January 14, 2022
When you hear the words "science fiction", you feel that there should be some science in the fiction. However, a lot of books, TV shows and movies throw in "baloneyum" which looks and sounds "scientific", but is really nonsense. How can we sort through the baloney to find the good stuff?
I'm going to talk about some basic scientific principles, especially the law of conservation of mass-energy, and review some fictional works that have good science, some that have bad, and one or two which are truly awful.
Chuck Adler is a physics professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland; he got his Ph. D. in Laser Physics at Brown University, and has done research in a variety of areas of Physics including atmospheric optics, atomic physics, and Physics pedagogy. He has written over 40 research papers, and is the author of the popular book Wizards, Aliens and Starships: Physics and Math in Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has a course for the Great Courses lecture series, “How Science Shapes Science Fiction”, and has given a number of other popular lectures, including "Storytelling in Science Writing" (Keynote address, POPMEC Conference, 2021), “Birds, aiplanes and Leonardo’s fliers" (UCLA, 2019), “Let’s Design a Dragon!” (Duke University), "Particle Fever and the Grandfather Paradox: Physics for Everyone" (Kavli Conversations on Communicating Science, with Dr. Mark Levinson), and “Cylons, T2’s and the Borg! Oh my!” (YHouse lecture, Manhattan, New York, with Dr. Bow van Riper). He is a lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy, beginning with watching Star Trek reruns when he was 7, and hopes one day to write his own work.