Sheffield,Charles - Borderlands of Science

Borderlands of Science

by Charles Sheffield

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31953-1

Cover art by Patrick Turner

First paperback printing, November 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication No. 99-37427

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION

WITH SCIENCE IN IT

"Charles Sheffield's bookBorderlands of Science is an ambitious attempt to survey all of modern science

—from a science fiction writer's perspective. . . . If you are fond of the effortless,

science-simply-explained style of the late Isaac Asimov's science popularizations, then the new book by

Charles Sheffield was written for you. His clear and somewhat witty style is clearly reminiscent of the

good doctor. . . . It's fun simply as an evening's entertaining reading."

—Geoffrey A. Landis, physicist with the

NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts,

The Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin

"A tour through the borderlands where today's science turns into tomorrow's science fiction, from the

physicist and Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning novelist. . . . Bang on target, in terms of appeal . . . As

Mr. Spock would say: fascinating."

—Kirkus Reviews

"Charles Sheffield, Ph.D., renowned scientist and award-winning science fiction writer, explains in an

easy-to-follow narrative about the fascinating frontiers of science—from interstellar space ships to

black-holes and immortality. Every library—high school, college or community—ought to have this

book."

—Eric Kotani, SF writer and astrophysicist

for the Apollo and Skylab missions

"Sheffield has long been one of the finest of our best hard SF authors. In his latest science fact collection,

he joins the ranks of Asimov with his dissection of the science beneath the skin of science fiction."

—Science Fiction Age

"Sheffield has a low tolerance for bad science . . . He follows the maxim that you can't break the rules

without knowing the rules. . . . For either aspiring writers or curious readers,Borderlands of Science is

an excellent guidepost . . . in understanding the universe."

—The Denver Post

BAEN BOOKS by CHARLES SHEFFIELD:

Borderlands of Science

The Compleat McAndrew

Convergent Series

The Mind Pool

My Brother's Keeper

Proteus in the Underworld

Transvergence

The Spheres of Heaven(forthcoming)

THANKS

This book grew partly from a one-week series of seminars given at Dixie College, Utah, in the spring of

1998, on the subject of science and science fiction. I would like to thank all the participants in those

seminars, particularly Ace Pilkington who organized and master-minded the event, for their useful

analysis and comment. Before I went to Utah, I sent my material to Jim Baen asking him to look at what

I had, and suggest places where the arguments seemed weak or insufficient. Much of the material had

originally appeared in magazines that he published, and he offered considerable feedback. Several

sections of the book owe much to our e-mail discussions. He also suggested that the material might

make a useful and informative book.

Finally I would like to thank Nancy Kress and Joel Welling, who read everything that I wrote and told

me when I was unintelligible because of brevity, or in danger of going overboard on technical detail. I

usually took their advice, but not always, so any residual incomprehensibility is due to me alone.

Parts of this book are drawn from articles inNew Destinies ,Analog , and theSamsung Quarterly

magazines.

INTRODUCTION

You are reading an out-of-date book. Since the frontiers of science constantly advance, today's

discussion of the borderlands of science will be obsolete tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you which parts of the book that you are holding need an immediate update.

With luck, the short-term changes will be mostly in the details, and the roots of each subject covered will

survive intact. The biggest changes in science usually turn out to be the most surprising, the least

predicted, and the slowest to be accepted.

Around the year 1900 there were plenty of forecasts as to what the coming century might bring. They

were all wrong, not because of what they included, but because of what they left out. On the abstract

side, no one expected relativity, quantum theory, the expansion of the universe, holography, subatomic

structure, the conversion of matter to energy, solid state physics devices (such as transistors),

information theory, black holes, the molecular structure of DNA, retroviruses, genome mapping, and the

theory of finite state automata. Still less did anyone expect the torrent of practical applications, with their

massive social fallout, that would follow from the new theories: television and telephones in almost every

home, personal computers, supersonic aircraft, humans to the Moon and observing equipment to the

planets, lasers, genetic engineering, video recorders, antibiotics, CAT scans, nuclear energy plants and

nuclear bombs, and artificial satellites in regular use for communications, weather, and monitoring of the

Earth's surface. No one in 1900 imagined that by 2000 the automobile would be absolutely central to

many people's lives, as the principal means of transportation, recreation, and even courtship. Even in

1950, not a person on the planet would have predicted the existence of hundreds of millions of

computers, used daily to conduct business, play games, send and receive mail, and wander at will

through a world-wide information network.

