on the part of powerful groups, via the Media ( largely the “old” Media). Not that I view this conspiratorially. I simply believe that the competition of ideas has been skewed, in the past and present, by undue alarmism, and that this powerful sentiment often arises in the old television and paper medium. But even with this skew, and with a ready medium by which to disseminate irrational fears, the government or other powerful entities have been unable to stall the progress that science has wrought. Ultimately, in a free society, even the government, which is composed of human beings, relents in the face of reason.

They have no choice to do so, as their own, personal survival, comfort, and wish for convenience are dependant upon it. Sure, they could attempt to keep the genie in the bottle, and harbor the secrets to themselves. But such an inefficient utilization of the power of science is more apt to backfire, breeding mistrust and creating leaks in an untenable system. In a post flat-earth world, and with the ensuing liberation of the human mind, the public has yearned for the wonderful things that science brings. The potential, many perils of science are well known, and documented. The public entrusts government with the power to protect their persons against mass peril or hazard, while demanding equal access to those things that benefit their health, happiness, and well-being. So, I feel that the vast majority of people trust science/technology, but distrust the established powers to use it wisely, or protect society where protection is needed.
Dan is one of the bloggers behind Okfuture

Anders Sandberg:

Yes and no. People are no longer trusting the scientist to be speaking only truth, not to be self interested or unbiased, and do not think him to be infallible. Instead they have acquired a more realistic view of how science works. At the same time they are interested in science and regard it as more truthful than most other fields. Science has lost its pedestal but remains the favored way of explaining the world - you don’t see people assuming computers to run by magic or angels, it is just that they do not
feel the need to know what science is behind it. They trust it but do not feel it is relevant.

A problem might be that science is becoming inaccessible. Not in the sense of any lack of popular science but simply less chances to engage in it - hobby electronics is dying, chemistry sets cannot do much fun (i.e. slightly dangerous) things and computers don’t come with a readily available programming feature (I’m with David Brin on this). The idea that much of science simply cannot be understood and should be left to its
priesthood, that is a deep risk. It is easy to distrust priesthoods, but science should be tested not on account of what the scientists are doing and thinking but due to its results.

Anders Sandberg, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University

Frank Wilczek:

Yes, unfortunately, in the U.S.. I think there are several reasons for it. The increasing influence of fundamentalist religion is one, because literal adherence to ancient texts, which are riddled with scientific errors, requires that the authority of scientific conclusions be denied. Another is the systematic confusion sown by economic interests (tobacco companies, extraction companies) who try to undermine the credibility of scientific conclusions they don’t like. Another is that science has become less attractive to the best and brightest students, compared to other fields like finance and law, because scientific careers are more difficult to establish and not as lucrative. Yet another is that we do not invest enough in education. Our teachers, especially in the earlier grades, tend not to know much math or science themselves, and even in many cases to be uncomfortable with it, so they turn off the students. My impression is that the situation is better elsewhere.

Frank Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor at MIT and 2004 Nobel Prize Winner

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