Author Tobias Buckell has been hospitalized with a possible heart problem.  He’s been blogging on the experience from the hospital, and generally displaying more fortitude than I imagine I would under the circumstances.  Few things suck more than being in a hospital bed day after day, so I hope you’ll go over to his blog and give him your best wishes.

I’m standing in line at the store last week, and there’s a fellow behind me on a cell phone.  I pay him no mind until I hear him say:

“Yeah, we’re having him shot in Salt Lake City next week!”

Well, that piqued my interest.  He was silent for a moment, and then followed up with:

“Yeah, yeah.  We’re bringing a crew up from California.”

Now, I know criminal overlords don’t openly discuss gangland slayings on their cellphones when they’re in line at Walgreens.  But I was still slightly relieved when I heard him start talking about camera equipment a few moments later.

Not long ago, at least by this blog’s glacial standards, SF Signal and its weekly mind meld feature featured the question of whether or not science fiction has held back the real-life exploration of space, as recently claimed by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The idea is that science fiction and unrealistic portrayals of space travel make the real thing seem boring and disappointing by comparison, diminishing the public’s interest in real space travel.

I find this implausible for a few reasons. The biggest is that I don’t think science fiction has enough influence on the public consciousness to be a serious factor in the way Aldrin suggests. Everyone has heard of Star Trek and Star Wars, but I don’t think the average person compares what they hear about real space travel to science fiction, even subconsciously. The people who are sufficiently immersed in science fiction to seriously make that sort of comparison seem if anything to be more likely than average to be in favor of space travel, in my experience, so if science fiction has any effect it seems more likely to be the opposite of what Aldrin suggests.

Another problem is that unrealistic or fanciful portrayals of other forms of technology don’t see have retarded their development or diminished public interest. The portrayal of computers and the Internet in movies is frequently ridiculous, but that doesn’t seem to have harmed the development of computers or the public’s interest in them; people don’t turn their noses up to real PCs because they don’t act like the ones in movies. The same could be said of weapons, surveillance technology, or forensic science, to name a few.

More generally, exaggerated or idealized depictions of a thing usually make people more interested in that thing, not less. I’d be shocked, for instance, if the movie Top Gun made viewers less interested in military aviation, or if movies about idealistic political crusaders and reformers made viewers less interested in real politics, or if Kill Bill made people less interested in katanas. In my experience, seeing an idealized fantasy version of something is what strengthens interest, both because it initially draws attention and because it makes people want to make the fantasy reality.

A personal example: I know plenty of long-time students at the martial arts school I go to who first became interested because of martial arts movies. Martial arts movies are seldom very realistic; even the relatively down-to-earth ones are often a lot smoother and prettier than the real thing. The movies also usually fail to convey what being on the receiving end a punch to the gut or triangle choke feels like, and leave out things like watching someone vomit because they got kicked in the groin on the day they forgot to wear their cup. Nevertheless, there is no doubt in my mind that martial arts movies have increased public interest in the martial arts and the number of practitioners. To give another personal example, I cover local government for a small newspaper. I see the nuts-and-bolts of real politics on a regular basis, and I can assure you that seeing it up close is a lot less likely to inspire enthusiasm about politics than watching The West Wing.

If anything, I think more realistic science fiction is less likely to inspire interest in real space travel than more fanciful SF. I love hard science fiction, but I think that most people- and especially impressionable kids- are more likely to say, “Wow, space is really cool!” from watching Star Trek then from watching a realistic portrayal of space flight, with all its limitations. This is by no means a criticism of hard SF; it’s not science fiction’s job as a genre to push any particular viewpoint.

If SF does hurt public appreciation for science, it would be not by presenting unrealistic science and technology that leads to disappointment with the real thing, but through the heavy reliance of media SF on “science gone wrong/tampering in God’s domain” type stories. This sort of plot and theme is far more common in movies and television then in science fiction books, I think due to a combination of who produces written SF vs. media SF and the constraints imposed by the different forms. However, this trope never involves space flight, as far as I’m aware. (I suppose the movie Event Horizon could be considered an exception, but I doubt anyone watched that movie and thought, “We should abandon all research into spacecraft propulsion to make sure nobody accidentally opens a gateway into Hell.”) It’s almost always applied to biological science and technology, or to robots and computers.

There are several factors leading to lack of public enthusiasm for space travel, I think, but science fiction is not among them. I have my own ideas on that front, but this post is long enough already.

Here’s a nice coincidence: I’m currently reading Andy Remic’s novel War Machine (and loving it so far), and I just discovered via Fantasy Book Critic that Remic will is putting out his novels War Machine and Spiral on the internet as podcasts, read by Andy Remic with background music provided by rock band the3 m1ss1ng.  They’ll be coming out at about a chapter a week on Podiobooks.com.

I think this is a really cool idea.  I especially like the musical aspect- I’ve written before about the combination of music and books, and the idea of a book “soundtrack,” so it’s great to see it actually being made a reality.  I look forward to seeing how this progresses.

You know, I hate to turn into one of those grumpy old codgers carrying on about how ridiculously long the holiday season has gotten nowadays.  Nevertheless, I have to ask: why, when I went to my local Walgreens a full week ago, October 6th, were they already selling Christmas cookies?  Christmas cookies, mind, in a store with an entire aisle dedicated to Halloween candy and decorations.  Please to explain.  I don’t want to see the different holidays bleeding into each other like this.  By early December, they’ll probably have the Easter candy out.

I’ve got a review of Graham Sharp Paul’s debut novel over at Crucial Taunt.  Have a look.

My video games column at Diverse Nerd Association continues.  My September 19th column has stuff on the possible Mass Effect movie, Warhammer Online, Uwe Boll, and what is almost certainly the first time anyone has brought up John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra while discussing Xbox Live.  The September 26th column has Crysis Warhead, the forthcoming Max Payne movie, Spore, and more.  You know, it’s not just any column that manages to work in USA Up All Night, municipal zoning laws, and the phrases “godlike post-singularity machine intelligences” and “pagan blood sacrifice” in the space of less than 500 words.

Under “Pages” at the top of my right sidebar, I now have a link to a listing of all the book reviews I’ve done, both here and elsewhere.  Check it out here.

My apologies for the slow posting lately.  I’ve got a chapter in a forthcoming book, and I’ve been busy looking over the proofs.  I’ll be more active shortly.

Tamara Brooks lists the the ways she’d would would misuse the Force.  She’s a fan of the Jedi mind trick, but leaves out the best power of all: Using the Force to choke people!

Someone cut in front of you in a line? Force choke. A fellow passenger on the bus won’t stop blathering into a cell phone? Force choke. An intoxicated would-be pick-up artist at your favorite bar won’t take the hint? Force choke. Next-door neighbor keeps having noisy parties at 3 in the morning? You guessed it.  Most of life’s daily annoyances would vanish like Yoda’s corpse.