Given our track record, and the fact that changes seem to be ever faster and more confusing, a pessimist

could conclude that it is now impossible to write science fiction. Prediction of future conditions is

impossible; even if we get the science right, surely the consequent social changes will be nothing like we

suppose or can suppose. When reality is so surprising, what place is there for imagined worlds?

I prefer to argue as an optimist. In science fiction, new science and new applications mean an endless

supply of new story ideas. So long as science and technology continue to advance, we can never run out

of subject matter.

This book should be regarded as a beginning, not an end. It defines the frontiers—"borderlands"—of

today's science. Those frontiers are not fixed, but constantly expanding. As they expand, the territory

just beyond them comes into view. In that territory, waiting to be picked up and used, lie hundreds and

thousands of gorgeous story ideas. They are pristine ideas, never used before, because they sit on

ground never before explored.

I invite you to join me in wandering the new territories, picking up the best ideas, and using them. My

idea is to offer a starting place for the exploration, but certainly not an end point. For one thing this

book, like any book ever written, reflects the author's personal interests and obsessions. It's not

reasonable that your own favorite scenery will exactly match mine.

A couple of final points need to be made. The first is an answer to the natural question: Why, with the

Internet an integral part of most people's lives, do I not direct the reader to web sites for information?

One answer will be obvious to you if you happen to be reading this book at the beach, or, as I like to

think, secretly in a classroom while a teacher spouts New Age non-science at you. A book provides

easy access, unobtrusively and with no need of special equipment.

Second, if you want to talk about lack of quality control there is no better example than the Internet.

Normally, if it comes from somewhere like the Jet Propulsion Lab or the National Institutes of Health, it

should be reliable. But even that is not safe. Some names of well-known individuals and institutions have

been pre-empted as web site names. You think you are reading a report from the famous Dr. X. What

you don't know is that Dr. X. is at this very moment engaged in a lawsuit regarding the theft of his good

name and reputation.

One more caveat. This book makes another assumption. As a friend of mine, Roger Allen, said to me,

"You call itscience fiction, whereas most people pronounce it as sciencefiction ." I plead guilty. That is

indeed the way I view the science fiction field, or at least the part of the field that interests me. I assume

that you, the reader, are interested in reading (and possibly writing) science fiction stories with some

reasonable emphasis on science. If not, then this is not the book for you.

CHAPTER 1

The Borderlands of Science

1.1 What you are reading.This is a text for the writer or critical reader who likes the science of stories

to be right. We will define the limits of knowledge in many areas, then wander beyond them. We will

spend little time surveying the scientific mainstream. Many other books do that, taking a detailed look at

quantum theory, astronomy, spaceflight, genetics, chemistry, or any other science you care to mention.

We will offer the brief summaries that we need, and list some of the better reference works. Then we'll

head for the scientific outer limits.

We will not try to tell youhow to write . Nothing here will address plot, character, pacing, or style;

nowhere will you see anything about markets, or foreign rights, or literary agents. When backgrounds

appear, it will be for their scientific content only.

Plenty of other works address the problems of being a writer, discussing everything from style to

contract negotiation to royalty rates. There are also writing courses without number. These courses are

valuable, especially when taught by successful writers, but not one of the courses—even when they are

explicitly and specifically about science fiction—teaches anything about science. We, by contrast, will be

concerned with only one thing: making the science in stories accurate, current, plausible (if the story is set

in the future), andinteresting . Readers of science fiction are an enthusiastic and forgiving audience. A

writer of science fiction can perpetrate literary sins that are anathema in "mainstream" writing. But one

thing you cannot get away with in my universe is botching the science of your story.

Or rather, you may get away with it some of the time. Your editors, who usually have a literary

background but often lack a science background, may not catch you. Your readers will. Write about

Shakespeare'sParadise Lost , or say that Abraham Lincoln led America in the Revolutionary War, and

the editor will jump all over you. Claim that Titan is a moon of Jupiter, and nothing may be said. I did not

make up this example. It happened. Titan as a moon of Jupiter sailed right past the editor and past the

copy editor. A reader totally outside the book's production process (me) caught the blunder, and it was

corrected in the published work. But you cannot rely on friendly readers being around all the time.

