From Science Fiction to Science (and back again)

In the modern world we are told to trust the experts, that they have studied a lot, and (usually) know what they are talking about. In fact we have come to a point where questioning those experts is seriously frowned upon, with memes showing a gravestone with an epitaph that reads something like 'I did my own research' being all over the place. The problem is that, in our hyper-specialized world, that practice comes with its own set of problems, as those experts' views at times have grown a little too narrow for comfort, so much so that they tend to miss the big picture. You know who doesn't have that problem? Science fiction writers, whose bread and butter is taking those facts, bending them every which way, and combining them with other facts that have been taken from the most disparate disciplines in fresh and interesting new ways, ways that often provide them (or rather us) with a rather unique perspective. That is what this book is about.

It is also about the ways in which science and fiction interact in the realm of science itself, an interaction scientists are often reluctant to even acknowledge, but one that is always there, lurking in the background. Want an example? The predictions regarding climate change. Those are unquestionably based on science, but they are also, at their core, a form of speculation, and as time goes by, as the future becomes the past, we will be able to tell whether or not those scientists got it right, and their predictions will either come to be recognized as facts, or wind up being dismissed as 'mere fiction'.

Anyway, this book looks at a number of areas where fact and fiction tend to overlap, from questions about what may be lurking in our distant past; to the quest for alien life, and alien civilizations; to wondering how the world ends; to how artificial intelligence has evolved; and finally to how the rapid pace of change has transformed the way in which we see the future itself.

Yes, that can come across as a rather wide array of subjects, but given that this book can also be seen as a battlecry against specialization that is probably to be expected.