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  • Hard science fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should be trying to be accurate and rigorous in its use of the scientific knowledge of its time, and later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label. For example, P. Schuyler Miller called Arthur C. Clarke's 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF [3], and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of "moondust" in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect.
    • In this view, a story's scientific "hardness" is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.

  • Jules Verne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised.
    • Verne, along with H. G. Wells, is often popularly referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction".[1]
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  • The War of the Worlds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • Wells depicts the Martians firing spacecraft to Earth from a giant space gun, a common representation of space travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bearing similarity to the modern spacecraft propulsion concept of mass drivers.
    • Military theorists of that era had many speculations of building a "fighting-machine" or "land dreadnought" (as the Royal Navy called this hypothetical machine on which some experiments were made just before the First World War). Wells's concept of the Martian tripods, fast-moving and equipped with Heat-Rays and black smoke, represents an ultimate end to these speculations, although Wells also presents a less fantastical depiction of the armoured fighting vehicle in his short story "The Land Ironclads". [1] [2]
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  • 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • Space Exploration

      When 2001: A Space Odyssey was written, mankind had not yet set foot on the moon. The space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union were only in the early stages. Much room was left to imagine the future of the space program. Space Odyssey offers one such vision, offering a glimpse at what space exploration might one day become. Lengthy journeys, such as manned flights to Saturn, and advanced technologies, such as suspended animation, are shaped and shown all through the novel.

  • Childhood's End - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • The idea of humanity reaching an end point through transformation to a higher form of existence is the main idea behind the concept of the Omega Point and of the technological singularity.

  • Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: Isaac Asimov (Toronto Star)

    • Dr. Asimov, 65, is a severe critic of Star Wars. "I'm
      against it, not because I'm a science-fiction writer, and
      therefore have special knowledge, but because I like to think I'm
      a sane human being."


      He believes Star Wars is a dangerous waste of money.
      "They're talking about spending $33 billion on research related
      to Star Wars. We're going to withdraw money from needed aspects
      of developing knowledge in order to set up something that
      probably won't work and even if it does work, won't do us any
      good."

    • Part of the problem with Star Wars is that it will take
      years to develop. "If I were the Soviet Union, I would have
      spent all this time trying to work up methods to penetrate the
      shield," said Asimov, who was born in Russia but grew up in New
      York. "I have a strong suspicion it would be cheaper to
      penetrate the shield than to set it up.


      "And if we're in real danger of a nuclear war now, trying to
      set up something for the middle of the 21st century isn't going
      to do us any good. In fact, by filling us full of false
      confidence, we're not going to make a strong enough effort to
      prevent war now."

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  • Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: Y3K: Artificial Intelligence

    • Within a century, it will be possible to scan a human mind
      and reproduce it inside a machine. Regardless of whether our
      minds are just very sophisticated analog computers, or whether
      they have a quantum-mechanical element (as Roger Penrose
      proposes), we will nonetheless be able to duplicate them
      artificially.
    • Already, at the close of the second millennium, a
      transhumanist movement has begun; Christopher Dewdney is the
      principal Canadian spokesperson for it. This movement holds that
      uploading our consciousness into machines is desirable, since
      that will free us from biological aging and death. On the other
      hand (a decidedly biological metaphor), there is more to being
      human than just the networks of synapses in our brains; clearly,
      much of what we are is tied in intimately with our bodies. We
      may find that uploaded humans are not happy — indeed, are
      incapable of happiness or any emotion.
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  • Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: On Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics

    • We have lots of computers
      and robots today and not one of them has even the rudiments of
      the Three Laws built-in. It's extraordinarily easy for
      "equipment failure" to result in human death, after all, in
      direct violation of the First Law.


      Asimov's Laws assume that we will create intelligent machines
      full-blown out of nothing, and thus be able to impose across the
      board a series of constraints. Well, that's not how it's happening.
      Instead, we are getting closer to artificial intelligence by small
      degrees and, as such, nobody is really implementing fundamental
      safeguards.


      Take Eliza, the first computer psychiatric program. There is
      nothing in its logic to make sure that it doesn't harm the user
      in an Asimovian sense, by, for instance, re-opening old mental
      wounds with its probing. Now, we can argue that Eliza is way too
      primitive to do any real harm, but then that means someone has to
      say arbitrarily, okay, that attempt at AI requires no
      safeguards but this attempt does. Who would that someone be?

    • We already live in a world in which Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
      have no validity, a world in which every single computer user is
      exposed to radiation that is considered at least potentially
      harmful, a world in which machines replace people in the
      workplace all the time. (Asimov's First Law would prevent that:
      taking away someone's job absolutely is harm in the Asimovian
      sense, and therefore a "Three Laws" robot could never do
      that, but, of course, real robots do it all the time.)

  • Isaac Asimov Home Page

    • What does the new movie have in common with Asimov's writings?
      • The Three Laws of Robotics

        The movie faithfully quotes Asimov's three laws of robotics:


        1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

        2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

        3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
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  • The Future of Humanity: a Lecture by Isaac Asimov

    • What you read here, though timeless, was a product of the time. 1973 saw the end of a lot of optimism carried over from the sixties, and the oil embargo was the first real inconvenience experienced by the baby-boomers of the USA on a nationwide scale. Many middle class families were now requiring two wage-earners, and the cost of living was on the rise.



    • I once, when I was not quite nineteen, wrote a story called "Trends". It was the first story I ever sold to John Campbell of the old "Astounding Science Fiction". It appeared in the July 1939 issue.



      And in it I dealt with the first flight around the Moon and back. I had it placed in the 1970's. The first attempt, which was a failure, was in 1973. And the second attempt, which was a success, was in 1978. The actual flight took place in 1968, so I was ten years conservative. In addition, my flight was all there was, whereas in real life the flight around the Moon was preceded by all kinds of orbital and sub-orbital flights, and dockings, and mid-course-corrections, and communication satellites, and navigation satellites...everything under the sun.



      So you can see how wrong I was. In fact I was even wronger than that because when I wrote my story back in 1939...38, it was printed in 39...When I wrote that story, I had definite ideas on how the space flight was to take place.

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  • The Illustrated Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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    • "The Veldt" — Two parents use an artificial "nursery" to keep their children happy. The children use the high-tech simulation nursery to create the predatorial environment of an African veldt. When the parents threaten to take it away, the children lock their parents inside where they are mauled and killed by the "harmless" machine-generated lions of the nursery.
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  • Fahrenheit 451 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • It is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society, written in the early years of the Cold War.
    • Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which ultimately leads to ignorance of total facts.[3]
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  • Dune (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    • He took a plane to Florence, Oregon, where the USDA was sponsoring a lengthy series of experiments in using poverty grasses to stabilize and slow down the damaging sand dunes, which could "swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, highways."[5] Herbert's article on the dunes, "They Stopped the Moving Sands," was never completed (and only published decades later in an incomplete form in The Road to Dune), but it sparked Herbert's interest in the general subject of ecology and related matters.
    • The CHOAM corporation is the major underpinning of the Imperial economy, with shares and directorships determining each House's income and financial leverage.
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