杏吧原创

AS A science writer who also writes some science fiction, I sometimes find myself on panels discussing the interface of the two. The panels are great fun as forums for tossing about the wild and innovative ideas that are the heart of the best science fiction. When the chemistry is right, the discussions get your brain buzzing with ideas. I find myself wishing I could bottle the stuff and later take a swig on a slow day.

In Different Engines, Mark Brake and Neil Hook have done just that 鈥� distilled the gist of science fiction鈥檚 best speculations and bottled it in a book. In doing so, they explore the ways in which science impacts society, how fiction reacts to that impact, and how science fiction and science feed off one another.

They cover a remarkable amount of territory, from Kepler鈥檚 1634 novel about a trip to the moon to and 鈥淣ew Weird鈥� fiction. Film and television are given their own share of discussion, from Georges M茅li猫s鈥� pioneering to Deep Space Nine.

Many of the stories are familiar. It is no surprise to find that powered flight and space travel, for example, appeared in fiction long before they happened in fact. It鈥檚 far easier to write down an idea than to build a rocket that will fly to the moon. Still, such stories served an important purpose: they were a way of testing out ideas and asking what might happen if they become real. Sometimes science fiction is mere entertainment, but often it offers serious explorations of the consequences, good and bad, of science and technology.

Twentieth-century science fiction can be divided broadly into two schools: the optimistic and the pessimistic. , for instance, epitomised optimism. An enthusiastic futurist, gadgeteer and overall cheerleader for scientific progress, he published the first US magazine of science fiction, Amazing Stories, in 1926.

At the same time, a larger group of pessimists emerged, writing assorted prophecies of doom. After the second world war, tales of nuclear destruction reflected the fears of the cold-war era. Brake and Hook credit bleak prophecies like Nevil Shute鈥檚 On the Beach with slowing the race toward nuclear Armageddon in the real world. Doubtless such stories influenced the public, but so did coming face to face with the real thing during the Cuban missile crisis.

Brake and Hook wander through other 鈥渁ges鈥� of science fiction: the new age of overpopulated world in Stand on Zanzibar, the computer age of and William Gibson鈥檚 Neuromancer, and the biological age of Gattaca with its new eugenics. They discuss masterpieces like Kurt Vonnegut鈥檚 Cat鈥檚 Cradle and Walter Miller鈥檚 A Canticle for Liebowitz.

But they haven鈥檛 covered everything, a limitation unwittingly highlighted by a publicist who evidently hadn鈥檛 read the book before churning out a flyer that opens: 鈥淲arp drives. Laser guns. Teleportation devices.鈥� It鈥檚 a perfectly good list of archetypal science-fiction ideas, but unfortunately Different Engines doesn鈥檛 mention any of them.

Then again, even the best panels run out of time. In the closing minutes, the moderator often asks for a summary: does science fiction drive scientific progress? Not so much 鈥渄rives鈥� as suggests, predicts and ponders. It provides a world in which we can safely experience the possibilities of science and technology. And sometimes, by tapping into what people want but scientists can鈥檛 yet deliver, it makes predictions. Gernsback scored some successes 鈥� predicting night baseball, birth control and a moon landing between 1970 and 1975. Then again, he also predicted weather control, teleportation and antigravity. Thankfully, the prophets of doom made some faulty predictions, too 鈥� perhaps partly because we heeded their warnings.

Different Engines is not an encyclopedia or an academic treatise on the role of fictional prophecy in society. It鈥檚 written to be thought-provoking and entertaining, and it does the job well.