If you wander wildly beyond what scientists believe theoretically possible, you have to explain how and

why. And you have to be reasonably current in your knowledge, because science changes constantly,

and sometimes it changes fast. Three years ago, the idea of life anywhere in the universe, except on

Earth, was pure speculation; today there is evidence, much disputed, for early life-forms on Mars.

As Josh Billings put it,"It's not what we don't know that causes the trouble, it's the things we know

that ain't so."

Not all sciences are addressed in this book. When a field is omitted, one or more of the following will

apply:

1) The topic doesn't seem to me to provide good material for science fiction stories.

2) Some other popular text covers the ground thoroughly and well.

3) I do not feel qualified to discuss the subject.

4) I do not believe that the subject, regardless of the fact that it may use the word "science" in its name,

is real science.

A number of fringe areas, useful for stories whether or not you believe the theories, are described in

Chapter 13.

1.2 Defining science fiction. When science fiction writers and readers get together, one of the things

they are likely to talk about is the definition of science fiction. It's hard to reach agreement. I have my

own definition, which, if it has no other virtue, describes the sort of science fiction that I like to read and

write. It takes a few sentences and needs a brief preamble, but the definition goes as follows:

Scienceforms a great, sprawling continent, a body of learning and theories. Everything in science is

interconnected, however loosely. If your theory doesn't connect with any part of the rest of science, you

may be a genius with a new and profound understanding of the universe; but chances are you're wrong.

Science fictionconsists of stories set on the shore or out in the shallow coastal water of that huge

scientific land mass. Stay inland, safe above high tide, and your story will be not science fiction, but

fiction about science. Stray too far, out of sight of land, and you are in danger of writing fantasy—even if

you think it's science fiction.

The purpose of this book is to define the boundaries of science. Where do the limits lie, today, that

define the scientific leading edge? And can we see places where, although no land is visible, prevailing

currents or the sight of breakers convince us that it must exist? That, surely, is where we will find fertile

ground for science fiction. On the other hand, we don't want to find ourselves out of our depth.

1.3 The good, the bad, and the simply awful: an example.

That's probably more than enough metaphors. Let me illustrate my point with a particular case.

Suppose I decide to write a story that tells of a race of alien beings who come to Earth from a home

world orbiting the star Rigel. Their ships are enormous and fast—they are five miles long, and they can

travel at 5,000 miles a second. When the aliens land on Earth and march out of their ships, it turns out

that they are also huge; they are a hundred feet high and two hundred across, and they look, breed, and

eat just like giant spiders.

Why are they here? To befriend humans, to educate us, to bring us into the Galactic federation of races,

to enslave us, or to kill us?

One of their leaders explains to our representative. They are an ancient species, with a recorded history

going back forty billion years. They were drawn to Earth by receipt of our radio signals, but humans, as

primitive newcomers to the galaxy, are no more than food animals to them. They have come to

overpower us, breed us, and eat us. At best, a few of us will be selected to help control the rest. As a

reward, those humans who do cooperate will live a natural human life span.

Before our envoy can reply that the whole idea is intolerable, the Rigelian swallows him whole.

Humans seem doomed, until another brave earthling, a scientist, discovers that the aliens' eyes are

different from ours. They see using shortwave ultraviolet light. We build a generator that can be used

from miles away to beam an ultraviolet signal into the aliens' eyes. The repeating signal pattern interacts

with the alien brain waves, sending them into convulsions and bringing them crashing to the ground.

Humans approach and overpower them, learn the secret of the alien ship, and decide to go to Rigel and

remove the alien menace from the galaxy forever.

An exceptionally dumb story? True. On the other hand, the smash-hit movieIndependence Day was

packed with worse scientific impossibilities and is in many ways a lot less plausible. I have never read

anything quite like the tale I've described, but I will bet that the long-suffering editors of science fiction

magazines see plenty.

What we have here is not science fiction, it is fantasy. Let's see why; and let's find out if we can, with a

little juggling, convert it to science fiction.

First, consider how the aliens got here. A ship that travels at 5,000 miles a second (8,000 kilometers a

second) sounds fast, but Rigel is more than 500 light-years away from the Sun. Light travels at almost

300,000 kilometers a second. Our aliens must be awfully patient in waiting for their dinners, because the

journey here took them at least 18,000 years. If we intend to visit their home world and seek vengeance,

it will take that long to get there.

