Sturgeon's Law validated

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, fictional influences, science, technology

I don't recall the year that famed science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon took a friend to a conference about science fiction and science fiction writing. In the middle of yet another lecture, the friend said in an aside to Sturgeon, "This stuff is 90% junk!". Sturgeon replied, sotto voce, "90% of everything is junk!" This anecdote has been retold and reprinted numerous times, and Sturgeon's reply has attained the status of a folkloric law.

Joel Levy, author of Reality Ahead of Schedule: How Science Fiction Inspires Science Fact, wasn't setting out to do anything at all related to Sturgeon's Law, but has validated it by omission. The 18 chapters of the book present historical reviews of subjects in five areas, Military, Lifestyle, Space Transport, Medicine, and Communications; all the subjects, including lasers, 3-D printing, self-driving autos, antidepressants and the Internet, were foreshadowed in fiction between a few decades to two centuries ago. For example, there is a clear correlation between the discovery of X-rays by Roentgen in 1895 and a great increase in the use of "ray gun" weapons in fiction. The actual development of lasers in 1960 led to a further increase  and more focused speculation (the "phasers" of Star Trek, for example). Many inventors have confessed to being inspired by science fiction.

It was fascinating to read of the many prescient writers of past generations. I already knew of the prediction of synchronous satellite communications by Arthur C. Clarke, also the author of Sentinel, the story that was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 also has one of many stories of computers becoming self-aware and running amok. He and Jules Verne are examples of writers who knew science and were careful to use it well, avoiding outright fantasy.

In a period of self-imposed exile, during about two years I read every science fiction volume in the city library where I lived. Thereafter, I became more selective in my reading, but I continue to read a certain amount of science fiction, half a century later. I know the field rather well. The author of Reality Ahead has unearthed quite a number of authors and stories I hadn't encountered, but also omitted a great many others, stories that have gripping tales, interesting speculative technology, and sympathetic characters, but that haven't inspired much of anything in today's science or technology. I don't fault him for such omissions.

Of course, we have to set aside all the variations of faster-than-light travel, mentalism (such as psychokinesis or telepathy), and direct use of materials such as neutronium. And while Isaac Asimov became rightly famous for setting up the Three Laws of Robotics, hardly anyone has pointed out that most of his stories about robots were actually exploring neuroses, such as people dealing with neurotic robots, or neurotic people faced with utterly stable robots. I wonder if there is a book in the works about Asimov's influence on psychiatry?

Now, what validates Sturgeon's Law? The fact that 90+% of science fiction doesn't foreshadow anything. Many, many stories shelved as science fiction are more about wish fulfillment or coming of age with only the vaguest reference to anything technical. Many others I call "psychological science fiction", exploring mental aberrations but with less expertise than Asimov had. A look at my local library reveals that a majority of modern "science fiction" is sword-and-sorcery, just set on other planets or on a purported future Earth, and the "technology" is more magical or fantastical than scientific. A few years ago the local library stopped distinguishing between science fiction and fantasy; now they shelve them together.

Once in a while I encounter some real, solid, fiction with a scientific basis that works with known physics, or that at least explains extensions of physics needed to make "new stuff" work. That is the most satisfying to me.

All that aside, I enjoyed the book. Great writers such as Verne, Wells, Gernsback and Clarke were careful to write plausibly, while stretching the limits of that plausibility. Sometimes, they hit the nail on the head. Joel Levy found a lot of those "nails".