[FRIAM] Mission to Abisko

[Steve Smith]

Dave -
> By John L. Casti and Anders Karlqvist
>
> Casti seems to hail from Santa Fe — anybody know him?

I met him just after he published "The Cambridge Quartet".    I also
know Benford and Bear.   All at the passing acquaintance, one-or-two
intense conversation level.  Casti, I toured around LANL and SFe,
including helping him arrange an interview on one of the Local Radio
Stations (live from the El Dorado?).  

> Our conversations involving metaphor and story and science prompted me to reread this book over the weekend. I would like to highly recommend it to everyone on the list.

Thanks for the reference.  I was NOT aware of this book in spite of
hosting a collection of SF authors at LANL during the 1998 Nebula Awards
held in SFe.   This is when I met Benford... Benford was one of my
respected colleagues PhD advisor...   The theme of the visit to LANL was
at least partly about how SF authors often *presage* scientific
discoveries.   Asimov is classic in this vein (Scientist/SF writer) but
another of my favorites is Robert L. Forward, and there is a "new kid on
the block" at LANL- Ian Tregellis, <http://iantregillis.com/> though his
fiction is closer to alternate history or fantasy by some measures.

    https://www.lanl.gov/discover/features/spotlight/ian-tregillis.php

MANY if not most colleagues in Engineering and Science that I have
polled anecdotally will reference the Science Fiction they read as
children and young adults as being the strongest influence for preparing
for their chosen careers. 

This was also just as the OED was coming out with an appendix on
neologisms coined in fiction and literature.   Our "guest of honor"
(Jack Wlliamson) had (I think) the most entries in the first publication
(or maybe draft) and told stories of being questioned by the FBI for one
of his short stories referencing an atom bomb during the Manhattan
Project.   Since he was *from* NM ( working as a meteorologist in the
Pacific during WWII, being too old for military service (40ish?)), they
apparently assumed he had some kind of insider info on the project?  
His "defense" was to pull out his copy of a 1933 short-story that
presented the idea for the first time (in his record).

My hypothesis of the *primary* role Speculative Fiction has in Science
is that it allows an author or a whole movement within a genre to build
a network of hypothesis about "whatever" without the rigid need for
grounding them out in observed facts.   It is a training/practice ground
for "believing 6 impossible things before breakfast" and then
thoughtfully if not always carefully working through the cascade of
assumptions.  "IF X were true then what are the myriad possible
consequences that might follow from that?".

Steven C. Gould (Jumper, Wild Side, etc.) states (paraphrasing) "the
difference between SF and Fantasy is that in Fantasy, *everything* you
know is up for grabs and in Science Fiction *one* 'new fact about
reality' is introduced and from that the rest of the story follows".  
It seemed trite when I first heard it but much SF stands up to that
description...  I can't speak as much to Fantasy.

> The subtitle of the book is "stories and myths in the creation of scientific 'truth'."
>
> Jon, Frank and anyone else who identifies as a mathematician will enjoy / find interesting the chapter by Ian Steward, "Secret Narratives of Mathematics."  From the chapter:
>
> "A proof is a story. Not any old story. It has to take off from the hypothesis and end by confirming the conclusion. Not end with the conclusion, by the way — any more than a novel is obliged to end with the hero and heroine riding off together into the sunset. The story ends when the conclusion is firmly pinned down. (This is where you stop and put your Halmos symbol.)
>
> If a proof is a story, then a memorable proof must tell a ripping yarn."
>
> Lot's of fun stuff about evolution, computational thinking, algorithmic and ascetic storytelling, something for everyone interested in science, how science is done, science as communication, science and prediction.

It is going on my pile!  Though I'm not sure I will draw the same
conclusions from this body of work as you might?

What about Boundaries and Barriers,
<https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201555700/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1>
which seems to be part of the buildup to Abisko?


Thanks,

 - Steve


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