The first fix: The aliens must possess some kind of faster-than-light (FTL) drive. They only use their

"slow" drive at 5,000 miles a second when they are close to Earth. It is not necessary to specify how the

FTL drive works. Science fiction has certain conventions, required by and used in so many stories that

no explanation is called for. The FTL drive is one of them. If you want to create your own using the

ideas of Chapter 9, that's fine. But you don't need to. Just say the aliens have one.

Next problem: The aliens supposedly had their attention drawn to Earth because they picked up our

radio signals. But radio waves travel at the same speed as light, and we have been generating signals for

only a century. Rigel is at least five hundred light-years away. The Rigelians ought not to know we even

exist for another four hundred years or more.

The fix: In addition to the FTL drive, the aliens must possess a form of FTL communications system,

able to pick up FTL emanations associated with normal electromagnetic radiation. They knew of our

presence as soon as we began to broadcast.

An alternative fix, to both this and the previous problem, might suggest itself to you: although the aliens

came originally from Rigel, they have been colonizing space for a long time. Their nearest colony is much

closer than Rigel. Unfortunately, this doesn't help unless the aliens were already closer to us than the

nearest star. The travel time from Alpha Centauri at 5,000 miles a second is more than a century and a

half—too long for them to get here after receiving our first radio signals.

The Rigelians are a hundred feet high. At that size, they would not be able to march out of their ships. In

fact, they would not march anywhere, or even be able to move. The largest creature on Earth, the blue

whale, is as much as a hundred feet long, but it is able to grow to such a size only because its body is

supported by water. A land animal a hundred feet tall would lie like a beached whale, crushed by its

own weight and unable to breathe. Weight increases as the cube of linear size, the area of an animal's

limbs only as the square, so something fifteen times as tall as a human has to support fifteen times as

much weight per square inch of limb cross-section.

Nothing made of living tissue and walking around on land today can be much bigger than an adult

elephant, whose legs are short and thick. This is discussed in detail in J.B.S. Haldane's essay, "On Being

The Right Size" (Haldane, 1927), which illustrates the size/area/weight relationship with a memorable

image: "You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets

a slight shock and walks away. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."

The fix: Our aliens must wear suits. Those suits include strong exoskeletons responding exactly to the

movements that the alien within wishes to make. We could make a good approximation to such a suit

today. It would be a trivial task for beings who build five-mile-long interstellar spaceships. The suits also

avoid another big question: How do aliens happen to be able to breathe our air?

They came to eat us. This may seem psychologically improbable, but let us accept that we do not

understand alien motives. There is a much bigger problem. It is highly unlikely that creatures who

evolved independently of Earth life will have a body chemistry close enough to ours to be able to eat the

same kinds of foods. Borrowing from Chapter 6, we note that amino acids are the raw materials from

which proteins are produced; that every living thing on Earth produces amino acids using coded triplets

of DNA or RNA bases; and that all codings produce only a total of twenty amino acids out of the

hundreds possible. We might argue that alien body chemistry will also be based on something like RNA

and DNA, because it is the only system we know of today for cell reproduction. However, the chance

that the very same amino acids would be generated is remote. Human flesh would be more likely to

poison aliens than be relished by them.

The fix: We call on some version of thepanspermia theory (Chapter 13), according to which life on

Earth did not develop independently, but was carried here from space. In that case, the aliens arose

from the same space-borne seeds; therefore, they can have compatible body biochemistry and can

digest humans.

An alternative version, in which an early super-race colonized the whole galaxy, then vanished without

trace, can accomplish the same result.

More problems: the aliens see using shortwave ultraviolet light. It's not impossible for such eyes to have

developed, particularly since the aliens come from a world whose blue-white sun, Rigel, produces far

more energy in the UV than Sol. But the aliens' eyes are working here on Earth. Our atmosphere

absorbs UV radiation of wavelengths shorter than 0.3 micrometers, so anything that used this part of the

spectrum for vision would be blind on the surface of this planet.

We will not ask how our scientist learned enough about the alien brain to realize how to disable it.

Presumably she is a genius in neuroscience and signal processing. But she doesn't know much basic

physics. Her UV signal generator will not be effective at long distances, as she planned to use it, since

the beam is strongly absorbed by air.

The fix: Give the aliens eyes that are superior to ours. Let them be sensitive to everything from short UV,

at less than 0.25 micrometer wavelength, to reflective infrared at 2 micrometers. (We see from about 0.4

to 0.7 micrometers.) That way the human can see the light produced by her signal generator, and be a

lot less nervous when using it in the field. ("Is this thing on?" "I don't see anything. Those aliens are getting

awfully close.")

The science problems in this story were deliberately chosen as obvious. There are a couple of other,

more subtle, scientific errors. They are minor, and one of them might get past a science fiction editor.

Rather than discussing them here, I will let the reader discover the glitches and provide a fix.

Even when all the fantasy elements have been converted to science fiction, it remains a dumb story. But

at least it is now a stupidscience fiction story.

Do you really need to worry about any of this? After all, what you are going to write is fiction.

If you are writing the kind of science fiction that I want to read, you do. I have thrown books across the

room and never picked them up again when they have offered some scientific howler too dumb to

believe: a story in which a planet had an atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen (watch out for that

cigarette!); a man with an IQ of 5,000 (measured how?); a scientist, warning the President that an

eclipse of the galaxy is on the way.

Even some of the science fiction classics are guilty. Consider H.G. Wells'The Invisible Man (Wells,

1897). He took a drug which made his body of the same refractive index as air. But if your eyes did not

absorb light, you would be blind.

There are more plausible ways of making a person invisible. Think about the problem and see what you

can come up with. We will address the topic in more detail in Chapter 12.

1.4 What kind of writer?You are going to be a science fiction writer. What kind?

It's no good saying, "a rich and famous one." We need to be more specific. Let's look at the options,

going back to the roots of science fiction.

When science fiction writers get together, one of the things they talk about iswhen science fiction began

.

Was it with Lucian of Samosata, who almost two thousand years ago had his hero, Icaromenippus,

wonder about the moon, and then go there? Even farther back, is Homer'sOdyssey science fiction?

What about Marco Polo's travels to China, which some today say never happened, with the tale made

up in a prison cell? How about the voyages of Sinbad? The idea of a bird that could carry off and dine

on elephants must have seemed more probable to early Europeans than the elephant itself—surely a fine

candidate for a mythical beast.

Closer to our own time, we have Kepler'sSomnium (Kepler, 1634) and Francis Godwin'sThe Man in

the Moone (Godwin, 1638). And what aboutGulliver's Travels , travel not to the Moon but to places

just as strange?

These were all seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works, although only Swift's stories are well-known

today. If you are inclined to dismiss them as social satires, let me point out that in the "Voyage to

Laputa," published in 1726, Swift remarked that the astronomers of that flying island, with their superior

telescopes, had "discovered two lesser stars, or `satellites,' which revolve around about Mars, whereof

the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters, and the

outermost, five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours and the latter in twenty-one and a half."

The modern values of these numbers are 1.35 Mars-diameters and 7 hrs. 39 mins. for Phobos, and 3.5

diameters and 30 hrs. 18 mins. for Deimos. However, no one knew that Mars had moons at all until

Asaph Hall discovered Deimos and Phobos in 1877.

Inspired prediction? More probably, sheer coincidence—but any modern science fiction writer would

be proud to do as well.

All these works have been cited as the "first science fiction." However, they all form isolated data points.

They did not give rise to a "school" of writers, near-contemporaries who went on to write similar works.

There was no continuity with what came after them.

That continuity came with two nineteenth-century authors. The different types of story that they created

persist. And the differences are relevant to writers today.

Origin number one was Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein (Shelley, 1818).

This novel is significant in three ways. First, it has been continuously of interest—and read—since it was

written in 1816. Second, it is fictionabout science . The idea of the reanimation of a corpse was based

on the science of the day. Mary Shelley wrote after the experiments of Galvani and Franklin, but before

Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell put an understanding of electricity and magnetism on a

firmer footing. At the time whenFrankenstein was written, electricity was perhaps the biggest mystery

of the day. Even such authorities as Erasmus Darwin, the celebrated grandfather of Charles Darwin, did

not dismiss the idea of the spontaneous generation of life. How much easier, then, it must have seemed

to reanimate a corpse, rather than to create life from inanimate materials. Mary Shelley was offering

legitimate scientific speculation , not fantasy.

Third,Frankenstein is amoral tale, concerned ultimately less with science than with moral issues.

You might not think about moral questions if you are familiar only with the movie versions of the story.

There the monster is at center stage. The cinematic electrical effects and the harnessing of the lightning

are not in the original book at all. In the movies, Baron Frankenstein loses ground to his creation. Even

his name is abused. When children say, "you look like Frankenstein," we all know what they mean, while

in that classic work,Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein , the Baron has gone entirely, replaced by

Count Dracula (who loses out in the end to the Wolf Man).

Let me add one personal anecdote about the power of the story. My first exposure was neither to book

nor to movie. The tale wastold to me by my father when I was about eight, and I realize now that he

talked of the movie version. It fascinated and absolutely terrified me.

The second point of origin is Jules Verne. Between 1860 and 1870, he wroteFrom the Earth to the

Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Five Weeks in a Balloon , andTwenty Thousand

Leagues Beneath the Sea .

LikeFrankenstein , these books have been continuously read since the day that they were published.

They also display a great interest in science. (Verne himself grumbled, late in life, that the upstart H.G.

Wells didn't use sound scientific methods, the way that Verne had.)

Verne, however, is little concerned with moral issues. In contrast with Mary Shelley's story, Verne's

plots can be summarized as "a bunch of cheerful but emotionally challenged guys go off and have a

rattling (and scientific) good time."

There is one other way in which Mary Shelley and Jules Verne differ profoundly. Verne's work directly

influenced scientists—not of his own generation, but of the one that followed. I don't think anyone

readingFrankenstein around 1825 said, "Hey, let's go and collect a few bits of dead bodies and see

what we can do." But we know for a fact that Tsiolkovsky, the father of the Russian space program,

was inspired by Verne. Hermann Oberth, whose work in turn inspired Wernher von Braun, discovered

Verne'sFrom the Earth to the Moon when he was eleven years old, and was led to a lifelong

commitment to space flight. Finally, Robert Goddard was influenced by H.G. Wells, andThe War of the

Worlds . He later said that after reading it, "I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device

which had even thepossibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale if sent up

from the meadow at my feet. . . . Existence at last seemed very purposive."

Today, the lines of descent from Mary Shelley and Jules Verne have converged. We all want to write

stories that draw from both—morally significant tales, with first-rate science.

Given that overall desire, we have a number of options as to the type of writer we want to be. I will

name and define half a dozen categories: Bandwagoners, Bards, Importers, Seers, Sensitives, and

World-builders. And I will make my own recommendation as to how a new writer should proceed.

The Bandwagoner.This writer is very much of the moment. The story chooses a theme, often of current

social or scientific significance, and pushes it hard. You will like the result if you are on the same

intellectual wavelength, and share the same passion. Otherwise . . .

It is difficult to be consistently successful with this kind of writing. Causes change with the times. Not

only that, the writer is likely to compete with fifty others who have responded to the same hot topic.

Finally, the Bandwagoner must find an editor who shares the same point of view.

The Bard.If you can visualize an interesting character passing through a whole succession of intriguing

situations, and can describe it so that other people can see the same scenes, you qualify as a Bard. If

you put your character in space, you are likely to be writing space opera. If she is in Neverland, you are

writing fantasy. If he is wandering the Mediterranean, a long time ago, someone else has already done

the story.

Successful Bards have narrative strength, but more than that, they generate interest in the central

character. Given a good tale-spinning talent, you can write these stories forever. Of course, after a while

an acute reader may feel they are all the same story. Homer was smart, and wrote theOdyssey only once.

The Importer.Science fiction stories have been written about hundreds of branches of science.

Fortunately for the Importer, science is a field in which new developments are reported every week. The

Importer picks a subject, any subject: aardvarks to zygotes, and everything in between; quarks, game

theory, prions, quasars, retroviruses, artificial life, superstrings.

There is only one restriction, but it's an important one: the subject must not have been used before in

science fiction. The Importer learns enough to be convincing, then uses the subject as the background of

a story.

This works better than one might suppose. Most science fiction readers have a natural interest in

science, and a story is a painless way of acquiring new information. As a result, Importer stories can

often be sold even when the writer violates some of the rules of good storytelling. The most common

fault is in presenting science in big, lecture-like blocks—"expository lumps." The Importer gets away

Sheffield, Charles - Borderlands of Science

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